Tech Soft 3D has spent nearly 30 years quietly powering much of the engineering software industry.
Its SDKs sit beneath hundreds of CAD, CAM, CAE, additive manufacturing, construction and PLM applications. Now the company is betting that the next competitive frontier will be built around something even more fundamental: access to rich, contextualized 3D engineering data.
In this special edition of AI Across the Product Lifecycle, I speak with Jonathan Girroir of Tech Soft 3D about the changing architecture of engineering software and the company’s latest moves.
We discuss why engineering workflows are shifting from files toward APIs, why cloud adoption is producing hybrid rather than purely cloud-native architectures, and why multi-CAD support now requires far more than importing neutral geometry.
Jonathan explains the thinking behind HOOPS AI, Tech Soft 3D’s framework for encoding native 3D geometry for machine-learning applications. We examine practical use cases including geometry search, feature recognition, part reuse, costing and the connection of CAD data with procurement and manufacturing information.
We also challenge some of the industry’s louder claims.
Is text-to-CAD genuinely close to transforming engineering, or is the industry underestimating the difficulty of training models on accurate, structured design data? Could OpenUSD become a common contextual layer across engineering and manufacturing? And will engineering experience its own “OpenAI moment” before 2030?
The conversation also covers Tech Soft 3D’s emerging Data Hub, QIF, DGN, cellular-volume visualization, lightweight web viewers, build-versus-buy decisions, startup support and the longer-term impact of quantum computing on simulation.
A grounded discussion about where engineering AI is delivering value today, where the hype is outrunning reality, and why the unglamorous glue between systems could remain one of the industry’s biggest opportunities.
Timeline
00:00 Introduction
00:37 What Tech Soft 3D does today
01:21 HOOPS, SpinFire and 30 years of engineering software
02:41 Cloud, hybrid architectures and data sovereignty
05:30 Connected workflows and engineering ecosystems
06:33 Why rich multi-CAD data matters
07:51 What engineering-software customers now demand
09:29 Rendering, OpenUSD and new interoperability models
10:53 Tech Soft 3D’s major 2026 announcements
11:09 Introducing HOOPS AI
12:24 Text-to-CAD: breakthrough or premature hype?
13:31 Geometry search, part reuse and contextualized 3D data
15:01 SpinFire mobile, cellular volumes and the Data Hub
16:32 The customer problems behind the roadmap
18:31 Why HOOPS AI generated the strongest response
20:15 Supporting engineering products measured in decades
22:43 What customers actually want from AI
23:26 Where AI creates real engineering value
24:04 Where engineering AI is overhyped
24:46 Why topology, PMI and design intent matter
25:49 Extending visualization across the enterprise
27:59 Web-based 3D collaboration and distributed teams
28:40 Build versus buy in engineering software
31:02 Openness, interoperability and intellectual property
33:36 Advice for engineering-software startups
35:17 How Tech Soft 3D supports early-stage companies
35:49 Will engineering have an OpenAI moment?
38:45 Quantum computing and the future of simulation
40:15 The underestimated opportunity between systems
40:37 What is next for HOOPS AI and the Data Hub
41:16 How to begin evaluating Tech Soft 3D
41:42 Closing thoughts
