This week the company previewed Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac. As part of the Inventor product family, Inventor Fusion is primarily a 3D mechanical CAD modeler application designed to engage emerging young engineers and designers.

Kevin Schneider, Sr. Product Line Manager for Autodesk Design, Lifecycle and Simulation Product Group, noted that Inventor Fusion is the first dedicated mechanical CAD product from Autodesk that is a Mac product.

01 - Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac. A new Mac-native ground-up mCAD modeling program for emerging mechanical engineers and design professionals.

“When we look at the next generation of designers and engineers,” says Schneider “we see their expectations of choice and software is very different than the current generation.” Autodesk told Architosh that the company is adapting to trends that show that the future generation of engineers and designers are increasingly coming both to and out of college with an affinity for Apple’s platforms.

While Autodesk Inventor is the company’s Windows-only full-fledged professional mechanical CAD product, Inventor Fusion for Mac is a simplified entry-level product that has been written from the ground-up on Mac OS X. It has a ’state-of-the-art’ modern user-interface and advanced modeling functionality.

The formal release of the product is aimed for the first quarter of 2012. Professionals and students interested in the Mac-based Inventor Fusion can learn more at a special page on Facebook setup by Autodesk (http://www.facebook.com/InventorFusion)

Final pricing has also not been set but those who engage in the public technology preview can try out Fusion for the Mac for free. You can sign up here.

The company’s next release for solidThinking and solidThinking Inspired will focus primarily on delivering solutions based on user feedback and designed to create a more intuitive user interface. Additionally, solidThinking Inspired will offer new computational tools and flexible features aimed at enriching the design process and accelerating product design and development.

For more information about solidThinking visit their website here. For more information on the IDSA International Conference visit:

solidThinking continues to expand its global presence in both established and emerging design/styling markets.

“Our vision is to provide clients with a competitive advantage during product development by helping them implement the right tools to create better designs in less time and at a lower cost,” said Daan Hulst, general sales manager, Holland Engineering Consultants. “Our knowledge of the CAD, CAM, CAE and PLM markets, combined with partners like solidThinking, will help designers and engineers develop products in less time and achieve greater assurance of product performance. solidThinking software is a perfect addition to our service offerings through its intuitive and user-centric features, flexibility and high-quality visualization capabilities.”

With solidThinking Inspired, users can run morphogensis form-generation technology to grow efficient shapes in response to environmental forces and pressures. Morphogenesis draws on the principles of biomimicry to allow designers and architects to use form-generation to explore and experiment with design concepts. To learn more about solidThinking visit them online here.

This has meant that the demand for more native Mac software has also grown several fold and that there is now very strong and growing demand for engineering and CAD software on the platform, complimenting the already existent and strong penetration of native design software for Apple’s easy-to-use UNIX-based system.

Within this context we have seen German industrial giant Siemens and its PLM software division fully commit resources to, and produce, a shipping version of its market-leading PLM software NX 6 for Mac OS X. In this interview Architosh talks to Paul Brown, senior director of NX Marketing for Siemens PLM Software and Jim Phelan, Director of PLM Media Relations. We start this discussion with a description of what constitutes NX 6 for the Mac.

The Interview

Anthony Frausto-Robledo (AFR): Paul thanks for taking the time to speak to me this morning. Let’s start from the beginning. What encompasses the NX 6 version for the Mac?

Paul Brown (PB): Sure. NX 6 for Mac includes all the core CAD/CAM technology found in the other platform versions, this means all the modeling and drafting functionality and all the assembly and collaboration tools…and of course the Synchronous Technology that has been much praised by the industry.

Jim Phelan (JP): Anthony are you familiar with our Synchronous Technology in NX?

AFR: Yes, I’ve written about it and have a general understanding. I understand it is a way to mix both parametric, history-based modeling functionality with aspects of explicit modeling. Is that correct?

PB: Yes, more or less.

AFR: I’d like to talk about that in more detail in a second. So the Mac version is more or less identical to the other platforms for NX?

PB: Almost. The Mac version doesn’t have the CAE (computer-aided engineering) items, the finite element analysis and engineering tools.

AF: Is that because the demand isn’t there for the most part or a porting issue?

PB: The demand. The analysis types are interested in other platforms like Linux for instance, where they can batch off big stuff to cost-effective Linux clusters where they can focus on pure performance while doing their engineering analyses.

AFR: So the demand was really there only on the “product design” side, is that correct?

PB: NX has a history of serving multiple platforms and so it made sense for us to add the Mac. There is growing interest among our customers with the Mac, especially on the front-end design side. And we are already seeing interest in the Macs being utilized for engineering workstations. In fact, last week we heard news of the first new large commercial deployment on the Mac. We found that delightful because it expands our base.

01 - Siemens PLM's NX 6 Mac shown here running on one of Apple's latest laptops.

AFR: Right, I assume besides making your existing customers happy a big point of the Mac version is to expand your base and increase revenue?

