NX features help engineers optimize with GPUs and consider environmental impacts.
This month, Siemens Digital Industries Software (Siemens) released a new update to its NX engineering solutions software. The big changes to the software focus on bringing new environmental impact assessment tools to the platform and the ability to speed up time-to-results for certain simulations and computations by using GPUs.
The new Sustainability Impact Analysis tool produces EN15804-based sustainability metrics based on AI, 3D design data and materials selection. The results can evaluate and intelligently optimize the design based on more than 30 environmental impacts. Since all this data lives in the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, it is available downstream to help organizations meet environmental targets, validate against requirements or achieve environmental credits.
To help simplify and democratize the simulation process the latest version of NX also includes the ability to use GPUs to produce near real-time results within the familiar user interface of NX. Engineers simply need to apply boundary and loading conditions, materials and geometry to see the results on top of the 3D model. Better yet, the tool works with NX’s geometry editing abilities to update and optimize the simulation on the fly. This can also be matched with parametric and design space exploration tools to optimize designs quickly.
Other updates to NX include:
- The integration of the Molded Part Designer, to validate and optimize the moldability of a design within the NX environment.
- A Cloud Tool Manager in NX CAM to centralize and manage tools across the organization.
Sustainability and GPU Based-Simulations Are an Established Trend
Siemens isn’t the first engineering software provider to integrate sustainability and environmental impact tools into its portfolio. It isn’t even the first time Siemens has announced such a tool. The trend is perhaps best implemented when the sustainability tools are easy to use early in development—when most of the environmental impacts are locked in. But the crux of many of these announcements involve pairing the environmental tool with PLM (to accommodate the lifecycle assessment, or LCA, nature of many environmental assessments).
But there is a benefit to adding sustainability features to help those that are producing part geometries early in design. They can use these estimations and best guesses—produced by AI systems—to get a ballpark idea of what the better options would be. As a result, the final environmental assessments, coupled with PLM, act as more of a validation to this optimization process.
This is like how engineers have been using simulation for decades. By using simulation early in design, better optimized products can be produced while limiting late development redesigns. This process will only improve with the added speed of GPUs. Again, this isn’t the first instance of an engineering software provider adding GPU capabilities to its simulation tools. But for Siemens users, this will be a nice bit of news. However, Siemens’ decision to add the capabilities into its flagship, instead of through a separate tool, is an interesting option that can differentiate it from others.