NX for Mechanical Design

Benefits Summary
• Facilitates design control, The NX™ software for mechanical design provides a comprehensive set of
speeds the design process, leading-edge CAD modeling tools that enable companies to design higher
increases designer and quality products faster and less expensively. The NX comprehensive
design team productivity and mechanical design solution lets you choose the tools and methodologies that
improves design throughput best suit your design challenge. Innovative technologies deliver breakthrough
• Improves design team mechanical design capabilities that set new standards for speed, performance
performance, especially for and ease-of-use.
handling large, complex
models Transforming product development by delivering greater power, speed,
• Raises product quality by quality, productivity and efficiency for mechanical design
minimizing design errors NX mechanical design capabilities are unmatched in terms of the power,
• Produces faster, more versatility, flexibility and productivity they deliver to your digital product
accurate and complete development environment. NX enables you to establish a complete design
product documentation solution for your environment, including leading-edge tools and
• Produces significant time, methodologies for:
effort and cost savings by • Comprehensive high-performance modeling, which enables you to
facilitating design re-use seamlessly use the most productive modeling approaches – from explicit
• Facilitates better integration solid and surface modeling to parametric, process-specific and history-free
and coordination between direct modeling that works with models from any CAD system.
multiple design disciplines, • Active mockup and assembly design, which enables you to work
design teams and their interactively with massive multi-CAD assemblies while leveraging leading
related CAD systems assembly management and engineering tools.
• Standards-compliant drafting and 3D annotation, which streamlines
Features the creation of product documentation by directly leveraging your 3D
• Comprehensive 3D design master model.
capabilities, including
wireframe, surface, solid and Today’s mechanical design challenges
direct modeling Manufacturing companies are driven by an increased pressure to develop
• Synchronous technology for more innovative products in a shorter time frame while continuing to deliver
uniting parametric and high levels of quality. Even with mature 3D CAD technology, many companies
history-free modeling in the fail to significantly reduce process waste, improve product quality or deliver
same design environment breakthrough product innovations that stir the imagination of the
• Assembly modeling with full- marketplace.
context, multi-CAD digital
mockup and validation tools These challenges require a radical rethinking of the business model that
pertains to product development. This rethinking should begin with
transforming the design process. Product design fuels the entire development

NX
www.siemens.com/nx
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NX for Mechanical Design

Features continued effort. Today’s design processes involve Process innovation NX enables you to
• Interactive design of massive increasingly complex products comprised establish an interactive environment
assemblies that improves the of design elements created by multiple where everyday design work can be
performance and capacity of teams, disciplines and suppliers using streamlined through the implementation
your design environment independent CAD systems. These complex of task-oriented workflows that improve
• Process-specific, streamlined processes require product makers to designer productivity. NX design
modeling tools for sheet coordinate the activities of team members environments facilitate high-performance
metal routed systems and dispersed across different geographies modeling techniques that provide design
other applications while retaining design intent from the teams with the flexibility and power to
• Configurable, intuitive start of the design project to handle design of virtually any size or
interface that facilitates its completion. complexity. NX allows you to dynamically
ease-of-use, user learning integrate your CAD processes with
and accessibility to powerful Companies need design processes that planning, simulation, tooling, manufac­
modeling capabilities compress the design cycle by eliminating turing and other lifecycle processes and
• Associative integration with value-added tasks, maximizing knowledge make informed design decisions by
all NX product development re-use and proactively addressing recognizing the requirements of all
solutions, including NX manufacturability issues before they reach design stakeholders and coordinating
industrial design, the factory floor. Product developers need their activity.
electromechanical, to “design-in” rather than “inspect-in”
simulation, tooling and product quality. More specifically, NX addresses the
machining solutions mechanical design process directly through
• Automated, real-time design NX next-generation design solutions its capabilities for:
validation checking to NX delivers next-generation design • Comprehensive high-performance
monitor functional solutions that transform the entire product modeling
requirements development cycle. NX represents a radical • Active mockup and assembly design
• Knowledge capture and departure from conventional CAD systems. • Standards-compliant drafting and
automation tools NX improves speed and efficiency while 3D annotation
• Seamlessly integrated, eliminating wasted work by providing
transparent engineering data unique technologies and methodologies, Comprehensive high-performance
and process management including: modeling
NX delivers the most powerful and flexible
Knowledge-enabled design NX modeling solutions available – solutions
automates and simplifies design by that enable you to freely use any modeling
enabling you to leverage the product and technique that fits your design challenge.
process knowledge that your company has All NX modeling tools are built on Siemens’
gained from its experiences as well as from Parasolid® geometry modeling kernel, the
industry best practices. NX tools enable world’s most powerful, robust and widely
designers to capture knowledge in the used modeling foundation.
form of high-level product structure,
templates, frequently used design Design Freedom NX supports Design
features, engineering rules, formulae and Freedom powered by Siemens’
validation checks. Knowledge-enabled groundbreaking synchronous technology.
design helps your company reduce design This unique approach enables you to unite
costs, compress the design cycle and feature-based parametric and history-free
improve design quality. modeling in the same design environment.

