As the capabilities of NX expanded, environmental features were a natural progression.
As a sub-PLM segment, CAD plays a growing and significant role in the overall product development landscape. This fact is highlighted by the most recent update to Siemens’ CAD flagship, NX, and is underpinned by the new version’s focus on improved solutions related to sustainability.
In light of this, it was no coincidence that sustainability took center stage at Siemens’ latest Realize Live event, the first part of which took place in the U.S. last month, and the second part in Europe this month.
During his keynote, Tony Hemmelgarn, president and CEO of Siemens Digital Industries Software, described the importance of sustainability and how it must be designed into the product up-front. He pressed particularly hard on Siemens’ commitment to helping companies improve sustainability in their products and operations.
Some interesting background here is NX CAD’s journey of success in recent years—a journey that is fairly unusual in the otherwise static CAD industry in terms of OEMs’ choice of design tools. In short, you don’t change CAD solutions without very good reasons—but in the case of NX, this has happened a surprisingly large number of times. Siemens does not report any breakout figures regarding the number of licenses and users of the system, but my research in this area indicates that the number of large OEM’s swapping systems to NX means it has gained market share.
For example, in recent years engineering.com has reported on Daimler Mercedes switching to NX, as well as the vehicle manufacturer KIA Motors, the shipyard giant Hyundai, the electronics group Sony and the American defense giant Lockheed Martin. These changes include between 4,000-10,000 users in each case, which means that Siemens CAD software on these examples alone has grown by upwards of 30,000 users.
In short, the movements in CAD in the OEM arena have been so vast that Siemens Digital Industries Software has likely taken home a substantial market share in this sub-PLM segment.
It is also clear that this is not only about successful marketing; above all, it is about the fact that NX has taken great technological steps during these years. Bob Haubrock, senior vice president of Product Engineering Software, the man responsible for the CAD segment within Siemens, claims that there are several important factors that make their NX software more relevant than that of competitors in a changed product landscape.
Above all, things such as electronics, software, collaboration across multiple domains, strong simulation connections within the framework of the PLM portfolio Xcelerator and “design intelligence” have become increasingly important and taken an ever-larger place in the product landscape, at the expense of the classic mechanical pieces. This is clearly manifested in the new NX, Haubrock claims, with better tools for electronic co-design, collaboration and automation intelligence.
But the development dynamic is an element without end, and when Siemens Digital Industries Software launched the latest updates for NX a couple of weeks ago, the sustainability piece is at the center—as expected.
This is a particularly suitable orientation for both Siemens and NX given the developments of recent years. Today, sustainability is a key focus in all industries, driven not only by consumer demand, corporate goals or government mandates and regulations. It is also driven by the need to ensure a product’s environmental impact is considered and optimized early in design. In fact, over 80 percent of all product-related environmental impacts are determined during the product design phase. So, the capabilities of the CAD tool to meet this environmental need are of utmost importance.
A New Set of Intelligent Sustainability Tools Comes to NX
The sustainability investment is also highly relevant, executive consultant at CIMdata, Ken Versprille believes. He commented on the new NX version in a press release from Siemens.
“With their latest updates and enhancements provided in the continuous release approach of NX, Siemens has heightened their focus on sustainability,” Versprille said. “The complete workflow that allows a manufacturer to not only tackle the challenges of product complexity and optimization but do so with a new set of intelligent sustainability focused tools that will assist manufacturers in meeting not only their functionality requirements, but also assist in reducing environmental impact.”
Here’s a closer look at the new improvements in NX.
Impact Analysis at the Heart of Sustainability Design
The new sustainability impact analysis capability, delivered in NX, puts environmental impact assessment at the center of a product’s development workflow. In fact, Siemens claims that, “This is the first time that a product engineering solution has delivered EN15804-based sustainability metrics based on accurate 3D design data combined with an artificial intelligence driven material recommendation engine.” This allows organizations to calculate, evaluate and optimize the impact of design decisions and material choices based on a diverse and comprehensive set of 30+ environmental impact factors, combined with full 3D design-integrated sustainability reporting.
It is also important that the integrated nature of the Siemens Xcelerator PLM portfolio means that the same data is available for further reuse downstream and when it is connected to the extended enterprise—including, for example, the suppliers. For the chain to last, it is undeniably important that everyone in it is involved.
Environmental goals and requirements for designs can then be driven by the requirements captured in Siemens Teamcenter software—the collaborative Product Definition management (cPDm) tool that is a backbone of data management. The savings can then be used for validation against requirements and environmental credits.
Bringing the Power of Simulation to the Front End of Product Development
With the ever-increasing pressure on design teams to deliver smarter, more sophisticated products, further underpinned by growing system complexity and decreasing resources allocated to design, the idea of simulation during the design process is gaining ground. CAD doesn’t stand alone in today’s product development landscapes. This is due to several reasons: partly to help validate product concepts, and partly because the tools have become much easier to use in recent years. Nevertheless, simulation is often still perceived as a complex process that requires an expert to run it.
It doesn’t have to be that way, which is a maxim the Siemens developers took very seriously.
To help bring the power of simulation to the front end of the design process, the new NX version introduced Performance Predictor. This gives NX the ability to harness the power of modern graphics processing units (GPUs) to deliver near-real-time simulation results directly within the design tool. After applying boundary and load conditions and materials, the parts can be simulated directly, with results superimposed directly on the 3D model. This means that NX’s geometry editing tools can be used simultaneously to edit, simulate and refine a design in real time.
The same technology can be used to deliver parametrically-driven studies using the Design Space Explorer in NX to define and solve multi-parameter goal-based optimization studies—all in a fraction of the time traditionally associated with this type of activity. Additionally, once defined, this simulation data can be reused and built upon in the Xcelerator portfolio’s simulation platform, Simcenter. The latter software products are intended for more advanced simulation as the project progresses.
Faster Molded Part Design
But there is more to come in the new updated NX. Take, for example, the need for cast parts, which continues to increase rapidly in the market.
The interesting background here, according to Siemens, is that the need for cast parts will grow from $520 billion in 2020 to $750 billion in 2028. Here, manufacturers are often looking for ways to reduce design iterations, remove costly physical prototypes and eliminate “trial-and-error workflows” that are common in the design of cast parts.
Reflecting this development, the processes involved in handling molded parts have been expanded in NX, enabling designers to create, manage and validate their molded part design features (such as bosses, spacers, snaps lips/grooves) within the framework of their 3D design data within the native NX environment. Whether developed from best practices, as a feature template, or imported from a third-party vendor, NX Molded Part Designer will validate these features, perform a formability analysis and present the results in visual dashboards where design feasibility and options can be evaluated in context with several scenarios, such as formability, structural analysis and others.
Material considerations can also be handled in the solution, which is particularly useful when used in conjunction with the Sustainability Impact Analysis capabilities of NX to ensure that the material not only meets functional and manufacturing requirements, but also meets environmental requirements.
Taking Tool Management to the Cloud
Standardization of the tools used in CNC manufacturing not only provides companies with reduced tooling costs, but can also improve the exchange of best practices between distributed manufacturing teams.
The Cloud Tool Manager, found in the NX CAM features, uses web-based technology to centralize and manage tools and holders/fixtures in an organization. It also supports the import of tooling data directly from tooling vendor catalogs, minimizing manual input, accelerating NC programming and enabling manufacturers to use the latest tooling advances, handle increasing part complexity, tighter tolerances and incorporate new materials.
