Page 19 - MetalForming Magazine October 2022 - FABTECH

Software for Manufacturing
Product-Engineering Software Promises Collaboration, Topology Improvements
Siemens Digital Industries Software announced the latest release of Siemens’ NX software for product engineering
that reportedly enables greater electronic co-design, collaboration, intelligence capture and reuse capa- bility. New features in NX, part of
the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of software and services, enable engi- neering managers to find produc- tivity improvements and greater efficiencies in their engineering departments, according to company officials.
With aesthetic quality now just as important as functionality, efficiency and performance, the latest release of NX offers new tools to help designers develop forms, including updates to curve creation and editing with parametric features, and NX Algorithmic Modeling updates that better support convergent modeling work- flows, reportedly enabling more efficient routes to complex patterns and shapes.
NX Topology Optimizer now fully replaces
and surpasses the software’s previous solution capabilities, according to company
random seed and normalization factors. This reportedly allows users to benefit from both cost and time savings through automation of complex opti- mization tasks, helping them achieve faster time to market during the design-engineering phase of product
development.
“This latest NX release brings
enhancements to our users across the board, enabling them to work more intelligently between multidis- ciplinary teams, capture and reuse
more knowledge, and achieve that opti- mum design more efficiently than ever before,” says Bob Haubrock, Siemens senior vice president of product engineering software. “Alongside brand-new function- ality, our significant investments to core technologies, such as sketch and con- vergent modeling, will further improve the toolsets that our community of users relies on every day.”
Siemens Digital Industries Software: www.siemens.com/software
Cimatron recently
released V16 of its die and
mold CAD-CAM design soft-
ware, touting numerous
new features for toolmakers
including powerful function-
ality for die addendum sur-
faces, mesh manipulation
and drafting detailing. User
efficiency continues to be
a focus, company officials
say, with the process work-
flow having been improved
in several areas including
batch printing with support for shaded views, dynamic triad dragging, expanded BOM support for assembly structures and extended preferences control with the ability to search and reset.
Major CAM developments support NC automation, with three-axis rough and vol- ume pocketing supporting the automatic selection of multiple cutters of different lengths for the optimum cutting sequence, by splitting the toolpath into multiple oper-
ations based on cutting length. This effi- ciency for rough parallel, rough spiral and volume pocket reportedly results in better tool selection, reduced tool vibration, extended tool life and faster cutting speeds.
VoluMillTM pocketing now can be applied to multiple open and closed pock- ets of differing heights and depths as a one-step routine and single NC operation. Other 2.5-axis operations include a new capability in the slotting procedure that
uses pre-drilled holes for safe material entry and to quicken machining with optimum toolpath move- ment at each level. Further efficiency gains can be achieved with multi-axis drilling routines that con- sider the real stock model instead of the geometry bounding box. This creates a starting point closer to the stock for a safer, faster machining cycle.
Five-axis deburring has been extended to support extra cutter types including end mill, sphere mill, lollipop mill, taper mill and chamfer mill. Importantly, a new multiple-cuts feature enables the user to create more than one cut along a sharp edge to generate a chamfer or fillet shape either by constant width or by constant depth for a chamfer, or by constant width or constant radius for a fillet.
Cimatron: www.cimatron.com
officials, as part optimization within the context of an assembly now considers design and manufacturing constraints and makes possible simultaneous opti- mization of multiple design spaces with independent materials.
And, the recently introduced NX Design Space Explorer for multi-objective opti- mization offers multi-run support to fine- tune ranges and refine searches, and Simcenter HEEDS software run options now are fully integrated and cover baseline,
Cimatron Version 16 Adds Functionality for Die Addendum Surfacing
16 MetalForming/October 2022
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