Siemens NX Versions: What's New in NX 1926

If you use the Continuous Release update model in NX, the latest version, NX 1926, should have been available for you to download on Friday, June 19, 2020.

We took time to look through the update and make note of the most important enhancements to the newest Siemens NX versions.

In the latest NX release, the updates to NX enable users to achieve cutting edge innovation with tools built from the ground-up to be the next step in design evolution.

If you have questions about the update, you can contact us here.

View the enhancements below or jump to a topic by choosing from the list.

The Future of Sketching

An iterative process makes it easy for you to make changes as you design and your idea evolves. New improvements to the latest Siemens NX versions include:

• NX sketching anticipates what you are going to drag / modify
• Does the geometric constraining for you as and when you need it
• Applies geometric relationships for you based on surrounding geometry
• Works seamlessly with data regardless of source

The new approach to Sketch allows users to capture ideas as they iterate and make changes as needed, instead of approaching CAD after the initial iterations have been sketched out by hand.

NEW: NX Draw Shape

NX Draw shape is a new add-on module in this release which allows freehand drawing of wireframe shapes on bodies. This expands NX’s capabilities and allows users to visually convey and communicate key aspects of designs prior to moving into 3D.

Draw on planar and freeform geometry in either an explicit or associative manner. Create shapes as pen strokes or actual curve geometry. This new module also includes analytic shape recognition, symmetric drawing, and various ways to modify curves including converting pen strokes into reusable curves.

Additional Design Enhancements in NX 1926

Other design updates include:

• Extrude capabilities - increased productivity enhancements to one of the most widely used modeling commands
• Hole - specify hole parameters faster for increased productivity
• Thread - enhanced thread command with many user requested updates for complete workflow support
• Pattern - new patterning method for increased performance and ease of creation
• Boolean - new ability to boolean multiple non-touching targets with multiple tools removes the need to perform multiple Boolean operations.
• Model compare - significant increase in compare performance (up to 144x), reducing from what would have taken hours in some cases to minutes or even seconds

Create Sketch Enhancements in NX 1926

Disc Break Sketch Demo in NX 1926

Quick Next Sketch 2D Layout Demo in NX 1926

• Bring in assembly to layout and smash to 2D
• Adjust cutout heights in fixture and height of fixture to hold a new product using new Sketcher functionality
• Create and offset reference line to increase the size of the machine bed
• Adjust the height and width of the machine to accommodate the new product using reference lines and Sketch dimensions
• Finally increase the size of the supports to hold the extra weight of a larger product using symmetry function from Sketch

Assembly Usability in NX 1926

In NX 1926, Assemblies features enhancements to several common assemblies operations, in order to improve user efficiency and generally simplify assembly creation.

The implementation of new selection and gesture capabilities improve frequently performed assembly workflows:

• Assembly Preference dialog updated to the new format
• Add Component selection and drag-drop component support multiple graphics windows
• New “Find Closest” orientation option for Touch Align constraint

DMU Application

Also within this NX release are several new capabilities that have been added to the DMU application, which are also aimed at enhancing user workflows. This is because an efficient design process must support what-if studies and provide a method for documenting various design states – and the DMU application makes this possible. This release features:

• Dedicated DMU Preferences and Customer Defaults
• New Measure and Section snapshot properties
• NX Viewer supports DMU & Markup capabilities

Enhancements to Structure Designer in NX 1926

Structure designer helps speed up design process and reduce time to market with enhancements around structural frames, rich industry standards library, and reusable frames. And structure designer now offers better downstream integration.

Structural Frames in Minutes

NX 1926 is easy to use, designed to minimize clicks, and automates features throughout the process to reduce workload. Easy to use structural frame modeling, rapid frame drawing assistant, and other enhancements help designers set up structural frames in minutes with ease.

• Easy to use structural frame modeling capability
• Rapid frame drawing assistant that creates 2D skeletons with minimal clicks
• 3D members placement are automatically oriented based on user defined rules
• Corner treatments are rules-driven and automatically added
• Create accurate designs with specialty features such as structural corner stiffeners, end caps, and mounting feet

NX Join in NX 1926

Next, let’s discuss NX Join: the initial release of NX Join targets users of fasteners in CAD models. It enables faster placement of locations and establishes join features in models. Users can add components to the assembly and bill of materials if desired:

• Enables placement of fastener locations and establishes join features in the model
• Provides easy access to database of fasteners via NX dialog
• Add fastener component(s) to the assembly and bill of materials if desired
• Expose the stack up calculation information
• Multi-edit large groups of data at once
• Supports join feature publishing into Teamcenter to enable management and exposure of joins to other applications.

Each join feature is a sub class of three primary classes of joins: point, line or face. In this release the sub-classes are all of type point and include:

• Rivet
• Fastener
• Spot weld

The features appear in the part navigator

Info and property information is available from the RMB

Custom attributes can be configured in

Design for Additive Manufacturing

NX 1926 enhances users abilities to create innovative designs by extending NX’s ability to engineer lattice structures to suite a broader set of functional requirements and improves Design-Additive Manufacturing collaboration. This release includes:

• Numerous new and improved lattice structure design workflow capabilities
• Design for Additive Manufacturing collaboration improvements via 3MF

NEW: Body Lattice

Users now have access to a new body lattice command that allows for the use of any CAD body as a unit cell, so any analytic or freeform shape is now possible, which greatly expands the engineering possibility of lattices.'

