NX CAE is a modern simulation environment that that leverages Siemens’ long history of providing world-class CAE solutions like I-deas and NX Nastran. NX CAE delivers all the advanced meshing, boundary conditions and solver interfaces that experienced analysts expect for high-end analysis.

What makes NX CAE unique from all other preprocessors is how it integrates a superior geometry foundation (that provides intuitive geometry editing) and analysis model associativity to multi-CAD data. Integrated multi-discipline solvers and multi-CAE solver support means you can more efficiently conduct all of your simulations from a single environment and eliminate data translation errors.

For NX 8, NX CAE introduces over 200 productivity enhancements in the following key areas.

Simulation Environment and Geometry Foundation

NX CAE is built on the same geometry foundation that powers NX. Integrating strong geometry capabilities with CAE preprocessing simplifies the geometry editing process, and results in enormous productivity benefits. NX 8 continues to strengthen NX CAE’s geometry editing capabilities for analysis modeling. Highlights include:

• Creating a face from an existing mesh helps you modify finite element models that either have no geometry (such as imported legacy bulk data files) or meshes that are not associated to geometry. Creating a face from mesh is helpful when you need to associate an existing finite element model to new geometry, connect shell meshes or locally refine a region of a mesh that is not associated with any geometry.
• Suppressing holes in sheet bodies is used in cases where you may want to ignore holes that do not contribute to the model’s structural behavior. Suppressing the holes eliminates unnecessary mesh density in those regions. The new Suppress Hole function can remove holes from sheet bodies (such as mid-surface sheet bodies) through manually selecting holes or by specifying holes with diameter smaller than a designated value.
• Surface wrap fluid domain helps you create fluid domain geometry used for CFD analysis from complicated models, such as for air volume of models that comprise many solid parts and complicated geometry. The surface wrapping algorithm creates an airtight envelope based on the selected bodies that define its surface boundaries and embedded bodies.

Multi-Discipline Simulation and Optimization

Whether you’re conducting structural, thermal, flow, motion or other types of analyses, with NX CAE you will always be within the same intuitive user interface, have access to the same core analysis and geometry modeling capabilities, and use the same file structure and management scheme.

With NX 8, NX CAE broadens its analysis solution even further. Highlights of new analysis capabilities available with NX 8 include:

• Topology optimization brings simulation to the earliest stage of conceptual design. Topology optimization helps you reduce component weight by computing a conceptual design based on a finite element model of the design space and loading conditions. Integration in the NX environment allows easy collaboration between analysts and designers because the conceptual design can be seamlessly handed to designers for further refinement.
• Multi-physics thermo-mechanical analysis allows you to analyze thermal contact problems that will also have impact on structural performance, such as in aero engine design. The thermo-mechanical analysis is done by coupling an NX Thermal solution with an NX Nastran 101 solution for linear statics analysis. Coupling is made easy within the integrated environment, and eliminates data transfer errors.

Systems-Level Simulation

NX CAE facilitates systems-level simulation through its ability to model and solve large analysis problems. NX CAE streamlines systems-level analysis through efficient finite element assembly management, test-analysis correlation and high-performance computing.

NX 8 improves systems-level simulation productivity even more. Highlights of new systems-level simulation capabilities in NX 8 include:

• External superelement system modeling allows you to build, solve, and post-process system models using external superelements. Using external superelements, you can reduce the number of DOFs (and consequently the number of equations) to a manageable number in a large system model. In addition, simplified representation adds an extra layer of security for OEMs who do not wish to share full geometry details with third-party suppliers.
• Parallel processing for flow analysis to speed solution times for large models. Distributed memory parallel (DMP) computing spreads large computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations over a number of processors, speeding solution time by 10 to 20 times.

HD-PLM

HD-PLM is all about making smarter decisions to develop better products, and simulation results are crucial to making the right product development decisions. NX CAE helps raise the visibility of critical simulation results so that decision makers have access to the latest and most accurate information.

New results measure capabilities facilitate HD-PLM by linking simulation results directly to specific product requirements within your PDM system. Project managers can then easily identify any cases where requirements are not being met.