Adam
Adam is an AI CAD copilot for hardware teams. It works inside Onshape, Autodesk Fusion and SolidWorks to edit geometry, reconcile bills of materials, detail drawings, compare suppliers, draft quote requests and package factory handoffs.
What is Adam?
Adam is an AI workspace for hardware engineering, published by Adam AI Labs, Inc., a Y Combinator-backed company based in San Francisco. It reaches its users through three surfaces: the web application at adam.new, Adam Copilot as an extension for Onshape and Autodesk Fusion, and CADAM, an open-source text-to-CAD workspace published on GitHub. The product describes itself as having built-in skills that make it expert in CAD, research, sourcing and engineering documentation.
The working model is presented in three steps. You connect Onshape, Fusion, SolidWorks, your PLM and supplier catalogues, so that geometry, BOMs, drawings and revisions are read in place rather than exported. You then ask for what you need from wherever you already work, including Slack and email — each user even gets a dedicated address at the adam.new domain. Adam returns finished output: a branched model edit, a reconciled bill of materials, an updated drawing, a render set, each linked back to its source.
Underneath, the documentation describes a chat layer, background tasks and workers that run in a private Linux sandbox for each user, able to spawn parallel subagents, install software, drive a real browser, search the web, generate images, transcribe audio and parse documents. More than seventy skills ship with the product, and teams can write their own. A user-editable memory carries role, projects and preferences between sessions, with a separate shared layer for teams. Sensitive actions stop at an approval card, and results cite the sources they rest on.
Connections cover Onshape, Autodesk Fusion, SolidWorks, Arena PLM, Google Workspace, Slack, Notion, Jira, Linear, Airtable, GitHub and supplier catalogues such as McMaster-Carr, Digi-Key and Xometry, with thousands more reachable through OAuth connectors. Developers get a versioned REST API, an OpenAPI 3.1 specification and a hosted MCP server. Model inference is not tied to a single vendor: Anthropic, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Google and OpenRouter all appear in the published subprocessor list.
What it does
- Edit parts in Onshape or Autodesk Fusion from a plain-language prompt, respecting the existing history and references
- Generate parametric CAD models from a text description through the open-source CADAM workspace
- Build and reconcile bills of materials, flagging part-number, quantity and revision mismatches against the PLM
- Detail drawings with datum-referenced dimensions, geometric tolerances, surface finishes and title-block standards
- Compare suppliers on cost, lead time and risk, find replacements for end-of-life components and draft quote requests
- Package design reviews and factory handoffs from build notes, drawings, BOMs, QA checklists and open questions
- Produce render sets, including hero shots and exploded views, that follow the latest geometry
When to use Adam / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Adam is the right fit.
When to use Adam
- Mechanical engineers who live in Onshape or Autodesk Fusion and want prompt-driven part edits, feature-tree cleanup and parametrisation without leaving the design session
- Industrial designers who need pinched fillets rebuilt as curvature-continuous blends and photoreal render sets that follow the latest geometry
- Sourcing and procurement staff comparing suppliers on cost, lead time and risk, hunting pin-compatible replacements for end-of-life parts and drafting quote requests
- Hardware programme and project leads preparing design reviews, packaging factory handoffs and turning build-thread blockers into owners, next steps and dates
- Hardware founders and small prototyping teams who want parametric models generated from a text prompt through the open-source CADAM workspace
When not to use Adam
- General-purpose software teams: the vendor states plainly that Adam is not meant for general-purpose software projects
- Graphic designers working in 2D and studios chasing photorealistic rendering, both excluded by the vendor's own scope statement
- Healthcare organisations handling protected health information, since HIPAA is listed as not supported and not on the roadmap
- Buyers who require EU or UK data residency or a completed SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit, none of which exist yet
- Teams that need a mobile application or an interface in a language other than English, neither of which is offered
How to use Adam
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account at adam.new with Google or an email address
- Type your request into the chat; anything larger than a quick answer starts a background task you can watch live
- Drag, drop or paste the context Adam needs: PDFs, images, spreadsheets, screenshots, URLs or plain text