NX seamlessly integrates Teamcenter-managed

You can manage your entire design Design Freedom means that your designers
engineering and process data, enabling designers
to quickly search a single source of knowledge and
process with Siemens’ Teamcenter® can use NX synchronous modeling tools to
locate the information they need to use. software, which lets you establish and modify design geometry initially created
seamlessly integrate a single source of on other CAD systems or by other
product and process knowledge into your modeling techniques. It does not matter
design environment. This enables you to whether the data in question was imported
coordinate your design chain, standardize from another CAD system or whether is
your design processes and accelerate native parametric or nonparametric. NX
decision making throughout the
design cycle.
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Design re-use Design re-use becomes subassemblies and components. Active

increasingly more important as today’s Mockup utilizes industry-standard JT™
manufacturers try to expand their market technology to enable designers to load
share by establishing product platforms. thousands of components from multiple
NX lets you use any part or assembly as a CAD systems in just seconds. JT is a highly
template for new designs, building product flexible CAD neutral format that allows
knowledge and best practices into your designers to fully represent all relevant
development processes. This capability model information. The JT format can be
supports your commonization, created from most major CAD applications.
modularization and re-use initiatives by Depending on your type of business
enabling you to reduce design time by up process, JT data can be very lightweight or
to 80 percent. very rich. JT models are able to hold
NX synchronous technology enables designers precise model geometry, product
to perform history-free editing on imported structures, attributes and PMI, including
CAD models. geometric data, translations and
annotations. JT enables you to load
assemblies with up to a million parts with
synchronous tools enable designers to exceptional interactive performance.
work directly with any geometry without
the need to rebuild data. These synchronous As a result, Active Mockup provides
tools let designers use parametric features designers with a true interactive design
without the limitations of a feature history. capability that lets them rapidly display,
section and rotate very large assemblies.
Process-specific modeling Conventional Active Mockup enables design teams to
CAD systems leave it up to the designer to collaborate by viewing, modifying and
figure out how to apply a system’s various evaluating complete digital mockups.
NX knowledge-enabled design tools let companies
tools. In contrast, NX logically structures Teams can view as much of the product
re-use existing designs as customized templates
commands in workflows oriented to design as required to evaluate its parts in
for new designs.
accomplishing specific design tasks. NX is the context of a particular task. These
prepackaged with industry roles that tailor design-in-context capabilities facilitate
the user interface and incorporate best Active mockup and assembly design rapid problem resolution during the
practice guidelines. NX also delivers NX powerful mockup and assembly physical assembly process.
process-based tools that build in domain capabilities provide your design
expertise for meeting specific challenges environment with a variety of interactive Assembly design validation NX provides
(such as dealing with sheet metal capabilities that expedite your assembly validation tools that enable your designers
components) or for performing industry- design and engineering processes. to identify and resolve assembly design
specific processes (such as handling and process problems in the early stages of
automotive body structures and general Active Mockup NX Active Mockup development – without resorting to
packaging). Process-specific design aids enables your designers to easily navigate physical prototyping. NX enables designers
enable designers to work faster than large assemblies and establish an appro­ to perform interactive clearance checking
general purpose CAD tools. priate environment for detailed work on and interference checking to detect and

NX Active Mockup and assembly management NX assembly validation tools include extraction
Sheet metal design is one of several streamlined enables collaborative design to be performed in path planning capabilities that optimize designs
process-specific modeling tools provided by NX. the full context of complex assemblies. so that a product can be easily assembled,
disassembled and maintained.
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eliminate fit problems. Designers can Standards-compliant drafting and NX drafting capabilities enable designers
interactively simulate assembly motion to 3D annotation to rapidly lay out their drawings, as well as
check and optimize moving components. NX delivers production-driven tools for to create drawing views, detailing and
documenting your designs either as dimensioning and geometric dimensioning
With automated assembly path planning standards-compliant 2D drawings or 3D and tolerancing (GD&T). Since NX adheres
and motion envelopes, designers can product and manufacturing information to the industry standards for PMI 3D model
optimize products for assembly, (PMI) annotations. You can use these annotation, the dimensions, symbols and
disassembly, maintenance and service. capabilities to ensure that design intent is tolerances can be automatically inherited
Designers can record and play back properly communicated throughout your on drawing views and directly used by
assembly and motion sequences as movies development organization. They improve downstream analysis and manufacturing
that can be shared as assembly product quality by removing potential applications. This improves productivity by
instructions with the factory floor. These sources of interpretation error from your eliminating the need to re-enter this
simple to use tools can be leveraged to design environment and by speeding the information.
quickly validate design changes as the process you use to take your designs to
product evolves. manufacturing.

Routed systems design NX provides tools

that enable designers to create and
validate routed subsystems for both
mechanical and electrical designs.
Mechanical routing tools and libraries are
available for tubing, piping and steelwork.
Electrical routing tools enable designers to
place wiring, conduit and raceways while
standard component libraries are available
for electrical systems. NX electrical routing
includes wire harness design and
manufacturing support, eliminating the
need for physical prototype and reducing
product development time by allowing
designers to perform interface checks,
validate design rules, visualize the routing
pattern in 3D and trace the location of
specific wires and connections.

NX maintains associative links between the

P&ID layout and the 3D systems to ensure
that system logic is maintained. Designers
can quickly apply logical design changes to Designers can use NX to directly include complete PMI on a 3D design model, thereby improving
communications and accelerating downstream applications.
the routed system. Routed systems are
fully associative to NX assemblies to
facilitate design changes. Automated bill
of material and other reporting provide
information for subsystem manufacturing.

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