PB: That is right. We don’t make any more money when our customers simply move to other hardware.

AFR: And speaking of revenue, what does a single NX license cost?

PB: Ranges start around 7,500.USD per seat. Things go up from there based on adding modules. Costs vary with modules and deployment size (number of seats).

AF: And what are some of the modules that can be added to the Mac version of NX?

PB: Nearly all the modules can be added except for the CAE (computer-aided engineering) modules. Some of the modules include the PTS, which is the Product Template Studio, CheckMate, and various other modules that add things like mark-up, etc cetera.

AFR: Do people use NX for industrial design or do they use other tools like AliasStudio and solidThinking and then bring that data into NX for final work?

PB: It depends on the end state of design. For some industrial designers the end state is a pretty rendered picture that comes out of their workflow and design tool. If that is the case, that is best served in another package. We are stronger when the end state is moving that industrial designed object straight into mechanical design and engineering. In this way ID (industrial design) and Mechanical engineering can be tied in much closer.

AFR: What percentage of pure industrial design happens inside NX?

PB: Quite a lot. We have many larger customers who do all their industrial design exclusively within NX. NX has all the tools they need and they can do the beautiful renderings as well.

AF: I know for instance that SolidWorks licensed Luxology’s modo technology to add powerful state-of-the-art rendering and animation technology into the SolidWorks workflow. How do you accomplish your photo-realistic rendering technology?

PB: We have a partner in LightWork Design and use their LightWorks rendering engine.

AFR: I have noticed that even in this latest version of NX 6 for Mac you are using a standard X11 interface on Mac OS X. Why are you not using a native Aqua Mac OS X UI?

PB: This is certainly not a true Cocoa app and we don’t use the native user interface technology because doing so would have amounted to a massive reworking of the code.

Jim Phelan (JP): Plus, we have to factor in our product in larger heterogenous environments and our customers don’t want to have different UI’s across a range of platforms. So we use the common user interface for all platforms.

AFR: So this means even Windows gets the common interface?

PB: Yes. We have lots of large customers and in large heterogeneous environements it is important for the IT staff supporting NX to be able to know and work with one common user interface.

AFR: And TeamCenter utilizes the Apple Safari web browser, correct?

PB: Yes, not all of TeamCenter runs on the Mac but most of it.

AFR: You mentioned large customers several times. Can you tell me if you have any large customers who are utilizing the Mac version of NX 6 and can you mention any names?

We’ve been saying that at Architosh for ten years Ken!

Next Generation Want CAD on Mac

But as I have been expressing privately to many of the CAD industry leaders who are already on the Mac for years now, it is the next-generation of young designers who will be putting the pressure on the switch over to the Mac platform. So I was pleased to read this quote in full here. Marc Chapin posted this at Desktop Engineering:

“The next generation of design students who are growing up with the Mac now will be looking for trusted CAD solutions for that platform, regardless of the aging CAD population who use Windows/Linux. The first big CAD provider who jumps onto the Mac platform, regardless of the huge expense, will reap the rewards of being the first to enter that market and will receive the greatest financial payback.”

Marc then writes…

“I am a young industrial designer (5 years experience) and use SolidWorks on Windows XP 64 and am considering NX 6 on a new Mac. I think that if any one of the mid range priced CAD modelers like SolidWorks, ProE, SolidEdge, or Inventor were to port to the Mac platform, they would instantly reap financial rewards from people like me. Just my 2 cents.” 

NX 6 on Mac Articles and Video

While Architosh just recently posted a story on the official release of NX on Mac, there are three separate but related stories and blog posts coming from the main press that covers highend (and PC-only) CAD. 

Kenneth Wong’s article from Desktop Engineering contains the user-feedback quotes we noted above, and the new MacDesign blog by Develop3D magazine online also covers this new story (and with some different graphics) and an interview, and finally there is the SolidSmack post. You can check out some YouTube videos of NX 6 on Mac above and below.

The full computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) functionality of NX, Siemens PLM Software’s flagship digital product development application, now includes the Mac in its list of supported operating environments. 

01 - Siemens' NX software is a full native 64-bit Mac OS X application. It requires an Intel-based Mac (ie: it is not Universal Binary and thus does not run on PowerPC-based Macs).

“We are delighted to add the Mac to the comprehensive list of operating environments supported by our NX CAD/CAM applications,” said Joan Hirsch, vice president of Product Design Solutions, Siemens PLM Software. “Today’s announcement further expands the flexibility of NX and provides customers with the freedom to choose from one of industry’s broadest range of supported operating systems.”

Siemen’s PLM Software’s NX (a descendent of Unigraphics) is used by leading companies around the globe to design and manufacture some of the world’s most innovative and sophisticated products. Its wide adoption throughout the global manufacturing industry is due in part to its ability to support a wide range of operating environments–including Windows, UNIX, and Linux–in a heterogeneous or single operating system deployment. Now Apple’s popular Mac OS X environment–which is UNIX based and has tripled in installed based in the past two years–rounds out NX’s deployment options. 

