Retro design inspires Loughborough University student to create NX Rendering

We haven’t had a female student win the student design competition in a while so we were thrilled when Alison Herbert, a Product Design Engineering student from Loughborough University in the UK won our monthly competition.

Here is Alison recieving her prize from Dr Mey Goh. Mey is the Programme Director for the Product Design Engineering Degree programme. Robb Doyle is Alison’s University Teacher. .

Alison created her image for a modelling and visualisation project to produce a range of realistic and striking images of an existing product. She chose the Roberts Revival Mini Radio due to its iconic design, 1960’s styling combined with modern technology and materials. 

A particularly challenging part of the build was creating a convincing leather handle including the bold stitching which Alison felt was a distinguishing feature of the design. It required some experimentation with NX functions but was eventually produced using sweep and pattern features on NX.

Other features of NX used to develop this model include simple extrudes and hole features, raster image to produce the 3D pin logo and blend and chamfers. To apply materials to the model and render the image Alison used advanced studio, this allowed her to edit materials to replicate those of the real product and alter the modelling environment such as the lighting and background. 

Alison said “I would highly recommend NX to another student for engineering/design CAD purposes. It is a very powerful modelling tool and fairly easy to learn particularly with the help of the Siemens Learning Advantage tutorials.”

Siemens self-paced training through Learning Advantage is a convenient, easy-to-use e-learning portal that provides educators and students with:

• Skills and knowledge of PLM software through cost-effective and time-efficient methods


• Online library access to more than 1,000 NX, Teamcenter and Tecnomatix self-paced courses and assessments for less than the price of a textbook


• Augmented classroom and lab experiences through online interactive learning

Get your hands on a license of the NX student license and enter our competition to be in with a chance of winning!

You can view past winners of the student design competition in our gallery

Congratulations Alison! Very well deserved!