Testing NX: a California Adventure

I always look forward to my trip to the Cypress, California office to test the latest functionality in NX. This marks my fourth attendance to the Early Access event—from NX 9 through the upcoming NX release—but this was my first as a Siemens employee, having previously represented a UK channel partner.

Would I be lying if I said the location didn’t help? Yep – not many work trips afford the opportunity to grab an early morning run along the California coast. I like to tell myself that the sight of the mountains to one side and the Pacific to the other at sunrise were motivating enough to push me into beating my 10K personal best not once, but twice (although the pragmatic engineer in me says it’s probably because it was pretty flat…). And while I’m being honest, boasting on Strava gets the legs moving a little quicker.

But location aside, it’s always great to speak directly with the developers responsible for building NX. You would struggle to find a group of people more receptive to the opinion of you and the customers you represent. Suggestions and concerns are discussed at length, and I don’t mind saying that sometimes it gets a little heated! But everyone’s goal is the same: to deliver the best product we can at every release.

What you really want to know, though, is what’s coming in the next release. I’m not going to let that particular cat out of the bag, but I will tell you that it’s looking great. One thing I can talk about is Multiple Displayed Parts, which was unanimously well-received. Being able to view multiple parts, drawings, and assemblies side by side and get instant feedback to changes you make is a game-changer for the way people will work with NX. This barely does the implementation justice, and the developers deserve a big thanks for delivering a solution so comprehensive and easy to use. I look forward to us sharing more on this later in the year.

Each release we struggle more and more to find bugs in the beta code, even with months of development time in hand. Our goal is to eliminate the “don’t deploy until the first patch” stigma associated with new software versions. If the stability of the latest NX build we tested is anything to go by, we’re there.

Next month, we take the NX beta code to our UK customers in Cambridge, and I’m looking forward to seeing how their workflows will be improved by this latest version. I will miss the beach, though…