Siemens NX on OS X is a-go-go
So those eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that there's been a lot of discussion of Siemens PLM launching its long awaited NX system on the OS X platform. According to some of the press release "NX 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." I've been playing with the system for a couple of months, but I wanted to find out a little more about the plans for the system on an on-going basis, so got in touch with Paul Brown, senior director of NX Marketing, Siemens PLM Software.
MacDesign: What functionality will be included and excluded from NX on Mac OS X?There's some interesting debate going on around this subject all over the place - things have got a little bit heated over at SolidSmack.com (with our old buddy Joe Moak from Formlovesfunction.com wading in at the end with the most reasoned response yet). From my perspective, there's two key things on of late. Vendors are porting older code, that's much easier (typically with a Unix-based) to port to the Apple platform to gain some market share. Then there are new vendors jumping to the space. Gut feeling tells this is something that's going to grow and we'll see more and more in the coming months and year.
NX on Mac OS X features virtually all of the CAD and CAM functionality in NX 6 along with synchronous technology. This includes all feature and free form modeling, rendering, drafting, assemblies, routing, sheet metal, turning, milling and much more.
The primary functionality not available with NX on Mac OS X is the CAE suite of tools. This is based on initial market demand expectations as well a number of required third party applications that are currently not available on Mac OS X. In addition, some specialty applications such as Mold Wizard and Progressive Die Wizard have not yet been fully tested in this environment. We will continue to monitor and evaluate the business case for these items.
MacDesign: Any insight on development plans for OSX in terms of synchronising platform and OS releases - will there be an OSX lag? NX 6.0.3 is being released and made immediately available on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux simultaneously. The plan is to maintain this synchronous platform release schedule, however, there will be one exception to this before it fully takes effect.
While the next major release of NX for all platforms will be NX 7.5, we are planning an interim release that will be targeted at delivering more Synchronous Technology functionality. This interim release will be limited to the Windows platform. With the NX 7.5 release we will resume shipping concurrently on all platforms.
MacDesign: Any plans to move to a fully cocoa/aqua based user interface rather than using X11/Motif?
Siemens NX runs using X11 to enable the interface and cross platform (as pretty much the same code is used across Mac and Linux) - on the mac front, it does require some tweeking of windows and cursor priorities to get it to work effectively.
We have several customers who use multiple platforms mixing Windows and Linux hardware to suit their needs. To ensure all customers can maximize their productivity our goal is to maintain a common user interface. We will continue to monitor our user community and adjust our strategy if necessary based on the best interest of our customers and our business.
MacDesign: Any other OSX planned releases? Native JT viewer that sort of thing? We have not announced any other plans at this time.
MacDesign: Any insight on user interest would be good too. Size of beta community?
We have experienced strong interest from our beta user community as well as others outside of that community with an interest in the Mac OS X environment.
MacDesign: Lastly. Why now?
Delivering NX on Mac OS X has been an important part of our strategy to give customers their broadest choice of platforms. We have been conducting extensive development and testing to ensure that the product met our standards for performance and quality before it was released. The timing of NX 6.0.3 for the other platforms we support made this a sensible choice to be the launch platform for NX on Mac OS X.
Oh and some video joy for ya too.
Labels: New Port, NX, Siemens NX
posted by al dean at
21:49
7 Comments:
Man, you have all the answer to the questions I was looking for. excellent man. I've been more excited about the possibilities of using a Mac again since first hearing about this. There's one program I use that is holding me up, but I'm about tired of using that as an excuse. anyway, brilliant.
Now the rest will have to follow...No more excuses dassault especially SolidWorks since the borrow their core from Siemens.But hey Alias, Rhino and now NX is enough if you ask me.
SolidWOrks is never going to happen. Not a full port. There's way too much invested in the Windows platform, too many underlying technologies. And I find it odd that everyone's talking about Parasolid and SolidWorks again all of a sudden. That's simple economics. Parasolid is a better modelling kernel for SolidWorks that the alternatives. Catia? no. That's not going to happen. Siemens and the Parasolid team have always been professionals. look at the maths. SolidWorks is by far their biggest customer. they'll retain them till the cows come home. And don't get me started on the idea of redeveloping, from scratch, every single bit of modelling functionality in Solidworks from the last ten year. simple. Not. going. to. happen. Even if it did, they'd still have to license parasolid to make sure they could read previous release data and replicate the features.
Any votes for SpaceClaim to make the switch?
I'd vote for SpaceClaim to make the switch - there's a growing market there for a half decent, affordable (which NX isn't. particularly) mechanical design system for the platform. Alias is good, NX is good. What it needs is a SpaceClaim, SolidWorks et all to come in. they'd kill it.
To further prove al dean's point, SolidWorks doesn't write all the code. And I'm not talking just kernels here, there are infact many things that are purchased, for example I believe constraint solvers are purchased and then tweaked and edited by SolidWorks Corp.
This is to say, porting such an application over is more than "simple" kernels. Just look at NX here, there are several things that aren't ported over (yet)
Hi,
Anyone ever tried to put the Linux version of pro engineer on osx with fink and fink commander, would it work.
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