Siemens has announced that its flagship CAD package NX will now have greater support for 3D printing thanks to a partnership agreement with 3D printing solution company Materialise.
In an announcement, Siemens stated that additive manufacturing (AM) technology from Materialise will be integrated into the NX package. With this integration, NX users will be able to prepare models accurately for both the powder bed fusion and material jet AM processes. According to Siemens, this new solution will be able to reduce AM file preparation time by leveraging Materialise’s expertise in AM setup, including the ability to create proper support structures, construct 3D nested prints, effectively build tray preparation and more. Because these tools will be offered in NX, users won’t have to go through the trouble of translating data into a third-party AM software, thereby eliminating the chance of mistranslation and faulty 3D prints.
According to Zvi Feuer, senior vice president at Siemens PLM Software, “Until now, the AM process required manufacturers to work with two separate systems—one for product design and another to prepare that design for 3D printing. The data translation issues and lack of associativity between these two systems created a process that was time consuming and subject to errors. By eliminating these issues, we are helping to expand the adoption of AM as a universally accepted production tool.”
With AM becoming ever more prevalent in both prototyping and production workflows, having the ability to guarantee that a model will be natively prepared for AM manufacturing is critical for product design success. With this new addition, NX users will now have the ability to move forward with their design and production iterations much faster because of the elimination of file translation flaws and prototype errors.