Troubleshooting & FAQ

The add-in is not visible in my CAD application

Make sure the add-in is enabled in your CAD system's add-in manager:

• SOLIDWORKS — Tools > Add-Ins, enable CAD Co-Pilot (tick both the active and start-up checkboxes).
• Inventor — check the Add-In Manager and enable the add-in if it is not loaded.
• NX — restart NX after installation; the add-in loads on the next start.
• Solid Edge — the ribbon tab appears after restarting Solid Edge following installation.

"Please sign in" or connection failed

Check, in this order:

• The server URL in Settings is correct.
• You are signing in with your organization account (the credentials from your CADCoPilot administrator).
• Your network can reach the server (VPN, proxy or firewall may block it).

Quick checks that the CAD link is healthy

If all three work, the chat, the server and the CAD connection are all fine and the problem is in the request, not the plumbing.

CoPilot said it made the cut, but the volume did not change

The cut went the wrong way — the single most common silent failure. Say so plainly:

To avoid it in the first place, give the direction as a world vector (“10 mm in −X”) rather than “positive” or “negative”, which mean different things on different sketch planes and in different CAD systems.

The volume is right but the feature is in the wrong place

Almost always a sketch plane problem. An offset stated without a direction — “the XY plane at Z = 11” — can land on the base plane at Z = 0, and the volume comes out identical either way. State the plane as a point and a normal:

To confirm where material actually is, use a probe cut:

The fillet went on the wrong edges

Identify the edges by world point — one point near the midpoint of each edge you want blended:

If it refuses, read the refusal: it names the nearest real edge and how far away it was, which is exactly what you need to correct your point.

The fillet fails on what looks like one edge

The run has probably been split into several segments by an earlier feature. Ask for a single fillet with a point on every segment — tangent propagation will not bridge a non-tangent junction.

"No sketch available" when retrying an extrude

The first extrude consumed the sketch. Ask for the profile to be redrawn in a fresh sketch, then extrude that.

The hole went into the wrong face — or the operation failed instead

Failing is the newer, better behaviour: if the face you named cannot be resolved, the hole is not drilled somewhere else. Name the face by getting it from a query, or by its outward world normal:

The revolve produced a huge ring instead of a shaft

A bare axis name (“X”) passes through the world origin. Give a point on the axis and its direction:

CoPilot stopped part-way through a long build

Long plans can run out of room. Split the work: one feature per message, verifying as you go. It is faster overall than restarting a stalled twenty-feature prompt.

A tab or flange will not work in Solid Edge

The document has to be a sheet metal part before sheet metal features work. Create it as one:

A dimension I asked for was deleted from my drawing

That is the accuracy gate working as designed. CoPilot reads every created dimension's value back from the sheet and deletes any whose value does not match what it should read — so a wrong dimension never stays on your drawing. Ask again, and tell it the value you expect:

The dimension attached to the wrong edge

Ask for the view's curves to be listed first, then dimension between the ones you can see:

The views overlap or run off the sheet

Omit positions and let the auto-layout place them. Then check:

A feature is not visible in any view

Ask for a view orientation that actually shows it — a hole in a side face needs a right or a section view, not front and top.

Reference planes are showing in the views

The mate was not created

Name the two components and the mate type, and let CoPilot find the geometry — do not supply face or edge IDs. Position the parts roughly correctly first; the pairing works by world coaxiality.

A mate exists but the assembly behaves strangely

Existence is not health. Ask for the solver status: Solved and Between fixed are healthy, anything else is not. A mate that will not solve is deleted and reported rather than left in place — so if it is still there and misbehaving, ask CoPilot to re-check it and confirm the assembly bounding box has not moved.

CoPilot cannot find a file I named

Use a full path that exists on your workstation, for example C:\parts\bracket.sldprt. A bare file name only works if the file is in the current working folder.

Dimensions and constraints were rejected during the rebuild

Expected, and harmless. Sketch dimensions and constraints do not carry across CAD systems — the curves are created at absolute coordinates instead, so the geometry is right even though the model is not re-parameterised. A report of “57 of 65 operations executed” with all the failures being annotations is a successful translation.

The recreated part's volume does not match the source

A faithful rebuild lands within a small fraction of a per cent. Anything larger is a missing or extra feature. Find the first one:

My changes seem to have been saved to the wrong file

Use distinct names per CAD system — fork_nx.prt and fork_sw.sldprt, not “the fork” — keep one document open at a time, and confirm the save:

The stress numbers look about twice as stiff as they should

On Inventor, an unsaved part cannot be meshed properly and falls back to a bounding-box approximation. Save the part to a file and re-run. CoPilot says when this happens — that note is worth reading.

The deflection is an order of magnitude off

Almost certainly the load direction. Loading a bracket across its thin dimension rather than its wide one differs by roughly a factor of ten, and both results look reasonable. Ask for the bounding box, then name the axis explicitly.

The study type I asked for is not available

Study types differ by CAD system and licence. Solid Edge Simulation covers linear static, frequency, thermal and buckling only; nonlinear, dynamic, drop test, fatigue and topology need SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium or Inventor Nastran. Ask first:

CoPilot refused to do something

Refusals are deliberate. An unresolved fillet edge, an unknown face, a cut that would remove more material than the body contains, a mate that will not solve — these now stop instead of silently doing the wrong thing. The refusal text names the measurable reason and usually contains the number you need for the corrected prompt.

The reply is a terse mechanical list rather than an explanation

That is a safety net: when a model finishes a long run of operations without writing a summary, CoPilot builds one from the actual operation records instead of leaving you a blank reply. The work happened. Ask for a proper summary if you want one.

The same prompt gave a different result today

CoPilot is probabilistic, not deterministic, and behaviour can also shift when a model is updated or changed. This is why the measurement habits in Verifying results matter more than any single prompt wording. Where you need repeatability, capture the sequence as a macro or the rules as a skill.

The AI answered in the wrong language

Set your language explicitly in Settings. The change applies immediately.

An NX journal cannot see the part I have open

NX journals launched from CoPilot run in a separate, headless NX session. Write the journal so it opens or creates the file itself, modifies it and saves it — then reopen the file in your session.

A command seems stuck, or the CAD popped up a dialog box

CoPilot watches for modal dialogs and will either handle a known one or come back and ask which button to click. If a request seems to hang, ask “is there a dialog open in the CAD?” — then tell CoPilot what to do with it, and add “and remember that” if you will see it again. Full detail on When a Dialog Appears.

Where are the log files?

Diagnostic logs are written to your Windows temporary folder. Press Win+R, type %TEMP% and press Enter — the log files are named CADCoPilot_*.log (for example CADCoPilot_PipeServer.log). Attach the relevant logs when contacting support.

Raising a support request without leaving the chat

If your organization's support is provided through a reseller or vendor, you can raise and track tickets from the chat panel.

CoPilot creates the ticket on your behalf and returns the reference number.

Contacting support

Email support@cadcopilot.ai. Include your CAD system and version, what you asked CoPilot to do, what happened instead, the measurements you took, and the log files described above. Exporting the conversation from the chat panel is the quickest way to send all of that at once.