BOSTON, May 20, 2008 – Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of Siemens Industry Automation Division and a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) products and services, today announced the release of NX™ 6 digital product development software that provides features driven from Siemens PLM Software’s recently announced synchronous technology.
Siemens PLM Software made the announcement in conjunction with its annual industry analyst event that begins today in Boston.
“NX 6 delivers on the breakthrough in design productivity we announced last month,” said Joan Hirsch, vice president of NX product development, Siemens PLM Software. “We’ve integrated synchronous technology into the NX comprehensive toolset, delivering major enhancements to design, simulation and manufacturing. This release enhances our strong momentum and the market share growth NX is experiencing.”
"Our implementation of NX is realizing productivity improvements that have exceeded our targets and overall we’re seeing a 20 percent improvement in the CAD operation efficiency,” said Keigo Fukushi, general manager, Process Information Management Department, R&D Engineering Management Division, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. “We believe the NX team is committed to helping Nissan achieve our long-term objectives in product development.”
NX 6 expands the capabilities of Design Freedom with the new synchronous technology application layer. NX 6 Design Freedom provides new approaches to creating and editing geometry. These improvements make CAD easier for everyone in the product lifecycle, including designers, engineers, analysts and manufacturing engineers.
A new “active selection” technique adds intelligence to designs when needed. These advanced selection methods automatically recognize logical and feature relationships even on non-native data.
“The Design Freedom capabilities from NX 6 will improve our engineers’ ability to deal with external non-parametric or very complex models,” said Feng Lianguo, chief engineer, Hisense Air-Conditioner R&D Centre. “We can easily and quickly re-use the model or feature not only from old version, but also from other software. It will definitely become a most powerful tool to assist engineers, and it will also improve our modeling method.”
In addition to Design Freedom, NX 6 continues to improve the user experience by providing users with greater flexibility through enhancements to its role-based user interface introduced in NX 5. The NX 6 user interface adds full screen mode for maximum graphics and customizable on-screen pop ups to speed interaction. The result is a system that casual users can leverage along with the most experienced CAD users.
“The latest release of NX enables me to be more efficient and productive. The customizable pop-up menus really speed things up,” said Elango Ramanathan, automation specialist, Hughes Christensen. “Now I can put all my favorite commands right under my mouse, there’s no need to go to the menu bar to pick a command. What’s really great is to be able to use all of my screen space for graphics; this makes complex design work so much easier.”
NX 6 continues to deliver on Siemens PLM Software’s Lifecycle Simulation vision, which is to make simulation pervasive throughout the product lifecycle in order to design in quality and drive product innovation. The new release includes a complete suite of robust multi-disciplinary simulation solutions that meet the needs of advanced CAE analysis experts as well as designers and design engineers.
NX 6 simulation provides extensions to the integrated Advanced Flow and Advanced Thermal solutions. This enables simulation of the complete range of coupled multi-physics, including conduction, forced convection, condensation. In addition, new FE model correlation capabilities enable CAE engineers to validate the accuracy of their simulation results against real-world performance measurements from physical prototypes. This results in better design decisions at increased levels of accuracy.
“We are very interested in NX 6’s new CAE features,” said Mdm. Liu Liping, manager assistant of CAE Dept., Foton Automotive Engineering Research Institute. “Particularly NX’s pre/post capabilities and the solver strengths of NX Nastran®. We noticed the enhanced unified CAD/CAE mode and see its inherent advantage. The method and capability of mid-surface extract is also good. We will also leverage the ‘Virtual Mass’ method when we make response simulations for liquid containers. It is an effective and quick linear contact solution for such analysis. These capabilities left us with a deep impression. We look forward to trying them out in NX 6.”
NX provides greater coordination by integrating CAD/CAM/CAE disciplines across a product’s lifecycle. This unified process accesses centrally managed knowledge to accelerate product development.
Product knowledge is leveraged in downstream applications through product and manufacturing information (PMI) data. NX 6 leverages PMI data to significantly improve the flow of information throughout the lifecycle. This connects to the feature-based programming automation in NX CAM and reduces NC programming time by 20 percent.
Additionally, CAE product knowledge is coordinated through NX Advanced Simulation, which leverages the new CAE data model and CAE Assembly Product Structure available in Teamcenter® for Simulation. Teamcenter integration enables the global transformation of new product development processes, including the integration of data from both commercial and in-house simulation tools.
NX 6 also improves coordination through faster data management capabilities. The new release leverages the latest performance gains offered by the new Teamcenter architecture. This is particularly important to users working at multiple geographically dispersed locations where the need to interact real time with information is critical.
With access to Geolus® Search available inside NX, engineers are now able to search for common parts by characteristics such as size and shape. Geolus Search is a 3D search engine which quickly identifies parts based on their geometry characteristics such as size and shape. Geolus search results can include NX parts, JT data or data from other CAD systems.
A differentiating feature of NX over competing systems is its ability to capture and re-use knowledge in CAD/CAM/CAE. NX 6 provides key new features that increase product re-use for reduced design time. Design Freedom preserves multi-CAD design intent by allowing users to add intelligence where necessary.
“The new editing capabilities of NX 6, which allow you to easily make fast changes, are really impressive,” said Danila Marco, CAD-CAM Portfolio Manager, Avio S.p.A. “You can simply modify data imported from other CAD systems, without knowing their history. Furthermore, JT format integration is a step forward in large assembly handling and the new interface is particularly intuitive and attractive.”
In addition to the re-use of product knowledge in design, NX enables manufacturing to re-use processes, which cuts overall manufacturing cycle time. For example, the new NX 6 Machining Knowledge Database stores feature-based machining processes to support programming automation and to share company best practices. Pre-built machine tool kits also speed implementation.
NX 6 is expected to be available by June 30.
Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division, is a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services with 5.5 million licensed seats and 51,000 customers worldwide. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Siemens PLM Software’s open enterprise solutions enable a world where organizations and their partners collaborate through Global Innovation Networks to deliver world-class products and services. For more information on Siemens PLM Software products and services, visit www.siemens.co.uk/plm.
The Siemens Industry Automation Division (Nuremberg), a division of the Siemens Industry Sector, is a worldwide leader in the fields of automation systems, low-voltage switchgear and industrial software. Its portfolio ranges from standard products for the manufacturing and process industry to solutions for whole industries and systems that encompass the automation of entire automobile production facilities and chemical plants. As a leading software supplier, Industry Automation optimizes the entire value added chain of manufacturers – from product design and development to production, sales and a wide range of maintenance services.
Note: Siemens and the Siemens logo are registered trademarks of Siemens AG. NX, Geolus and Teamcenter are trademarks or registered trademarks of Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and in other countries. NASTRAN is a registered trademark of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. All other trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks belong to their respective holders.
Dora Smith
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