INDUSTRIAL designers, product engineers, and product development managers, now have available the latest version of Unigraphics NX3 CAD/CAM/CAE PDM software.
Developed by UGS (USA) and distributed locally by Product Lifecycle Management Australasia (plm), the icon-driven software has an extensive list of user-friendly features for faster, more precise product development in the digital environment.
As the product is an integral component of plm's Teamcenter suite of software for product lifecycle management (PLM), users deploying Unigraphics NX3 can easily scale up to a full PLM solution.
Plm director Dennis Colusso said upgraded user interface and user workflows were some of the key developments in Unigraphics NX3 as was the coming together of its predecessor technologies, Unigraphics NX2 and I-deas NX.
“The coming together of Unigraphics and I-deas is a major industry milestone as General Motors globally has standardised on Unigraphics, whilst Ford has standardised on I-deas,” he said.
“This development will enable the automotive product development supply chains to work far more effectively.
"Suiting both the frequent and occasional user, the NX3 version of Unigraphics has also evolved to fully integrate and assimilate UGS's other mainstream CAD product, Ideas NX, thus allowing companies with either line of product to converge all associated work.
"This is not only of benefit to a company's in-house design engineers, the assimilation of two influential NX product suites completes what industry has been missing until now - a completely streamlined integration of design along an entire supply chain," Mr Colusso said.
Predominant upgrades within Unigraphics NX3 include usability, ease of learning, knowledge capture, improved workflow and common tools.
Ease of learning and flexibility of the onscreen interface means a much-simplified environment with fewer menu options presented and easy to read and customisable toolbars.
This allows users to easily customise menus and toolbars interactively to get all their commonly used commands within easy access.
Another major new feature on NX3 is Design Logic, a new UGS technology that enables customers to quickly and easily capture and embed knowledge into their designs. Previously this could only be done through complex programming languages.
Design Logic allows designers to capture know-how during the design process in an intuitive fashion that requires no programming and very little additional work. This is due to the new workflows embedded in NX3.
All Microsoft customisation techniques, including 'drag and drop', are supported in NX. For improved workflow, analysis of user workflows has led to the definition of an enhanced user interaction model.
This extends the style of interaction steps to include dynamic on-screen interaction with previews where appropriate. With each new release there will be an application of this interaction model spreading across NX applications.
Tools that are used across all applications are made very efficient to use and with a consistent user interface.
Mr Colusso said Unigraphics NX3 was recognised as the most powerful CAD software in the world.
“As did its predecessor, this new version has major applications in prototype design in every industry from consumer electronics, automotive and engineering through to mining, aerospace, defence and the energy industries.
"The time and expense of preparing drawings and building costly, physical prototypes is not required as the accuracy of anything designed using the software is precise to the tightest of tolerances and almost always market-ready.
"This allows product engineers and designers to fashion a prototype at a very late stage of development because in-situ testing is performed in a digital environment,” he said.
"Coupled with our data migration convergence with NX I-deas, companies in Australia and New Zealand will now find it four to ten times less expensive than to migrate to any other CAD system.”