Active mock-up and direct-face editing among new features in UGS NX CAD release

Integrated solutions usually win, but with a new version of its NX CAD package, product life-cycle management (PLM) vendor UGS isn't placing all its bets on tighter integration between NX and its Teamcenter product data management (PDM) system. The new NX 5 also has a bevy of features that promise to accelerate product development.

Among these is Active Mock-Up, which allows designers to see entire designs within NX rather than in separate tools; and a new editing capability that allows rapid design changes without digging into complex history-tree structures. Ken Versprille, PLM research director with Stamford, Conn.-based Collaborative Product Development Associates (CPDA), calls this latter feature an example of “direct-face editing” technology that uses special algorithms to intelligently find patterns in a CAD model's geometry without parsing history structure.

“Direct-face editing commands allow users to make last-minute changes if customer or market requirements change, or for some unforeseen manufacturing consideration,” says Versprille. “The other situation in which these commands would be useful is when a user has to import what's known as a 'dumb solid' [i.e., without a history tree] because it has been passed to them that way by a partner. Most parametric, history-based CAD can't do much with dumb solids, but if you have direct-face editing, you can do a lot with dumb solids.”

Richard Bush, UGS director of marketing for NX digital simulation, says Active Mock-Up overcomes the complexity of working with entire designs, which for some users regularly involves 250,000 parts in one product. With that many parts, the complete CAD data becomes too cumbersome to work with, leading software vendors to develop special mock-up tools that use lightweight formats.

The challenge, says Bush, is that digital mock-up typically has been used within a separate design-review process, leading to more design iterations. Bush says UGS overcomes this by leveraging its lightweight JT format right within NX.

For example, says Bush, if a designer is tasked with making a design change to an engine's turbocharger, the Active Mock-Up view would reveal if the change affected any surrounding parts, such as the engine hood. “With Active Mock-Up, users see everything in the design within context,” he says.

Versprille believes Active Mock-up will contribute to faster design cycles. “I don't think you will eliminate design-review meetings, but many of the problems [traditionally] caught in reviews will have been seen and addressed during the authoring phase,” he says.

Dave Cochran, a program manager with Rocketplane Kistler, an Oklahoma City-based manufacturer of aerospace vehicles used to launch payloads into orbit, is enthusiastic about Active Mock-Up's potential. “Active Mock-up makes it feasible to design in the context of larger, higher-fidelity assemblies,” he says. “Working in an accurate assembly context is paramount to driving down interface problems between components.”

Other NX 5 features include greater flexibility in setting up the user interface; and Teamcenter Navigator, which enables finding product-record information from within NX. While Versprille sees these as incremental improvements, Bush says an easier-to-use CAD package with links to core PLM data are important, and contribute to a UGS benchmark test showing an overall 20-percent improvement in productivity between NX 5 and the preceding version.

“Productivity just doesn't come down to a better user interface,” says Bush. “It also comes down to the tools you have. The ability to easily access the corporate knowledge base and leverage it while you design is key.”