In Stay Sharp Episode 124, 3DEXPERIENCE World 2026 Wrap Up, co-hosts Jonathan Scott and Juliann Grant welcome two Razorleaf colleagues to help them dig into the key themes and surprises from Dassault Systèmes’ annual conference. Andrew Halley, Senior Director of Partnerships, and François Schlub, Sales Executive, attended the event—as did Jonathan—and the trio report on their perspectives and experiences.
François’ main takeaway from the conference is wondering if perhaps Dassault is out of step with customers—though previous podcasts have noted that the company often blazes a trail that customers aren’t immediately ready for. François says, “Dassault is promising a lot around what you can do with AI, and a lot of messaging was on AI. Of course, it’s a nice flashy thing and I believe that it could have great impact for sure. Now, when I talk to my clients, this is not what they want to talk about. They want to address from foundation of a PLM, what is the solution to use with our workflows. I should be configuring the solution.”
Common Themes
The main topic, to no one’s surprise, was AI. Andrew mentions a demo from Dassault about integrating AI agents that each focus on a different discipline into the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, and links the AI push to a critical question: “How are you going to view that data and really be ordered to utilize that?” Jonathan adds that while the demo focused on SOLIDWORKS, the agents were actually inside 3DEXPERIENCE and working on SOLIDWORKS data, such as running a simulation on something you’ve just built.
A related theme at the event was ensuring your data’s in the right place to take advantage of the exciting new capabilities—which for Dassault means in 3DEXPERIENCE. Morgan Zimmerman, head of the 3DEXPERIENCE brand, discussed knowledge versus know-how. Knowledge is the data you have in your system, and know-how, Andrew says, “is really using your real-world experience and examples to make your projects more efficient and learning from that and utilizing SolidWorks better and help with the AI, with your know-how. So again, where’s your data at?”
AI was also the topic of a big partnership launched at the event between Dassault and Nvidia to, as a press release states, “establish a shared industrial architecture for mission-critical artificial intelligence across industries.” With this, Dassault secures the horsepower required for their AI efforts.
Image courtesy of 3DEXPERIENCE WORLD
Sessions, Exhibits, and Takeaways
Some of the sessions Jonathan found the most interesting, included tracks on Dassault’s ERP and business system, DELMIA, especially how it connects to 3DEXPERIENCE. In addition, all three attendees appreciated information and case studies from Dassault and from customers about 3DEXPERIENCE adoption, including the 3DEXPERIENCE on the cloud. More signs of what Dassault sees as important could be found in the exhibit hall, François says, mentioning the 3DEXPERIENCE EDU space as proof Dassault understands the complexity of so many of these solutions. The most fun surprise, and the most brilliant event design, Jonathan notes, was the addition of a playpen full of puppies at the back of the exhibition area to draw attendees through the hall.
Jonathan also chimes in about the AI focus and the cognitive dissonance between that emphasis and the examples shown. The message was, it’ll be great, it’ll extend your capabilities, he says, “Then we would then see a demo of watching how something that used to take an engineer four hours now takes five minutes. And I find myself going, okay, so you just told me that AI can do the thing that the guy over here next to me used to do. How’s it not taking his job?” The message might not quite be there yet, he concludes.
“What I really took away from that is, where’s your data at? How are you accessing it? How is it structured?” Andrew says. “You got to be asking yourself those questions. How am I storing my data? How am I’m going to access it? Who’s going to access it? Who’s going to get access to what and why?” The trio agree these questions are valid for customers, but also for partners and resellers who need to be planning ahead. Andrew adds, “In the next two, three, four years, you’re really going to be thanking yourself or that partner for asking those questions and thinking ahead of the game. You just got to start getting yourself in the mindset.”
Learn More About 3DEXPERIENCE World 2026
The full podcast contains more discussion and details on a variety of topics, including how one speaker predicted greater value in scientific exploration than in chatbots, why the emphasis on AI might backfire and lead an engineer to write their own PLM platform, why Dassault is pushing customers to migrate all of their data into 3DEXPERIENCE, and more.
Be sure to check out Stay Sharp Episode 124: 3DEXPERIENCE World 2026 Wrap Up and join us each week for a new podcast.
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