What’s New in NX | June 2024 | Immersive Engineering
Welcome back to the latest installment of our what’s new in NX series, focusing on the June 2024 release of NX™ software. The latest release of NX covered a range of new capabilities across the digital twin, focusing on a range of areas.
In this blog, we’re focusing on the role immersive engineering plays in connecting the real and digital worlds. We’ll explore new capabilities available in NX Immersive Explorer, whilst casting our eyes to the future. Let’s take a look 👇
What is immersive engineering?
Let’s set the scene. To remain competitive, companies continue to demand more from their visualization capabilities. There’s a need to attract the next generation of engineers, whilst also being in a position to make smarter, faster and more cost-effective decisions.
Additionally, there’s a need for more sustainable design through reduced prototypes, whilst removing current constraints on design and ideation.
This is where immersive engineering excels. Immersive engineering goes beyond traditional 2D design practices by creating a fully-integrated, user-centric virtual space.
Immersive engineering users can benefit from precise 3D interaction with datasets, stunning visual fidelity, and seamless collaboration across the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio. It truly is a technology for the future.
Updates to Immersive Explorer
NX Immersive Explorer was first available in the December 2023 release of NX. We’ve listened to your feedback and added new capabilities to the June 2024 release. We’ve collated some of the newest features into a technical deep-dive expanding on the NX premiere we released earlier in the year. Take a look at the video below to learn more.
Live updates
Live updates breaks the barrier between NX and your virtual workspace. Any changes made in the NX application are applied to any model within the immersive environment.
It’s an intuitive feature that is applicable across multiple use cases; perhaps you want to apply a different material to your dataset? Maybe you want to make basic geometric changes? Or you want to see how your assembly line will look with Mechatronics Concept Designer?
The live updates feature is also available when any of the following is used as the active application:
- Gateway
- NX Sheet Metal
- NX Feature Planner
Remember:
The Live Updates toggle is not available when Merge Component by Material is active within NX desktop
We’ve made sure that the assembly navigator is fully compatible when the Live Updates toggle is on. Within the immersive environment, the assembly navigator will have checkboxes enabled, similar to that in the NX viewport.
Enabling/disabling these checkboxes will change the visibility of parts, which will then be reflected in both the NX viewport and the immersive environment. It’s a useful tool if you’re focusing on one part of the assembly.
Other Immersive Explorer updates
Studio material updates
We’ve made some important updates to material options within Immersive Explorer. With our latest release, we’ve enabled support for the following Studio Material parameters:
- Emissive Intensity
- Spherical, Cylindrical and Planar Texture Spaces
- Relative to Part Coordinate Space for all Texture Spaces
Greater choices of studio materials makes for a more realistic representation of your dataset within the immersive environment. A more realistic representation means a greater degree of accuracy when designing and iterating on your dataset.
Greater control over movement speeds
We’ve also streamlined the movement function within the immersive environment. Additional speed options have been added to the main tablet menu. New speeds include 10%, 25%, 50%, 200% and 500% of the default option. An expanded range of options enables both intricate control around a small model, as well as the ability to quickly navigate larger models.
Accessing Immersive Explorer through Value Based Licensing
A sneak peak for Immersive designer
We’re bucking the usual trend with our what’s new series, and giving you a taste of what’s to come. We’re incredibly excited to be launching Immersive Designer; a new product to drive 3D CAD design in the industrial metaverse.
Immersive Designer enables you to move beyond today’s design limitations in order to create tomorrows innovation, all whilst standing in the same space as your digital product. This is all made possible through our exclusive partnership with Sony to create the Sony XR head-mounted display (HMD). It’s the most precise and natural way to experience, interact and collaborate in 3D.
Take a look at our Immersive Designer page here.
Continue your journey with NX
ICYMI, be sure to check out the full premiere on YouTube, where you can see a range of other capabilities added to the June 2024 release of NX.
We’ll be back over the coming weeks for the next What’s New installment.