- Connect your CAD and PLM through the connections page, authorising each application over OAuth
- Install the Onshape extension from the Onshape App Store to work inside your documents
- Install the Autodesk Fusion add-in from the download page on macOS or Windows, or through a single command line, then reopen the palette from the ADAM button on the SOLID toolbar
- Forward or copy Adam on an email thread, or message it from Slack, to hand off work from where you already are
- Review the approval cards it raises, then approve, edit or ask for a revision before anything is sent or changed
- Open the task timeline to inspect each step, pull out generated files or branch a follow-up from any point
- For automation, call the versioned REST API or connect an MCP client with a personal API key or Adam ID OAuth
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Fits into the CAD stack a team already runs, with no migration and no exported copies of intellectual property
- Covers the work around the geometry as well: BOMs, drawings, renders, sourcing, supplier email and PLM records
- Model choice across several providers rather than a lock-in to one AI vendor
- Unusually detailed compliance page: twenty-seven named subprocessors with purpose, data and location, plus recovery objectives and patch SLAs by severity
- Explicit approval loop and source citation, so sensitive actions do not run unattended
- Permanent free plan alongside a seven-day free trial on the paid entry tier
- Open developer surface: REST API, OpenAPI specification, MCP server, and an open-source CADAM component
Cons
- No security certification yet: SOC 2 Type I and Type II are in progress, ISO 27001 and an independent penetration test only planned
- Data is hosted in North America only, with no customer-selectable region and EU or UK residency still on the roadmap
- No postal address, legal notice or contact page anywhere on the site; the only published identity is the footer company name
- A single generic mailbox handles support, legal, privacy and security enquiries
- Pricing is rendered by JavaScript, so the plans and amounts are invisible without scripting enabled
- No mobile application and no interface language other than English
- Terms and privacy policy are short and leave international transfers and retention periods largely unquantified
Pricing & Plans
Adam offers a permanent free plan at no cost, together with a seven-day free trial on the Pro tier. The lowest paid entry point is USD 40.00 per month for Pro. Max is priced at USD 200.00 per month, team seats start at USD 50.00 per seat per month, and Enterprise pricing is quoted on request. Every plan includes a weekly usage allowance, and larger workstreams consume more of it.
- light daily quota for working on CAD with agents
- Lite model only
- CAD-specific skills
- integration with your CAD software
- weekly usage reset
- access to frontier models
- shared folders
- CAD-specific skills
- persistent memory
- CAD integration
- five times the usage of Pro
- significantly higher frontier-model quotas
- shared folders
- CAD-specific skills
- persistent memory
- CAD integration
- weekly usage reset
- priority support
- included usage assigned per seat
- shared workspace and files
- per-member usage visibility
- shared integrations
- owner-managed roles and access
- highest priority support
- dedicated account management
- SAML/OIDC single sign-on
- centralised admin controls
- knowledge base configuration
- dedicated deployment option
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Adam handles your data.
GDPR overview
Adam does not claim GDPR compliance. Its Trust and Compliance page lists GDPR as in progress, described as EU data protection alignment through a DPA and subprocessor disclosure, next to SOC 2 Type I and Type II also in progress and ISO 27001 merely planned. Concrete measures do exist: a DPA is available on request at hello@adam.new, the full subprocessor list is published with purpose, data and location, and the company commits to notifying affected customers within 72 hours of confirming a security incident, in line with GDPR Article 33. The privacy policy grants access, correction, export, deletion, restriction and objection rights depending on jurisdiction, exercised at the same address. No Article 27 EU representative is named, no data protection officer is designated, and EU or UK residency remains a roadmap item for enterprise customers.
Who owns the data?
The terms of service state that the service itself, excluding user content and open-source components, belongs to Adam AI Labs, Inc., while you keep ownership of everything you submit. The product is built so that the vendor never takes custody of engineering data: geometry, drawings, bills of materials and correspondence stay in your own accounts and PLM, Adam connects over scoped authenticated access using OAuth where supported, and it reads only what a task needs instead of copying CAD into a separate store. Every workspace is isolated and encrypted, nothing is shared between accounts, and connected tools train no models.
