In a bid to more tightly marry the design and product lifecycle management (PLM) world with the world of manufacturing process planning and simulation, UGS Corp. this week unveiled Tecnomatix version 8, the latest release of its digital manufacturing software product.
The release marks the first tight integration between UGS's Teamcenter product data management/PLM software and the digital manufacturing and simulation applications that UGS acquired in 2005 when it bought Tecnomatix.
Also this week, UGS unveiled upgrades of its NX CAD/CAM/CAE software, as well as a new version of the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) module within the Teamcenter portfolio.
The new Tecnomatix release is significant in a couple of ways, Dick Slansky, senior PLM analyst at ARC Advisory Group, told Managing Automation. First, he said, because Teamcenter, with 3 million licenses sold, is the dominant PDM platform in the market — ARC estimates its market share at 32% — the release of Tecnomatix 8 will likely reinforce the benefits of integrating PLM/PDM with digital manufacturing and simulation software. UGS competitors, including Dassault, have also been pushing the integration of PLM and digital manufacturing.
Second, Slansky said, Tecnomatix 8 and its integration with Teamcenter will help make UGS manufacturing customers more agile by allowing them to digitally simulate and validate the production of real product designs before actually commissioning and installing expensive production equipment.
Historically, digital manufacturing and simulation software has allowed manufacturers to visualize and test out production line designs, Slansky noted, but it hasn't been easy for users of the software to factor product-specific design information directly into the simulation.
"It's one thing to build a virtual world of factory systems using software, but it's another thing to take a product, plunk it into the middle of that environment, and validate that the factory design will work," Slansky said. "That's what UGS is doing with Tecnomatix 8."
In addition to being integrated into the Teamcenter environment, Tecnomatix 8 includes a new module for programming and simulating robotic automation processes. The Process Simulation Robotics module, UGS said, lets users design and simulate the interaction of robots across an entire production line. The module is intended to complement, rather than replace, UGS's Robcad offline robot programming tools, which focus on designing robotic processes at the individual work cell level, UGS officials said.
While the integration with PLM represents an important step forward for the Tecnomatix product, digital manufacturing tools have been slow to catch on outside of a few very large automotive and aerospace and defense manufacturers, ARC's Slansky noted. A lack of integration with PLM has been only one of the factors holding digital manufacturing software back. Using factory simulation software requires a big learning curve for many manufacturing engineers, he said. Also, digital manufacturing software, priced from $100,000 to $350,000 for a few seats, can be prohibitively expensive, particularly for smaller manufacturers.
Still, Slansky said, manufacturers that take advantage of PLM-digital manufacturing integration such as that supported by Tecnomatix 8 should become more productive.
"You can simulate workflows with accurate digital models of the actual product," Slansky said. "Instead of working in a nonvisual world, you can work in a 3D world and simulate all of this together."
In other news last week, UGS unveiled releases of its NX CAD/CAM/CAE software and its Teamcenter for MRO module.
The new release of NX, version 5, offers several new features, including support for quick, simple digital design mockups, a new user interface, and tools for accelerating design changes.
NX's new Active Mockup feature is enabled by the integration of the company's JT lightweight visualization data format and tools into NX. With Active Mockup, designers can use NX to quickly generate simple design mockups that can be used for review and collaboration.
NX version 5 also includes a feature that UGS calls Advanced Selection Intent. This feature, similar in concept to capabilities being built into CAD tools by competitors competitors such as Autodesk Inc., infers a designer's intent from a geometry under design and automatically completes the basic design, saving the designer time. Advanced Selection Intent works from a library that currently contains 15 item types, said Richard Bush, director of NX marketing.
NX customers with active maintenance licenses can download NX version 5 free. New licenses for NX version 5 start at $5,000 per seat.
Separately, UGS announced a new version of its MRO module for Teamcenter that helps manufacturers and field service providers track and manage the large amounts of data generated by MRO processes. The release includes a Service Data Management capability that supports the management of all asset data from the beginning to the end of a product's lifecycle, UGS said. The information on how a product operates in the field can be used in the Teamcenter design processes to improve product quality and customer support.