A unit cell can be parametrically defined or based on an imported body. A unit cell body can be a solid or sheet and the resulting lattice structure is associative to the unit cell definition.

Lattice

The Lattice tool also feature several workflow and command enhancements, and now allows users to place balls at the lattice nodes to further improve lattice durability, and Tessellation factor is maintained between editing operations for improved lattice quality.

• Lattice command (Graph based, Rods & Cones) now supports specifying a ball diameter at the nodes.
• Rod Thickness command also supports ball diameters at the nodes.
  • Modify Rods, Balls, or Both
• Connect lattice command has added control for the tessellation  of the resulting body.
• NEW: Clip Lattice command allows for clipping any selected lattice to any boundary body.
• A more compact graph representation is now used for greater efficiency and improved performance.
• Lattice tessellation has been enhanced for improved geometric quality.

3MF Export

Updates to 3MF in NX 1926 export allow users to export body & face colors, and visualize material textures.  This is aimed at improving collaboration among the community of Additive Manufacturing OEMs, suppliers and services bureaus. Manufacturing slicing performance is significantly improved using the lattice graph directly from 3MF.

Export body & face colors, visualization material textures, and decals

• Texture based visualization materials
• Multiple decals applied on the same face
• Various mapping types

Export and Import lattice graph definition

Model Based Definition

In this latest NX release, Model Based Definition offers several workflow and functional improvements focused on improving design and collaboration efficiency, including:

• Greater support and automation for publishing Technical Data Packages from NX
• New capabilities for PMI Compare
• Dimension workflow improvements
• Additional standards coverage for creating standards-compliant models

Want to learn more? Watch this 26-minute webinar hosted by Reese Shearer touring the PMI interface in NX, new improvements to the tool, and how it’s used to enable Model Based Definition Practices.

Automatic Table Improvements

As of NX 1926, multiple workflow and functional improvements help improve efficiency by allowing a greater level of control over the published content in Technical Data Package content from NX, along with support for additional viewing workflows.

• Automatic model view display update for Viewports
• Control over PMI object naming in a PMI Table
• Additional column entries for PMI Tables
• Support or filtering a PMI Table based on specific PMI types
• Configurable column widths
• Support for lock (freeze) table header when scrolling

Enhanced Publishing

Further ease-of-use enhancements are around publishing, where we’ve added greater support for, and automation around, publishing Technical Data Packages. Users can now multi-select attachments in a single operation and automatically open Adobe Acrobat Reader to view newly published technical data packages, making it easier than ever to communicate within and across teams.

PMI Compare Enhancements

Within PMI, we’ve added additional PMI object properties for enhanced workflows and improved efficiency, dramatically reducing PMI and model view checking time by quickly and easily identifying changes.

• Feature Control Frame Tolerance modifier comparison and reporting
• Additional detailed comparisons for Hole & Thread Callout properties
• Custom Symbol properties comparison and reporting
  • Detects changes in the text, angle, scale, horizontal, and vertical properties

Want to learn more? Watch this 26-minute webinar hosted by Reese Shearer touring the PMI interface in NX, new improvements to the tool, and how it’s used to enable Model Based Definition Practices.

Fiberism

Fibersim 17 introduces forming capability focused on helping companies design parts for forming. It can be used for refining the part and tool shapes to make a part more viable to forming by giving quick feedback within the traditional CAD design space, similar to Fibersim’s classic producibility simulation for hand-laid parts.

Designers, not only CAE users, can use this tool to filter part and tool shapes down to a select few options. After filtering to a subset of designs, they can send the designs to the CAE groups who run the advanced forming simulations available in the industry, which can be very hard to use and take a long time to setup and run, for the detailed analysis and final design selection.

We believe that engineers will achieve significant time savings if calculated by the time they start their part in CAD, iterate through different designs and ultimately create their final tooling shapes within the same CAD environment.

Fibersim 17 introduces forming capability focused on helping companies design parts for forming:

• Quickly assess producibility of numerous design concepts.
• Quickly reduce number of viable design concepts for further in depth analysis.

Topology Checker

Fibersim 16.1 adds a topology check to the design checker capability:

• Reduce perception of sensitivity to geometry quality with better tools to visualize actual issues

Intelligent Part Number for Create

Teamcenter features a further workflow integration update with Intelligent Part Number create, where it assigns a number to new items created in NX, allowing for better documentation and property tracking.

Assign IPN to a new Item’s Id created in NX.

Intelligent Part Number (IPN) enables a user to select values resulting in the generation of a smart part number when creating new items from NX.

• Configure your Id generator using BMIDE
• NX retrieves this information and prompts the user to select values when creating new items
• The properties associated with Id generation are shown above Item Id
• On auto-assign, the selected property values are sent to the Id generator resulting in a coded Id
• Includes Import assembly into Teamcenter

Animation Designer: Enhanced Inverse Kinematics

Animation designer has enhanced inverse kinematics which allows users to set multiple travel points between start and end in order to simulate designs in motion. Improvement include:

• Set multiple travel points between start and end
• Control location and rotations
• Editable results
• Control over Euler angle conventions
• Nearly instant results
• Created motors can be edited independently to fine-tune motor speeds