And what’s happening to NX and Solid Edge?
It’s not NX. It’s not Solid Edge. And it’s definitely not Zel X. It’s Designcenter, Siemens’ latest brand refresh, and it’s all of those tools and more.
First announced at CES 2025 in January and reintroduced at the Siemens Realize Live 2025 user conference in June, Designcenter is the new name for Siemens’ portfolio of mechanical design software. It goes beyond branding—the new moniker comes with increasing interoperability and “aggressive” new pricing that Siemens believes will serve everyone from a single-person design startup to a major enterprise OEM.
Engineering.com dug into Designcenter to find out what it is, what it isn’t, and what it means for Siemens users.
The origins of Siemens Designcenter
All the major CAD developers have dual offerings: a premium CAD program for large enterprises and a more affordable option for the mass market. Dassault Systèmes has Catia and Solidworks, PTC has Creo and Onshape, Autodesk has Inventor and Fusion, and Siemens has NX and Solid Edge.
Siemens has something else, too: Parasolid, the modeling kernel that they use in both NX and Solid Edge and license to several competitors (including Solidworks and Onshape), and D-Cubed, Siemens’ geometric constraint manager, also used in-house and licensed to competitors. You could call these components the heart of CAD software.
With both NX and Solid Edge built on the same underlying technology, Siemens saw an opportunity for closer integration.
“Our overall move for Designcenter is to try to take a more aggressive position in the marketplace, as one offering, and not be seen as a split offering between NX and Solid Edge,” George Rendell, VP of NX Design at Siemens, said in a presentation at Realize Live 2025. “Based on the same technology and the same solid modeling kernel, Parasolid, we can scale and flow the data… from single seat customers to large enterprises.”
As Siemens’ mechanical design brand, Designcenter slots in neatly next to Siemens Teamcenter (for PLM), Simcenter (for simulation), and Opcenter (for manufacturing operations management). Siemens’ executive vice president of PLM products, Joe Bohman, hinted at Realize Live 2025 that more Siemens “center” brands may be coming soon (Lifecenter, perhaps?).
What does Siemens Designcenter mean for NX and Solid Edge?
Siemens NX and Siemens Solid Edge aren’t going anywhere—yet. Both products exist as part of the Designcenter portfolio. Siemens hasn’t announced any specific plans to phase out those brands, but Rendell revealed that, at some point, Designcenter will be the name of Siemens’ CAD software.
“For those of you who still call NX Unigraphics… I think you can see where this is headed,” he said to a chuckling audience (clearly many of them remembered that name change from 2002). “Over time, we will slowly stop using the NX product name.”
Presumably, the same is true of Solid Edge—it would defeat the purpose to phase out one brand but not the other.
What’s available in Siemens Designcenter?
For now, Designcenter includes all of the Solid Edge and NX product offerings, including the software-as-a-service (SaaS) versions labeled with an X. It will offer the same four tiers that NX X does: Essentials, Standard, Advanced, and Premium. (NX X Essentials is a browser-based version of NX formerly called Zel X and the latter three tiers used to be known as NX Mach 1, 2, and 3).
Since the X products are all licensed per user, these tiers can be mixed and matched within an organization, Rendell said, with Parasolid ensuring seamless data flow no matter the tier. The browser-based Essentials tier will be included with higher tiers, meaning all Designcenter users can access their data through the web and on mobile devices.
On top of these tiers, Siemens offers more than 100 add-on modules through its value-based licensing program. The token-based system includes modules for generative design, manufacturing, simulation, sustainability and more.
Who is Designcenter for?
Siemens sees Designcenter as a solution for every engineering company, no matter the size, industry, or workflow. Designcenter can be tailored to each company’s needs and it will evolve alongside them, according to Brian Grogan, director of product management for Siemens’ mainstream engineering software group.
“We have a lot of small companies that want to buy the right size product at the right size price point today, but be assured that as they grow as an organization and they achieve more design complexity, that they can scale up in the portfolio without having to worry about the boundaries of the products,” Grogan told Engineering.com.
What will Designcenter cost?
Here are the current prices for Solid Edge X and NX X:
| (Prices per user, per year in USD) | Solid Edge X | NX X |
| Essentials | N/A | $2,292 |
| Standard | $3,132 | $7,371 |
| Advanced | $3,744 | $9,576 |
| Premium | $4,956 | $12,222 |
Siemens didn’t announce any specific price changes coming to Designcenter, but Rendell emphasized that more accessible pricing is one of the reasons for the rebrand.
“The feedback we have at Siemens is that sometimes we’re a little hard to do business with, sometimes we’re a little bit expensive,” Rendell said. “So part of our focus here on a scalable message is to be more aggressive at price point.”
There have been a lot of name changes at Siemens recently, and likely more to come with the company’s increased focus on acquisitions. Designcenter, at least, is a change towards harmony. While veteran users may bristle (the same ones who still call NX Unigraphics 23 years later), one thing is undeniable: it’s a lot better than SE X.
