Case study · Turbomachinery
Compressor Impeller Design Changes
Parametric edits through agentic AI with Argus & SolidWorks
Tools
Argus · SolidWorks
Outcome
Up to 75% time saved
Case study · Turbomachinery
What’s inside
An engineer worked with Argus to edit a centrifugal compressor assembly through natural language — taking an edit pass from ~30–50 minutes of manual work down to ~7–10 minutes. What the agent successfully completed, where it self-corrected, and where the engineer was still needed.
Summary
The edits that fill an engineer’s day, driven through agentic AI — in a fraction of the time.
Across a full editing pass on a centrifugal compressor, Argus reconfigured blade height (4 → 7 mm), total height (40 → 43 mm), and blade count (12 → 10) among other geometry modifications.
65–75%
Time saved per edit pass, engineer new to model
7
CAD edits driven through agentic AI
0
Broken models left behind
Problem
Editing in-assembly is unforgiving — one dimension hides behind layers of sketches, patterns and derived features.
01
Constraint-driven, not point-driven
Moving a sketch endpoint does nothing — fully-defined sketches snap it back on rebuild. The real control is the driving dimension (e.g. D4@Sketch1).
02
One edit ripples across the assembly
Geometry is coupled — grow the impeller diameter and the housing bore must follow to hold clearance. Knock-on edits have to be tracked across parts.
+ Benefit to engineer
For an engineer new to the model, the pass drops from ~30–50 minutes to ~7–10 minutes — the agent finds the driving dimension and course-corrects on its own.
Methodology
For each request, Argus inspected the relevant sketches, proposed a target feature, applied the edit and checked the rebuild — correcting itself when the result did not hold.
DRIVING DIMENSIONS D2 / D4@SKETCH1 BLADE HEIGHT 4 → 7 MM, AS IT TOOK PLACE
Who | Message |
|---|---|
ENGINEER | Open the Blade part from the assembly and make the blade taller — take the height from 4 to 7 mm. |
ARGUS | The 4 mm height lives in two sketches — Sketch1 (revolve) and Sketch3 (loft). I’ll raise those points by 3 mm. |
ARGUS | That did not hold — the sketches are fully defined, so the constraints snapped the points back on rebuild. The real control is the driving dimension D4@Sketch1. Editing that instead. |
ARGUS | D4@Sketch1 set to 7 mm and the model rebuilt cleanly — blade height is now 7 mm. |
Results
Every figure below was produced in SolidWorks during the session as Argus walked the feature tree and applied edits — reporting back to the engineer conversationally at each step.
Feature-tree inspection
Argus traced the controlling sketches before touching any geometry.
Blade count 12 → 10
Total instances on CirPattern2 edited; model rebuilt cleanly.
Blade height, dimension-driven
Height changed via D4@Sketch1 after the direct point-move was restored on rebuild.
Impeller in volute housing
The assembly under edit — bore resized to 81 mm to clear the 80 mm impeller.
Time Savings
Modeled engineering estimates for the same edit pass — not stopwatch data. The manual baseline assumes realistic feature-tree hunting overhead, not just the final click.
Task | Method | Manual | With Argus | Savings* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Inspect feature tree, find driving dims | Feature-tree analysis | 5–10 min | ~instant | ~7 min |
Blade height 4 → 7 mm | D4@Sketch1 | 3–6 min | ~1 min | ~3 min |
Total height 40 → 43 mm | D2@Sketch1 | 2–4 min | ~1 min | ~2 min |
Blade count 12 → 10 | Circular pattern | 1–2 min | ~1 min | ~1 min |
Part variants (10- & 12-blade) | Save As | 1–2 min | ~1 min | ~1 min |
Blade diameter 75 → 80 mm | D1@Sketch1 | 2–3 min | ~1 min | ~1.5 min |
Housing bore 76 → 81 mm (cross-part) | Boss-Extrude10 / Sketch26 | 5–10 min | ~2 min | ~6 min |
Surface bump (Indent workflow) | API automation | 10–15 min | – | – |
Total | ~30–50 min | ~7–10 min | ~22–40 min |
* vs. the engineer new to the model.
+
New to the model: the hunt disappears
The big wins are where unfamiliarity is highest — Argus avoided the fully-defined-sketch snap-back trap, easily 10+ minutes of debugging.
+
Original author: shift to hands-free work
The value shifts to hands-free parallel work, batch intent and the conversation doubling as the changelog.
→
Bottom line
Approximately 65–75% time saved on CAD edits. Instead of clicking through the feature tree and hunting for dimensions, the engineer was able to make changes through agentic AI and natural language.
Think through > click through.
Let Argus handle the rest.
Your AI agent for engineering workflows
Want to try Argus on your assembly workflow?
Visit www.cosmon.com to start a trial.
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