This article discusses the challenges of assembly planning in manufacturing, highlighting its complexity and the need for AI-powered solutions. It explains the gap between 'as-designed' and 'as-manufactured' views of a product and how AutoAssembler aims to bridge this gap with a 'virtual build' approach. It details why classic approaches to assembly planning have stalled and how recent advancements in compute power, AI, and data models are making industrial-scale assembly planning tractable.