Siemens’ UGS shows mettle in PLM functionality

Always keen on true PLM (product lifecycle management) software, as opposed to cobbling together products and modules to produce something that can be optimistically described as such, UGS makes special efforts to break down barriers to integration. NX product line vice president Joan Hirsh, interviewed at a promotional event in Barcelona, told us: “Every night we send 50,000 models across to Parasolid in Cambridge to validate the next release we are working on. “We have all these workstations that are doing nothing during the night so I thought we might as well use them. We do automated tests and so does Parasolid to make certain that the models re-play and that fidelity is preserved, Parasolid claims it is a really good test.” According to Hirsch, interoperability between users of NX and other software packages, “Hinges on the Jupiter Technology backbone”. Within NX5, JT is also the key to the light weight loading of very large models. She said models with 50,000 to 70,000 parts are no problem, with up to 250,000 in the real world, “pushing the envelope at 1 million”. It is very noticeable in NX5 that large models load very quickly, displaying only the most prominent parts, but more and more details appear on the screen as the user zooms in. Additionally, she told us that, “With the JT technology inside, we have the performance to better simulate assembly and disassembly, tool path planning, and the display of motion envelopes, once you have defined the path”. UGS has a company philosophy of true concept to grave, right up to the “Retiring and sun-setting of products”, to use Joan’s words, and as well as fully integrated CAD. The parallel Teamcenter PLM offering includes a “Green module”, to assist the tracking of parts such as those elements of cell phones that should not go into landfill as well as various other tools to assist with compliance with European regulations. Hirsch continued: “I still think there is a lot of room to squeeze efficiency into the engineering process and remove the CAD overhead. I also think the disciplines are coming together – design, simulation, and tooling, all as parts of the same whole. People want to value CAD more than just for shape”. The UGS suite of offerings already includes Tecnomatix and manufacturing planning. Hirsch said: “For example, if I am doing work cell simulation, I will want to access information such as weld lines from NX models and keep out zones”. While the UGS people present at the event declined to answer any questions relating to the acquisition by Siemens, we, having recently attended a briefing on German developed 3D vision systems to ensure that robots were stopped if workers entered unsafe working areas, began to see something of how the synergy between UGS CAD and Siemens manufacturing software is going to work. Once the digital mockup has been defined, that geometry is to form the basis of all subsequent manufacturing and simulation, including the design, running and re-configuring of manufacturing plant, and also the plant that is going to take products apart for recycling at end of life. “All of these applications will plug into the managed environment”, she said, “The challenge is to keep everything in an open database to ease this. We are publishing interfaces to help integration. Jupiter Technology is also key as regards data sharing.” Asked about the gulf between the ability to integrate different IT functions, such as CAD, analysis and CAM, and what actually happens in most businesses, Hirsch responded: “There is a lot of lip service paid to it, but when you look into it, they are not really doing it. I see engineering managers, mostly in automotive, being given data re-use quotas.” One of the barriers to re-using data has always been the problem of finding it. While SoldWorks has announced a ‘Google’ type text search engine, UGS has gone one stage further and embraced model shape searching. Hirsch said: “We purchased Geolus recently, a company that we believe has one of the best facilities for shape searching. In the past, the fidelity of shape searching has not been that interesting”. (Geolus Shape, originally developed by the German company Software Design & Management, has now been renamed ‘Geolus Search’ and searches by both text phrases and geometric similarity) Another way of re-using data, especially with regard to products that are all variations on a common theme, has been to develop product configurators, a number of which we have described in these pages down the years, and whose origins go back to the earliest days of CAD. UGS does not have a specific package for this purpose, but Joan Hirsch told us that, ”We have developed such facilities for key customers”, citing the example of Iggesund Tools, which made knife systems for saw mill and pulp mill chipping and saw mill debarking. “They have developed their own configurators with our tools”. She also mentioned the California company, Interpore Cross (more information at www.interpore.com , which, she said, “make web like devices that bone forms around. Its complicated stuff. We worked with them over four months using Knowledge Fusion and completely revolutionised their business into double digit millions.” One of the problems that all the CAD companies have to address is the usability of their products. Nobody in CAD now uses phrases such as “User friendly”, and even “Seamless integration” seems to have gone out of fashion. Nonetheless, Paul Brown, the company’s NX marketing director claimed that, “You can learn the basics of NX in a day now.” Hirsch said that among the 400 enhancements in NX5, “The two big things are role based user interfaces and block based dialogs, so that instead of a thousand things you have to learn, you now only have to learn about sixty”. Users can attach or “Clip” most dialog boxes to a “Rail” running along the upper edge of the graphics window to reduce clutter. Another important advance to improve ease of use is that users can click on and manipulate features on a model without having to pay any attention to how the model was built. Regardless of history tree, or even whether an imported model has one, faces and bosses can be picked up and moved in and out. A library of industry standard parts has been added that includes: bolts, screws, nuts, washers, pins, bearings and profiles. In NX 5 Sheet Metal Design, applications include a materials database that enables designers to automatically apply material thickness, bend radius, neutral factor and other characteristics on application of the material. In simulation, NX Response Simulation is a new add on to NX Advanced FEM and Nastran that provides an interactive, visual environment for the evaluation of the structural dynamics response of a system when subjected to various types of complex shock and vibration loading conditions. In addition, NX Advanced Flow is a new add on module to NX Flow that extends the CFD simulation to highly compressible flows and offers additional turbulence models, non linear fluid properties and transport of specials, including humidity and condensation. NX Advanced Thermal extends the range of thermal simulation capabilities to include material transformations – phase change, thermal ablation and charring. Integrated manufacturing modules have also been notably enhanced, including Mold Design, Progressive Die Design, Electrode Design and High Speed Machining.