Aura Aero Cuts Design Time by 80% for Zero Emissions Aircraft with PTC’s Onshape and AWS

Aura Aero—a pioneering French aerospace company that builds zero-emissions aircraft—needed a more efficient and collaborative computer-aided design (CAD) solution. The company adopted Onshape, a cloud-native CAD platform developed by AWS Partner PTC. Built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Onshape eliminated hardware limitations and enabled real-time collaboration across teams. Aura Aero now spends 80 percent less time on repetitive design tasks using Onshape’s automations and seamless version control. As a result, Aura Aero has accelerated product development, improved collaboration, and optimized costs without compromising performance—all while enhancing sustainability.

On a mission to decarbonize air travel, Aura Aero designs and manufactures zero-emissions electric aircraft. The company launched its first fully electric INTEGRAL E, a training two-seater with an aerobatic capability for regional passenger travel and military and VIP missions, in 2024. Based in Toulouse, France, Aura Aero is committed to advancing the European Union’s goal to achieve climate neutrality in 2050. That date is fast approaching, but Aura Aero is up to the task—in a way that goes beyond the choice to use sustainable resources like wood and carbon fiber. “We are trying to do everything we can to minimize our impact on the environment,” said mechanical engineer Misael Hernandez Perez. “That drives every single design decision that we make.” That’s why, shortly after the company’s founding in 2018, the product development team at Aura Aero decided to adopt tools that support collaboration and innovation—without the environmental cost of traditional, hardware-heavy systems.

Engineers and designers in the aerospace industry rely on CAD systems for precise modeling, simulation, visualization, and management of complex designs. On-premises CAD systems require significant investments in computers and on-site servers to support saving and managing large files, along with ongoing maintenance. Alban Semond, physical design manager at Aura Aero, said, “With traditional CAD systems, you’re dependent on the capacity of your PC, what kind of graphics card you have, and how much memory you have.” As Semond learned from previous experience, these systems don’t allow you to move quickly. “You might forget to save your design, the system would crash, and you could lose a full day’s work,” he said. By far, the biggest flaw of on-premises CAD systems is that they limit innovation. Engineers are tied to the computers’ physical locations. Only one person can work on a file at a time, delaying progress and inhibiting real-time collaboration. Version control becomes difficult, as teams often work on outdated files or need to manually merge changes, leading to errors. That’s why, a year after its founding in 2018, Aura Aero sought a cloud-native CAD system to improve efficiency between its design office and the factory floor.

Aura Aero adopted Onshape, a cloud-native CAD and PDM platform developed by PTC, to streamline design collaboration and accelerate product development. Because Onshape is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, Aura Aero’s engineers and designers work together in real time, from anywhere, without managing local files and hardware. Built-in features such as version control, workflow automation, and customization support seamless collaboration across teams. Onshape also provides easy access to the latest designs, ensuring that key stakeholders at Aura Aero—from sales and quality control to the production line—always have the most up-to-date information. “Onshape’s accessibility allowed us to save time and improve communication with suppliers and partners when sharing information,” said Semond. “We can visit any supplier and talk about any subject—whether it be commercial, technical, or strategy—and as soon as a question arises about a part, we can easily show the 3D model from our phones.” One of Onshape’s standout features is Branching and Merging, which allows users to work in parallel. Aura Aero’s teams can explore multiple design ideas simultaneously, without affecting the core design, and later merge the best elements into the main model. This flexibility encourages creative exploration and reduces the risk of losing work. Additionally, Onshape offers FeatureScript, an open-source programming language that Aura Aero can use to create custom tools tailored to its specific design needs. For example, Aura Aero developed a feature to automate the orientation of material grain and fiber direction in aircraft parts, a task that was previously time-consuming and manual. Other standard features save time, including Replicate, which enables the placement of hundreds of bolts, nuts, and washers with a few clicks, versus adding them to the assembly one at a time.

Onshape’s cloud-native capabilities are built on AWS, which provides data security, scalability, and continuous availability—critical factors for Aura Aero’s design process. With AWS services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Onshape can dynamically scale compute power to handle fluctuating workloads. Energy-efficient AWS Graviton2 processors support Aura Aero’s sustainability goals by delivering high performance while reducing energy consumption. Amazon VPC and automated IP management services from AWS help Onshape quickly set up new environments and manage network configurations. This means that updates and expansions occur smoothly, without disrupting Aura Aero’s workflows. Additionally, Amazon CloudWatch proactively monitors the platform to detect and resolve issues before they cause downtime. For managing large CAD files, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) provide scalable, durable storage. As a result, Aura Aero can store and access complex designs without performance issues.

Today, Onshape is supporting sustainability and efficiency at Aura Aero by streamlining the design process for electric aircraft, facilitating efficient collaboration, and reducing time spent on repetitive tasks. Its cloud-based CAD system eliminates the need for paper drawings, supports the use of renewable materials like wood, and accelerates production with custom features that improve design efficiency. In 2024, these capabilities helped Aura Aero achieve a significant milestone: the maiden flight of its fully electric INTEGRAL E, a two-seater aerobatic trainer. Onshape’s collaborative and cloud-based features in accelerating development cycles helped this launch move quickly, and Aura Aero is making progress toward its next goal—the development of the Electric Regional Aircraft (ERA), a 19-seat zero-emission plane targeted for production by 2026.

Additional efficiency gains come from the use of AWS Graviton2-based Amazon EC2 instances, which consume up to 60 percent less energy than comparable EC2 instances for the same performance. Graviton2 also provides the best price performance for cloud workloads running on Amazon EC2, saving up to 40 percent compared to traditional x86-based instances. Onshape can therefore help optimize the value-to-cost ratio for Aura Aero without compromising the performance required for its computationally intensive workloads. Plus, Semond said, “With Onshape, we weren’t required to invest in expensive servers or heavy-loaded PC workstations just for running CAD.”

PTC’s Onshape provides custom features and workflow automation capabilities that enable Aura Aero to save time spent on repetitive design tasks by an estimated 80 percent. The team can also quickly onboard new designers with Onboard’s self-taught tutorials. “The biggest thing for me is that we have designers fully integrated on the team after only three days of learning Onshape,” said Semond. “I remember at a previous job, our CAD system required a month or six weeks of training. Things move fast here. We can’t wait a month.” Perhaps most importantly, Onshape is encouraging innovation across the engineering team at Aura Aero. Its Branching and Merging feature, for example, promotes creative exploration without the risk of losing work. The ability to access CAD data anytime, anywhere, and from any device had an immediate impact on how Aura Aero conducted business. “As our team grows, Onshape will be essential in our production because everyone’s work is visible to other departments in real time,” Semond said. “There’s no waiting for design updates. Everyone can keep working without delays.”

Aura Aero is a pioneering French aerospace company focused on designing and manufacturing sustainable, next-generation aircraft. Based in Toulouse, the company is committed to reducing aviation’s environmental impact by developing electric and hybrid-electric planes. Aura Aero’s mission is to support decarbonized air transport through innovative technologies, contributing to climate neutrality goals by 2050.