Industry pressure to reduce costs and improve quality is driving growth in the use of digital simulation throughout the product lifecycle. While Lean and the Six Sigma methodologies, often demonstrate their most dramatic improvements in manufacturing operations, effective simulation of product performance has recognized as key to the success of these and many other business initiatives.

Digital Simulation enables entirely new designs to be investigated, performance and manufacturing issues to be understood on the computer, offering the opportunity to make informed decisions that directly impact balance sheets.

The value of an efficient design, in terms of reduced material and manufacturing labor costs is well understood. Designs that have been studied and improved have lower warranty costs and fewer liability issues. Digital simulation adds more benefits, enabling improvements throughout the R&D process, allowing more concepts to be reviewed while reducing direct costs associated with expensive physical prototypes.

Integrated within enterprise data management systems, Digital Simulation enables management to leverage knowledge of existing product performance to reduce development cycle time.

By getting to market faster, companies gain significant marketing sales benefits but benefits are often seen in many more parts of the balance sheet. Among others, increased confidence that designs will work enables suppliers to reduce contingencies in contract negotiations while efficient process tools and scalable environments release scarce resources to focus on new business opportunities with new revenue possibilities.

UGS is the only supplier of product lifecycle management to offer an entire range of digital simulation and prototyping solutions within a collaborative digital product development environment.

By virtue of its 30+ year heritage in the CAE industry, UGS has one of the largest and most complete simulation offerings of any company in the market today. NX simulation, validation, and optimization solutions are suitable for users of all levels and are highly scalable to help solve even your most advanced challenges:

The Challenge: Increasing Profit and Business Value

The Initiatives: Lean Design, Six Sigma, Systems Engineering

Advanced Simulation Applications

• NX MasterFEM: Available standalone or seamlessly integrated within the NX environment. NX MasterFEM is a full function, industrial strength simulation environment suitable for both general engineering use and the most demanding CAE specialist.
• Femap: Available standalone or with NX Nastran, Femap is recognized as the World's leading Windows-based FEA pre- and post-processor.
• NX Nastran: Available standalone or seamlessly integrated at the core of many NX Digital Simulation products. Nastran defines The world standard for advanced FEA solvers.

Design Productivity Applications

• NX Scenario: The design environment for structural, thermal and motion simulation of parts and assemblies. NX Scenario integrates knowledge-driven structural and motion performance simulation to help designers and engineers understand behavior earlier in the development process.
• NX Optimization Wizard: An automated design exploration tool that helps solve complex engineering problems by providing designers a fast and simple method for arriving at an optimal design solution based on multiple engineering variables and constraints.
• NX Strength Wizard: provides users with clear and concise guidance to help guide them through simulation process steps to safely analyze their designs.

Automation Applications

• NX Quick Check: Companies can use Quick Check to monitor mass, weight, critical dimensions and other parameters in part and assembly models, employing automated checks that repeat with each model update.

"As the software industry continues to consolidate, one of the toughest challenges facing software suppliers is taking the best attributes of disparate products and evolving the functionality into a single, robust offering. UGS is showing exceptional strength in balancing enhancements to both NX 2 (Unigraphics) and I-deas NX Series as the company continues to deliver on its NX strategy and roadmap. The company appears to be on track – both from a functional and timing perspective – while still balancing the progression with a pragmatic understanding of what it takes to move customers through the transition process."

Ken Versprille, partner and PLM research director, CPD Associates (formerly DH Brown)