“NX has been our exclusive CAD/CAM software for several years because of its unmatched ability to handle all of our product design and manufacturing needs,” said Marcel Eggimann of Eggimann Design. “At the same time, we have always preferred the Mac as the system of choice for the work we do. Now we can have the best of both worlds as these two great technologies come together. We have been using NX on Mac OS X for three months now and we are very impressed with its performance and reliability.”

The Mac OS X version of NX includes all of the software’s robust CAD and CAM functionality, as well as support for Siemens PLM Software’s Teamcenter platform through rich client capabilities embedded in NX and the thin client based on Apple’s Safari web browser. As a result, NX for Mac OS X can leverage all the capabilities of Teamcenter, the world’s most widely used PLM portfolio, including its ability to support a multi-platform CAD strategy.

“It’s pretty clear that more and more people are demanding that their primary software tools are available on their operating system of choice,” said Al Dean, Editor in Chief, DEVELOP3D.com. “Siemens PLM Software’s move with NX to Mac OS X should see them gain a foothold in a growing community.”

To learn more about NX for the Mac please visit this website: www.siements.com.plm

Powerful Industrial Design on the Mac

Mac-based industrial designers have never had so many wonderful new tools available natively on their platform of choice. solidThinking is one of a only a few high-end CAID (computer-aided industrial design) software packages that runs natively under Mac OS X, utilizing Apple’s key core technologies. 

And solidThinking is not just for industrial designers. Architects looking to create custom furniture or cabinet or door hardware are extremely well-served by this application. In the same way it can benefit Interior Designers. There are two demos here that show how an industrial designer or architect could design custom door hardware. Another shows how to design furniture. 

solidThinking Webinars – Learn How to Design Cars, et cetera on the Mac

If you have ever wanted to design that dream car or some other sculptural object — think the next great Apple product! — solidThinking is offering a series of free webinars including “solidThinking for Industrial Design” and “Getting Started with solidThinking.”

The first online webinar starts Dec 8, 2008. The full schedule and signup webpage is here.

solidThinking will be demoonstrated in booth #B118. solidThinking will be focusing on demoing the application to product designers and those involved with tooling for manufacturing and engineering products. The focus should be on speeding “product development processes” and on critical time-to-market. 

Also in solidThinking news, the company has a new profile story on customer Bros Manifatture, a worldwide leader in fashion jewels and watch accessories. The company has turned to solidThinking for watch and accessories product design. 

Bros Manifatture of Italy uses solidThinking to design watches and similar complex products.

The Interview

AFR: Dr. Sarkar, can you tell me how you went about making the decision on Parasolid, when did this take place?

BS: Back when I joined the company coming from PTC (Parametric Technology Corporation) my focus was on making Vectorworks strong in modeling. At that time we adopted geometric modeling kernel technology from SMLib. In 2002 Gary Crocker, a co-founder of SMLib, broke off from that group and formed IntegrityWare taking his solid modeling libraries with him. We continued to utilize these libraries until our decision a few years ago to look for a better modeling kernel technology.

AFR: So you were using both SMLib and Solids++?

BS: The technology stayed the same, just the companies changed.

AFR: Tell me how you and Sean Flaherty approached your superiors in Munich about the idea of adopting Parasolid. I’m assuming you needed some approval given the cost considerations, right?

BS: Yes…(laughs). Sean and myself went to Munich and broached the subject with the CEO who at that time was a real technology driven person. We didn’t go ask straight out, we brought it up. It turned out they were very interested with this idea.

AFR: So they said go for it….

BS: Absolutely. They are also interested with addressing the same issues we were having in Vectorworks with ALLPLAN.

AFR: So nearly two and a half years ago you did this. Who else was on your short-list…did you look at Spatial’s ACIS?

BS: We looked at ACIS but in the end we believed Parasolid was the better choice. Everyone uses it, it’s even used in ProE and CATIA.

AFR: Wait a minute, doesn’t ProE and CATIA use in-house kernels?

Our earlier discussions centered on OpenGL and DirectX as competitors in the graphics operations arena and how if one major CAD company jumps on DirectX they may all follow. So far this hasn’t truly happened as OpenGL continues to be the one true cross-platform standard. Also, cross-platform technology–or embracing it–is the way many Autodesk competitors compete or differentiate with Autodesk. Copying that company’s strategies in a coordinated “follow-me-too” way could only hurt the lot of them competing with what has become a true 800-lb gorilla in the room. 

Henrik’s strong determination to fight back, sort of, with StreamCAD should be applauded. He is saying essentially that the rules and situation have changed dramatically for Autodesk third-party developers and that the company has become different then in the past regarding these loyal supporters. By creating an alternative–one that is cross-platform–he is doing, at the minimum, what Autodesk has thus far failed to do: support the burgeoning Mac platform. For this we applaud Henrik and his company Streamspace.