Sept. 30, 2026, St. John’s, N.L. — CoLab has revealed its vision for generative engineering, announcing the release of a new capability called generative artifacts and setting a date for the launch of a generative CAD product in H1 2027. “There is a lot of excitement about generative CAD accelerating design iterations and allowing engineering teams to explore more concepts,” said Adam Keating, co-founder and chief executive officer of CoLab, in a media release. “It’s an important piece of the puzzle, but if all you do is speed up CAD operations, you’re not really solving for program speed. The question engineering leaders should be asking is not ‘how can I adopt generative CAD?’ but ‘how can our organization shift toward generative engineering?’” CoLab’s generative CAD offering will aim to address two different needs. First, CoLab will offer the ability to generate new concepts, leveraging historical program data and integrations with leading CAD and topology optimization tools, including nTop. Second, CoLab is developing the ability to “AutoFix” a design, based on a specific annotation or requirement and with an emphasis on using engineering knowledge and documentation to justify each design decision. “Now that AI can use CAD, engineering teams have to consider what that means for how they make design decisions,” said Jeremy Andrews, chief technical officer and co-founder of CoLab, in a press statement. “Your competitive advantage is based on the knowledge only you have. So, AI should leverage internal data and standards, there should be a human in the loop, and design changes should be paired with rationale as part of an auditable design history.” Beyond that implicit knowledge, CoLab is investing in providing explicit guidelines for AI as well. Companies can upload their internal standards and guidelines to the platform, and CoLab will license trusted third-party standards. Earlier this year, CoLab announced a licensing agreement for ISO standards, which allows AutoReview, CoLab’s AI Peer Checker, to review designs for compliance, providing citation-backed annotations.