Ask Mode

Read-only, on every plan including Free. It answers questions about the open document and changes none of it.

What it reads from your document

Every prompt carries a snapshot of the open document, so the answer is about your file rather than about SOLIDWORKS in general.

  • The document itself: name, type, path, active configuration, configuration count and units.
  • Where you are: whether you are inside a sketch, the feature count, any rollback, and the current selection.
  • Up to 12 features that are in error or warning.
  • For a part or an assembly, a digest of up to 60 features, up to 16 custom properties, and a geometry block of bounding box, mass, volume, material and body count.
  • An assembly summary, and on request the full bill of materials with material and mass per part.

On top of that, the open document is indexed once when you open it: metadata plus up to 400 feature-tree nodes, with the 6 closest matches appended to each prompt. Indexing is skipped for assemblies, for drawings, and for parts over 1,500 features, and is off entirely on zero-retention and encrypted accounts. See data handling.

What it can answer

  • Geometry and dimensions: sizes, distances, wall thicknesses, the bounding box, a measured distance between two things you select.
  • The feature tree: what each feature does, what depends on what, what a change would break.
  • Materials and mass properties, including the effect of a substitution you have not made.
  • Assemblies: the parts list with material and mass per part, how components are mated, what is grounded, and interference between components with the clash volume for each pair.
  • Sketches: why one is over-defined, which relations dangle, whether a profile will close.
  • Anything on the live web: material properties, process and machining data, standards, component pricing.

A cost or manufacturability question is answered as reasoning in prose over your document plus that web search. There is no manufacturability score and no cost model behind it, so read it as an engineer’s opinion with its basis shown, not a quote.

Worked examples

None of these change anything.

What is this part, what is it for, and what is the overall envelope?
Names the object from the feature names, custom properties, material and proportions, then gives the bounding box. It opens with what the thing is rather than an inventory of the tree.
If I switch this from 6061 to 316 stainless, what happens to the mass?
Reads the current material and mass properties and reports the new mass. The material on your part is untouched.
Which components interfere, and by how much?
Runs the interference check across the assembly and lists each clashing pair with its volume.
Why is Cut-Extrude7 failing, and what depends on it?
Reads the failing feature, its parent sketch and everything built on it, quotes the specific error, and names what would break if you deleted it.

The Run in Agent handoff

When an answer ends in an offer to do specific work, a Run in Agent button appears under it. Clicking it switches the composer to Agent Mode and re-sends your original words, not the answer text. Attachments that can be re-sent go with it.

The button is deliberately narrow. It does not appear when Ask is only answering, explaining, measuring, comparing or recommending; when it needs a selection or a dimension you have not given; or when what you asked for is not supported. A button with nothing to run is treated as a defect, not a convenience.

It fires once. A second click on an offer you already took does nothing, and reopening an old chat does not re-arm it.

What it cannot do

  • Change anything. No feature, no dimension, no mate, no property, no material, no file.
  • Write or run a macro. The VBA tool is never handed to a read-only mode, and Ask will not paste executable VBA into the transcript.
  • Force a rebuild. It reads the document as it stands. Debug Mode is the read-only mode that rebuilds.
  • Claim a change was applied. Ask is held to "I can" and "this is ready to apply in Agent Mode" wording.

Ask a mutating question in Ask and the turn stops before any tool runs: "That would change your model. Switch to Agent mode to build or edit it."

Where to go next