Siemens NX

CAD Co-Pilot is an AI chat assistant built into Siemens NX as an add-in. Describe what you want in plain language and CoPilot carries out the work in your open part — sketches, features, drafting, assemblies, sheet metal and layers — reporting each step as it goes.

Installation

Run the Siemens NX CAD Co-Pilot MSI installer (the per-CAD installer for NX). Close NX before installing. After the installer finishes, restart NX so it loads the add-in.

The AI Co-Pilot commands appear only after NX has been restarted following installation. If they are still missing, close and reopen NX again.

Where to find CoPilot

CoPilot appears as an AI Co-Pilot ribbon tab and menu, with the commands Chat, Macros, Settings, Usage Stats and Help. Choose Chat to open the chat as a dockable window you can position anywhere in NX.

The AI Co-Pilot ribbon tab in Siemens NX — The AI Co-Pilot tab in NX, with Chat, Macros, Settings, Usage Stats and Help.

Siemens NX with the CAD Co-Pilot chat window open beside the model — Chat opens as a dockable window in NX. Each reply lists the tool calls it made, so a failed step is visible rather than hidden inside a summary.

Your first prompts

Create a new part

Create a 50 mm cube

Take a screenshot of the current model

Then move on to the worked examples in Part Modeling.

Three NX-specific habits

All geometry is in 3D world coordinates — including sketch curves. When you give a point for a sketch entity in NX, give the full world X, Y and Z. This is a genuine difference from the other three systems, where sketch coordinates are 2D and local to the sketch plane.

Set the work part before you edit. NX distinguishes the work part (what you are editing) from the displayed part (what you are looking at). If an edit lands somewhere unexpected, ask which is which.

Switch environment explicitly. NX has separate Modeling, Drafting, Sheet Metal and Gateway environments. Ask CoPilot to switch, and it reads back the environment that actually became active.

What are the current work part and displayed part?

Switch to the Drafting environment

What CoPilot can do in NX

Modelling — sketches, extrude, revolve, sweep, loft, fillet (blend), chamfer, hole, thread, shell, draft, boolean, split, patterns, mirrors, datum planes, axes, points and coordinate systems. See Part Modeling.
Surfaces — offset, extend, trim, thicken, planar surface.
Sheet metal — base flange (tab), edge and contour flanges, bends, hems, jogs, corner breaks, flat pattern and DXF export.
Assemblies — add components, constraints, replace, ground, suppress, exploded views, BOM export and import, interference checks, cloning. See Assemblies.
Drafting — sheets, views, dimensions with automatic value checking, notes, balloons, parts lists, centre marks, GD&T, weld and surface-finish symbols, plus layer control. See Drawings.
Arrangements and part-family members — see below.
Expressions — NX expressions are handled as parameters: list, read, create, change, import and export.
Journals — record, run and store in the Automation Hub. See below.

Layers — an NX-only capability

Layer control from chat exists for NX and no other CAD system.

Move all the drafting dimensions to layer 90

Make layer 90 the work layer and hide layer 200

Arrangements and part families

List the variants of this document

Activate the "Extended" arrangement

Create a new arrangement copied from the current one

An NX arrangement carries component position and suppression only. Dimension overrides on an arrangement are refused rather than silently ignored — use a part-family member for that.

NX has no per-variant custom-property scope. Properties belong to the part, not to the arrangement, so a BOM cannot vary a description by arrangement the way it can by a SOLIDWORKS configuration or an Inventor model state.

Journals

CoPilot can start and stop NX journal recording, run existing journals, and store them in the Automation Hub with named parameters.

Start recording a journal, and save it to C:\journals\rename.cs when I say stop

Run the journal at C:\journals\export_step.cs

An NX journal launched this way runs in a separate, headless NX session. It cannot see the parts open in your live session. Write journals that open (or create) the file themselves, modify it and save it — then reopen the file in your session to see the result. This is how NX runs journals, not a CoPilot limitation.

CoPilot's own recorded macros are a different mechanism and work normally — see Macros.

Preferences

NX has the richest preference surface of the four systems, and CoPilot can read and set all of it:

Session preferences — Sketch, Modeling, Drafting, PMI, Assemblies and more.
Part preferences — Modeling, Drafting, Work Plane and more.
Customer defaults — at user, group or site level.

List the session drafting preferences whose names contain "arrow"

Set the sketch preference for dimension text size

Customer-default changes only take effect after NX restarts. CoPilot will apply the change; the behaviour follows on the next launch.

Simulation and Teamcenter

NX exposes Simcenter structural analysis (linear static and modal) and a bridge that exports an NX Nastran deck for an external solver, and Teamcenter / NX Manager for data management. Both depend on how your NX session is configured, so probe before you plan around them:

Is simulation available in this session, and which solvers can you see?

Is Teamcenter active in this NX session?

Teamcenter must already be active in the NX session — CoPilot does not log you in separately, and it cannot log you out either; closing the NX session is how you disconnect. See Simulation & FEA for study setup.

Things that are not available on NX

Trimming a body with a tool body, and face divide / delete / replace, are not implemented.
BREP comparison between two parts is not available on NX.
Coaxial and insert assembly constraints are not implemented as separate operations — use a concentric constraint, which is the reliable route.
Native nesting — NX has no nesting API, so CoPilot's own nesting engine does the layout from exported flat-pattern DXFs.
Curve projection onto a surface and CAM setup / toolpath generation are not available in any CAD system yet. NX's own CAM module is unaffected — this is only about chat-driven CAM.