Knowledge Bases for Deeper Insights from External Engineering Data Sources

Data connectors now support knowledge bases for connected data sources. When enabled, your engineering documents are automatically indexed and made available to the Rescale AI Assistant, so you can ask questions in natural language and get answers grounded in your own data, with citations back to the original files.

What Is It

A knowledge base indexes the content from your connected sources including PDFs, Word files, presentations, and other engineering formats, so the Rescale AI Assistant can read, understand, and answer questions about them. Instead of searching for files by name and opening them manually, you can ask the AI assistant a question and get an answer drawn directly from your organization’s documents, with citations back to the source.

With data connectors, users can already browse and attach files from connected sources. Knowledge base goes a step further: it lets Rescale Assistant search inside those documents and surface the information you need.

How Engineering Teams Use Knowledge Bases

Ask questions, get grounded answers: Instead of manually searching through documents, ask the AI Assistant directly: “What are the recommended boundary conditions for external aerodynamics?” The Assistant retrieves relevant content from your indexed documents and generates an answer citing the specific source files.

  • Semantic search, not just keywords: The knowledge base understands meaning. A search for “thermal analysis results” finds documents about “heat transfer simulation outputs” even if those exact words don’t appear.
  • Citations you can trace: Every answer includes citations referencing the source document and location. You can trace any claim back to the original file.
  • Control what gets indexed: For SharePoint connectors, admins can configure path restrictions to scope the knowledge base to specific document libraries or folders, useful for large sites where only a subset of content is relevant.
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Rescale Assistant Summarizes Information from Connected Sources

Supported Sources for Knowledge Base

  • AWS S3 Object Storage
  • Microsoft Azure Blob Object Storage
  • Microsoft SharePoint Cloud Storage

Supported Document Types

Common engineering file formats are supported, including PDF (with images and tables), Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, plain text, and XML (including PLMXML).

Getting Started

To enable and begin using these new capabilities, follow these steps:

  1. Admins: Connect a source (S3, Azure Blob, or SharePoint) via Connectors > Manage Connectors. Click “Sync” to trigger ingestion. For SharePoint, optionally configure path restrictions to scope indexed content.
  2. Users: Open the AI Assistant and ask questions about your organization’s engineering documents.

Requirements

  • Workspace must have the Agentic Engineering platform subscription enabled. Please contact your account manager for more information.
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