Skills

A skill is a standing instruction. Write your drawing standard, your hole convention or your naming rules once, and CoPilot follows them every time the subject comes up — without you re-typing them.

What a skill actually is

Not a macro and not a script. A skill is guidance in plain English that gets injected into CoPilot's instructions when it becomes relevant. A macro replays fixed steps; a skill changes how CoPilot decides.

Compare:

A macro says: sketch a rectangle, extrude 20 mm, add four holes. Same result every time.
A skill says: “On every drawing, use third-angle projection, put the title block bottom-right, dimension in millimetres to one decimal, and always add centre marks to holes.” It applies to any drawing you ask for, of any part.

What a skill contains

Name — e.g. Company Drawing Standard.
Category — one of Drawing, Sketch, Feature, Assembly, Document, Query, Pattern, SheetMetal, Simulation or General. The category groups the skill and helps CoPilot decide when it is relevant.
Trigger keywords — a comma-separated list, e.g. drawing,sheet,view,layout. When your request contains one of these, the skill activates.
Instructions — the actual guidance, in natural language. This is the part that does the work.
Always active — when set, the skill applies to every request regardless of keywords. Use sparingly; reserve it for genuine house rules.
Enabled — skills can be switched off without deleting them.

Creating a skill from the chat

You do not have to open a dialog. Describe the skill and CoPilot creates it.

Create a skill called "Company Drawing Standard" in the Drawing category, triggered by drawing, sheet, view: always use A3 sheets, third-angle projection, dimension in mm to one decimal place, and add centre marks to every hole.

CoPilot saves the skill and confirms the name and category. From then on, asking for a drawing pulls those instructions in automatically — you do not invoke the skill by name.

More worked skills

Create a skill "Standard hole callouts" in the Feature category, keywords hole, drill, tap: all through holes are Ø6.6 clearance for M6 unless I say otherwise, and every tapped hole gets a cosmetic thread.

Create a General skill "House units and materials" and make it always active: all dimensions are millimetres, default material is 6061-T6 aluminium, and always report volume in cubic millimetres.

Create a skill "FEA setup rules" in the Simulation category, keywords stress, study, load: always name faces geometrically (minX, maxX and so on), never by face number, and always state the load direction as an explicit axis.

Managing skills

List all my skills

Show me the full instructions of the "Company Drawing Standard" skill

Update the "Company Drawing Standard" skill: sheets should be A2, not A3

Disable the "FEA setup rules" skill for now

Delete the skill called "Old title block"

Skills can also be exported as JSON for backup or for handing to another site:

Export all my Drawing skills as JSON

The Skills Manager dialog

If you prefer a form to a conversation, open the Skills Manager from the chat window's toolbar. It lists your skills by category and lets you create, edit, enable, disable and delete them, with the same fields described above.

Writing instructions that work

Skills are read by a language model, so the same qualities that make a good work instruction for a new colleague make a good skill.

Be specific and testable. “Dimension to one decimal place” beats “dimension neatly”.
Give the number, not the intent. “Clearance holes are Ø6.6 for M6” beats “use appropriate clearance”.
Say what to do when the rule does not apply. “…unless I give an explicit diameter” stops the rule fighting your instructions.
Keep one subject per skill. A drawing skill and a hole skill are easier to maintain, disable and share than one long “standards” skill.
Pick trigger keywords you actually type. If you say “print” rather than “drawing”, include print.

A skill influences CoPilot's behaviour; it does not guarantee it. Continue to check results — see Verifying results. If a skill is being ignored, check that it is enabled and that your prompt contains one of its trigger keywords, or set it always-active.

Sharing skills across your organization

Skills sync through your organization's server, so a skill authored by one member can be made available to everyone. This is how a team keeps one approved set of drafting and modelling conventions rather than several private ones.

Shared skills are visible organization-wide — anyone in your organization can see and run them. Keep names and descriptions clear, and do not put confidential project detail in a skill body.

Who can author skills

Organization admins can author skills. Other members need the Manage Skills permission, which an org admin grants from the Skill Authors dialog in the chat window. Everyone can use the skills that exist.

Skills, macros and the knowledge base

Three different things that are easy to confuse:

Skill — a standing instruction that shapes how CoPilot works. Use for conventions and standards.
Macro — a recorded sequence replayed on demand. Use for a repetitive job with fixed steps. See Macros.
Knowledge base — documents CoPilot can search and quote. Use when the source is a specification, standard or catalogue you want answers drawn from. See Knowledge Base.

A useful pattern combines them: index the standard as a document, then write a short skill saying “when drawing, follow our drawing standard from the knowledge base”.