Reuse rights
You keep ownership of what you submit, and nothing in the terms restricts reuse of your own material: the models, drawings, bills of materials and files Adam produces are yours to use, share, export or rework without asking Adam AI Labs for permission. The licence you receive runs the other way, covering personal or internal business use of the service and forbidding you to modify, copy, distribute or reverse engineer it, except where the law or an applicable open-source licence allows — CADAM itself being published as open source on GitHub. On the vendor's side, the privacy policy limits processing to providing, maintaining, securing and improving the service, communicating about changes, detecting abuse and meeting legal obligations, with third-party providers handling hosting, model inference, billing, email and analytics on its behalf under confidentiality and data processing obligations. Model inputs are not used for training under those providers' commercial terms.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Adam hosts customer data in the United States. The primary database is an AWS RDS PostgreSQL instance in US East, Northern Virginia, encrypted at rest with automated daily backups and point-in-time recovery; application compute runs on AWS ECS Fargate with an ElastiCache Redis cache. Uploaded files and generated artefacts sit in Cloudflare R2 buckets in Western North America, served through a global Cloudflare edge that is stateless and persists no customer data. Per-user Linux sandboxes run in the United States with Daytona; they are ephemeral, stopped after inactivity, rebuilt on demand, and their state never enters backups. Encryption is TLS 1.2 or above in transit and AES-256 at rest across database, file storage and backups. The published recovery time and recovery point objectives are both twenty-four hours. Region pinning is not offered to customers, and EU or UK regional residency is described as a roadmap item for enterprise customers under a DPA.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Adam.
- The company publishes no postal address, legal notice or contact page, so there is no identified establishment behind the service beyond a footer company name
- A single generic mailbox handles support, legal, privacy and security requests, which offers little assurance on response times for a formal data subject request
- GDPR status is stated as in progress rather than achieved, no Article 27 EU representative is named and no completed audit report is published
- Data is hosted in North America only; European teams should assess transfers before connecting production engineering files
- Granting OAuth access to CAD, PLM, email and file storage concentrates a great deal of intellectual property behind one agent, and connection scopes deserve review before rollout
- The agent runs code and drives a real browser in a persistent sandbox, so tasks should be scoped and approvals kept on rather than switched off for convenience
- Delegating drawing tolerances, BOM reconciliation and supplier selection can erode the review reflexes an engineering team depends on; treat every output as a draft to be checked, not a finished decision
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low for everyday use. A browser and an account created with Google or email are enough to start a task, and application connections use standard OAuth screens that can be revoked at any time. Working inside CAD adds a small step: the Onshape extension installs from the Onshape App Store, and the Autodesk Fusion add-in installs from a macOS package, a Windows executable or one terminal command, after which the palette opens on its own. Only the developer surface — the versioned REST API, the OpenAPI specification, the MCP server and API key handling — calls for engineering skills.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Adam
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Adam.
Frequently asked questions
Will Adam break my feature tree when it edits a model?
Does my CAD data leave my accounts, and is it used to train models?
Which CAD tools and applications does Adam work with?
How much does Adam cost?
Where is my data hosted?
How long is my data kept?
Is Adam GDPR compliant?
Is there an API or an MCP server?
How do I install Adam inside my CAD application?
Can I stop Adam acting without my approval?
Should you pick Adam?
Adam is one of the more coherent attempts to put an AI agent to work on hardware engineering rather than on text. It does not ask a team to move house: it reads Onshape, Fusion, SolidWorks and Arena in place, and hands back the artefacts engineers actually ship — a branched model edit, a reconciled bill of materials, a detailed drawing, a render set, a supplier quote request. The scope beyond geometry is what separates it from a CAD plugin, and the approval loop keeps a human between the agent and anything irreversible.
The reservations are those of a young company rather than of a weak product. No security audit has been completed: SOC 2 Type I and Type II are in progress, ISO 27001 and an independent penetration test are only planned, and HIPAA is out of scope. Data lives in North America with no customer-selectable region, which rules the product out for buyers who need EU or UK residency today. The site publishes no postal address, no legal notice and no contact page, and routes support, legal, privacy and security enquiries through a single generic mailbox — a gap procurement teams will notice before engineers do.
Set against that, the transparency where it exists is genuinely above average: twenty-seven named subprocessors with purpose, data and location, published recovery objectives, patch SLAs by severity, a bug bounty with safe harbour and an anonymous reporting channel. The changelog moves weekly, the developer surface is open, and CADAM is available as open source.
The sensible way in is the free plan, then the seven-day trial on Pro at USD 40 per month, run against a real project rather than a demo file. Teams under a regulatory obligation on data location or certification should wait for the audit roadmap to land.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.