SOLIDWORKS Design has been updated! On July 11th 2026, SOLIDWORKS rolled out their mid-year update to SOLIDWORKS 2026 in the form of FD03, granting users access to new features and functionality.
We’ve picked out three of the best features that we feel will have the biggest benefit to SOLIDWORKS users and TECHNIA customers’ workflows and help you to access them in SOLIDWORKS Design 2026.
Firstly, to clear up some technical jargon, FD stands for ‘Functional Delivery'. This is simply an update to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform that users of SOLIDWORKS Design with Cloud Services are able to take advantage of.
These updates occur four times each year, as additional updates to the major annual release (GA) and typically align with the four Service Pack (SP) updates that desktop SOLIDWORKS users will be familiar with.
It’s worth keeping up with the latest updates to make the most of the tools available to you, but we’re here to support you whenever you decide to update SOLIDWORKS.
It will likely be no surprise that AI features heavily in this list, especially as SOLIDWORKS Design 2026 has gained the ability to generate macros through the LEO Virtual Companion.
LEO can generate a VBA macro from a simple sentence describing the task the user wants to automate and will whip up some code in the macro editor. Generated macros can be reviewed and edited by the human user or developed further by LEO, they can also be run and saved after creation.
LEO is one of the Virtual Companions that are now available to all SOLIDWORKS customers with activated Cloud Services. AURA can be accessed from the Communities tab within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, and both LEO and AURA can be turned on by activating the ‘AI Labs’ task pane inside of SOLIDWORKS Design.
Industry insight"This is a really exciting update, especially for productivity, as it opens the door to users working with API more frequently and speeding up their workflows more easily. While I don’t expect results to be perfect straight away, there’s a fun iterative element to this functionality, and it provides a huge benefit by removing the initial barrier of having to learn to code to do repetitive procedures more quickly in SOLIDWORKS. I also see it as a stepping stone to encourage the average user to learn how to code so they can interrogate outputs better and design more complex macros for themselves with or without AI’s assistance." Michael Hopley-Ash, CSWE SOLIDWORKS Applications Engineer | TECHNIA |
It’s fair to say there was quite the buzz around the Auto-Generate Drawings functionality when it was announced in SOLIDWORKS 2025, and in SOLIDWORKS Design 2026, it is living up to the hype and makes it into our Top 3 features of this update.
AI-generated drawings have been enhanced in FD03 and drawings are now more accurate and easily prompted via LEO, the Virtual Companion equipped with engineering knowledge.
Manual set up and the placement of dimensions and drawings views have been enhanced, while support for sheet metal parts and bend tables has been added. The position, style, and scale of both drawing views and annotations can now be discussed and prompted through ‘natural language’ and files can be exported from simple conversations with LEO.
Industry insight"Virtual Companions are, without a doubt in my mind, the most significant enhancement to SOLIDWORKS since the two-plane mirror (big cheer, please!). Their potential time-saving abilities are huge, especially when it comes to setting out a drawing. We’re talking about complex drawings being generated rapidly, with all drawing views and accurate detailing being completed to company standards. The added support for sheet metal parts and general layout enhancements, combined with the substantial investment from Dassault Systèmes and their ongoing efforts to develop secure and accurate agentic AIs, lead me to believe these tools will simply keep improving with each update." Michael Hopley-Ash, CSWE SOLIDWORKS Applications Engineer | TECHNIA |
Learn more about the AI tools in SOLIDWORKS or contact us to understand which AI tools are right for your business and how your workflows could benefit.
Assemblies have seen some excellent updates in recent releases. FD03 brings another performance enhancement to SOLIDWORKS Design, this time when working with parts in Large Design Review (LDR) mode.
There’s no need to wait for assemblies to resolve before making edits to components as parts can now be edited in-context within LDR mode. SOLIDWORKS will keep the assembly visible while you work on the part and only resolve the component you’re working on.
Industry Insight"This will save users who model using in-context workflows a lot of time. Along with the recent addition of ‘Automatic Resolved Mode’, being able to edit parts within LDR is a really neat adjustment that I think many SOLIDWORKS users have been waiting for. It’s great to see how SOLIDWORKS have been steadily improving how the software handles large assemblies over the past few years, particularly by reducing the need for user intervention to realize performance benefits." Michael Hopley-Ash, CSWE SOLIDWORKS Applications Engineer | TECHNIA |
While these are just three of the best features, the full list of enhancements for SOLIDWORKS Design R2026x FD03 can be found in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
If you need help updating SOLIDWORKS, or simply want to learn more and see how these features could benefit your business, then feel free to get in touch.