of architecture and engineering firms reported a cyber attack attempt in the past three years.
1 in 5
had an attack succeed, causing financial or reputational damage.
0%
believe they could lose market share within two years without serious digital investment.
0%
of carriers in the architect and engineer professional liability market paid a multimillion dollar claim in 2025.
Attack, damage and market share figures from the 47th Annual Deltek Clarity Architecture and Engineering Industry Study, published May 2026, which surveyed 896 firms across the United States and Canada. Claim figure from the Ames and Gough 2026 Architects and Engineers Professional Liability Insurance Market Survey, which surveyed 15 insurers. Checked September 2026.
The software you run
What Dassault and Autodesk publish
Every claim below is Dassault's or Autodesk's own published position. Where a vendor stays silent on something, we say so and leave the gap visible.
SOLIDWORKS
A PDM vault is a database, not a folder
SOLIDWORKS PDM keeps a SQL Server database and a separate file archive managed by the Archive Server. Nobody browses the archive directly. Every client works through a local file vault view. Treating the archive as an ordinary share is how firms end up with files the vault does not know about. Dassault also states that it does not test or officially support NAS or SAN devices for the archive, and warns that putting the archive folder on a network drive can degrade performance.
Everything stops when the license server does
SolidNetWork licenses come from a license manager. If that server is unreachable, nobody opens SOLIDWORKS. There are two supported answers. Borrowing lets a machine hold a license offline for up to thirty days, though it is tied to that user and that machine and cannot be moved, and it returns to the pool at expiry even if the laptop is offline. A triad setup puts the license manager on three servers so a single failure does not stop the office.
Cloud licensing has its own offline limit
The named user license on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows thirty consecutive days offline before it needs to check in. Worth knowing before somebody takes a laptop to a site with no signal for six weeks. Offline mode is also not supported on virtual machines, which catches firms running design seats in VDI.
Certified card, certified driver, pinned
SOLIDWORKS lists certified cards and drivers as the graphics requirement outright. Autodesk is more forgiving but clear: uncertified hardware may not adequately support advanced product features and in some cases may cause problems during use, and consumer or gaming cards are not supported by Autodesk or the hardware vendor for 3D applications. The part firms miss is that certification is per driver version. Autodesk says plainly that the newest driver does not always provide the best support, so the driver gets pinned and tested, not updated because it appeared.
Autodesk
Third party cloud storage is not supported for Civil 3D
Autodesk stated this outright in December 2025. The reason is mechanical: most cloud storage clients do not support drawing level file locking, so two people can open and edit the same drawing at once and one overwrites the other. Data shortcut files and their source drawings are on Autodesk's own list of what gets corrupted or goes stale.
Data shortcuts break when paths move
A data shortcut points at a source drawing by path. Rename the drawing, move the working folder, or lose the connection to the network folder while Civil 3D is starting, and the references break. None of that is exotic. It happens when somebody tidies a project folder on a Friday afternoon.
Clock speed still beats core count for modeling
Autodesk publishes this for Revit in the system requirements: highest single core base clock speed is recommended, while noting Revit uses multiple cores for many tasks. AutoCAD and Civil 3D requirements weight clock speed the same way, recommending three gigahertz base and four turbo. Dassault publishes no processor guidance for SOLIDWORKS beyond the architecture, so anyone quoting you single thread advice for SOLIDWORKS is going on experience, which is fine as long as they say so.
Civil 3D does not run on ARM
Stated in the 2026 system requirements. Relevant to any firm looking at the current crop of ARM based Windows laptops for field or travel machines, which are otherwise appealing on battery life.
Sources: SOLIDWORKS System Requirements and Hardware Certification pages; SOLIDWORKS PDM Help, Archive Folders; Dassault SolidPractices on PDM network and hardware, and on licensing; Autodesk, Civil 3D cloud storage support; Autodesk, Revit and Civil 3D system requirements; Autodesk Hardware Certification FAQ. Checked September 2026.
The thing nobody has written down yet
AI is already in your firm, and your insurer knows
Seven in ten design firms now use AI tools, up seventeen points in a year, and most got there with no policy and no rule about what goes into a chat window. Your liability carrier treats that as a market level risk.
70%
Adoption ran ahead of governance
Up from 53% the year before, and generative tools specifically went from 64% to 78%. Very little of that was preceded by a written rule about what staff may put into a tool, and this is an industry where people sign drawings.
