This NX release cycle will get an implementation of iRay+ for rendering models – such as this lovely Suzuki
While we were out at Siemens PLM’s annual European PLM Connections event last week, the company also slipped out the news of its NX 10 release.
We’re waiting to get up close and personal with this year’s major release, but for the meantime thought we’d take a brief look at what’s coming down the pipeline.
The NX 9 release saw the introduction of sub-divisional modelling tools into the NX environment – alongside the more traditional, high-end surface tools that have been a staple of the system for years.
The NX 10 release sees these gain more maturity and what it comes to subD modelling, that’s always down to the small features that let you create exactly the shape you want, rather than just getting close more quickly.
//www.youtube.com/embed/M-FHrmRgdVE
Related to this was a new module that was soft launched at the event, the NX Advanced Studio Display.
While there was an announcement earlier in the year about greater integration between NX and KeyShot, the NX release cycle will get an implementation of iRay+.
This is the technology owned by Nvidia (following its acquisition of MentalImages), but sold and extended by the LightWork Design folks.
As you can see from the video above, this is a mix of both the traditional CPU and GPU driven ray tracing tools as well as some cloud computation.
From speaking the product managers at Siemens it’s clear that they have this technology planned for some time in the NX 10 release cycle, but it’s not quite ready for release yet – and part of that is the challenge of working out how to price this to the customer when they’re using cloud resources to compute heavy scene visualisation.
There was also discussion of the way that Siemens are looking at touch-based interfaces. This is something we talked to Siemens PLM’s Chuck Grindstaff about at length (look out for an interview shortly).
It’s an issue in today’s software in that there are incredibly powerful mobile computing devices, but as yet, the technical software industry hasn’t really taken advantage of it. What Siemens is beginning to do is look at how users want to use their tools and how they need to adapt the user experience.
When it comes to NX, it’s clear that the traditional user interface isn’t particularly ideal for touch-based input and control – and they’ve, as a first pass, developed a ‘role’ that adapts the user interface, when on Microsoft Surface tablets, to enable easier use with touch-based input.
There’s a whole bunch of other new bits and bobs coming, covering 2D layout and concept engineering, inspection as well as CAE. It’s clear that NX 10 is looking like a very interesting release.
If you want to learn more, then there’s some more details at www.siemens.com/plm/nx10.
Stay tuned for more, once we get our hands on it.
