Siemens HD3D software aids digital development

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 9, 2009

Siemens PLM Software has announced the HD3D from its NX software range, the company's flagship digital product development solution.

HD3D is an open, visual environment to help global product development teams unlock the value of PLM information and enhance their ability to make efficient and effective product decisions.

NX 7.0 includes enhancements to synchronous technology - the computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering analysis (CAD/CAM/CAE) productivity software introduced by Siemens PLM Software last year - that will accelerate a variety of product development tasks and expand the ability of NX to effectively work with data from third party CAD applications.

The announcement of NX 7.0 was made in Paris at the Siemens PLM Connection Europe annual users conference.

The introduction of HD3D in NX 7.0 is part of Siemens PLM Software's comprehensive approach to achieving this vision and establishing a new paradigm in visual analytics.

The environment will be common across NX and Teamcenter software, Siemens PLM Software's digital lifecycle management portfolio, and its open architecture will also allow for integration with a variety of third-party applications.

HD3D expands the power of NX and Teamcenter to visually deliver the information companies need to understand, collaborate, and make decisions in today's globally distributed and heterogeneous product development environments.

HD3D provides a simple and intuitive way to collect, collate and present product information, where it can be immediately applied in critical decision-making.

The implementation of HD3D in NX 7.0 will enable users to visually interrogate and evaluate a product design based on any type of data tracked in Teamcenter or NX, such as release status, weight thresholds, material type and delivery status.

For example, an NX 7.0 user could run a report looking for parts that are currently in development and registered as on-schedule or late.

The 3D NX model of the product will visually highlight all of the parts that are more than one week late and a cause for concern.

Interactive tags are displayed on the screen and can be selected to navigate into more detailed information.

With potentially thousands of parts in a given product, this visual feedback and interactive work environment eliminates the need to sort through written bills of materials and status reports to manually interpret where issues exist and what action to take.

In addition to this visual analytics capability based on PLM data, HD3D will be implemented within NX 7.0 Check-Mate, a standards-based checking application that ensures compliance with design criteria, consistency in CAD model file structure and adherence to a variety of corporate and industry standards.

HD3D will enhance validation tools within Check-Mate with a visual user interface for analysing and reporting issues.

The environment improves decision making during product validation by providing an intuitive, visual means of viewing Check-Mate results and evaluating issues.