38%
Value has not followed yet
Only 38% of firms report measurable positive business impact from AI. Most of the spend so far has bought access, not outcomes. Closing that gap comes down to picking which tools, for which tasks, with what limits around them.
80%
Your insurer is watching this
Eight in ten of the insurers writing architect and engineer professional liability view design firm AI adoption as a potential disruptor of the market. That is the conversation coming to your next renewal, and firms with a written policy will have an easier one.
What a carrier or a client asks to see is a written rule, and that is an AI acceptable use policy. There is a template you can start from.
Adoption and impact figures from the 47th Annual Deltek Clarity Architecture and Engineering Industry Study, May 2026, which surveyed 896 firms. Insurer figure from the Ames and Gough 2026 Architects and Engineers Professional Liability Insurance Market Survey, which surveyed 15 insurers. Checked September 2026.
The work itself
What we run for engineering firms
The same managed service as every other client, with the vault, the license servers and the workstations treated as production systems.
The vault, run properly
SQL maintained, the archive on storage the vendor supports, latency measured, and replication considered before somebody in a second office asks why saving takes a minute.
Licensing that survives a failure
A triad license manager where the seat count justifies it, borrowing configured for the people who travel, and someone who knows what happens at the thirty day mark.
Workstations specified against the software
Certified cards, a pinned and tested driver version, and a replacement schedule you can budget for, so a dead workstation is never an emergency purchase.
Two engineering firms, two different problems
Taylor Engineers
Their internal IT lead had a full plate and a rack of servers past end of life. We scoped and ran the migration alongside him instead of around him, so the project finished without taking over his quarter.
V&A Consulting Engineers
Eleven servers consolidated down to two, with the files moved into Egnyte. Tens of thousands of dollars came out across four lines at once: hardware and its refresh cycle, the maintenance and monitoring on every box, the backup footprint, and the downtime that comes with keeping eleven of them running.
Yes, with the right arrangement. What does not work is treating the PDM archive as a share reachable over a VPN and hoping. Dassault sets a network latency threshold of 250 milliseconds as the point where replication needs considering, and does not officially support NAS or SAN for the archive. We will look at your latency, your file sizes and whether replication or a hosted approach fits, and tell you what each option costs before you commit.
What happens if the license server goes down mid-deadline?
Without preparation, work stops. With it, you have two protections. License borrowing puts a license on the machine for up to thirty days, tied to that user and machine. The second is a triad, which spreads the license manager so no single server outage stops work. Most firms we take over have neither, and find out on the day.
Do we have to buy certified graphics cards?
For SOLIDWORKS the answer is effectively yes, because Dassault publishes the certified list as the requirement itself. Autodesk will run on uncertified hardware but says it may not support advanced features and may cause problems, and that consumer and gaming cards are not supported for 3D work. The bigger point is the driver. Certification applies to a specific driver version, and Autodesk warns that the newest driver is not always the best one, so the right approach is to pin a tested version and leave it alone.
Can we put our Civil 3D projects in OneDrive or Dropbox?
No, and it is worth knowing why, because the failure is quiet. These clients mostly do not lock a drawing while somebody has it open, so two engineers can edit the same file and the second save wins without warning anyone. Nothing errors. The work is just not there on Monday. Autodesk put its position in writing in December 2025 and named data shortcuts as the casualty. We put the working folder on infrastructure built for simultaneous access, and keep the sync tools for everything a project needs that is not the live drawing set. If your team is already working this way, ask around about drawings that had to be redone. The answer usually comes back quickly.
Are we stuck on Windows 10?
If you want SOLIDWORKS 2026, yes, you are stuck until you move. Dassault ends Windows 10 support at SOLIDWORKS 2025 SP5, so 2026 and 2027 need Windows 11. Revit 2027 is Windows 11 only as well. This is a hardware and scheduling problem more than a software one, because some machines will need replacing, and doing it in the same month as a deadline is a choice nobody enjoys.
We are twenty engineers with no IT person. Where do we start?
With the two things that stop everyone at once: where the vault lives and how licenses are served. Those are the failures that idle the whole office instead of one desk. After that it is the operating system runway, because the SOLIDWORKS and Revit version walls are dated and will not move. We can put that in order in a few weeks and tell you what each step costs first.
Your license server goes down on a Friday. Then what?
