NXConnect: Multi-User CAx on a Commercial Engineering Software Application

The Engineering Design Process, supplemented by modern CAx applications and tools, is taught as a serial design sequence. It is common for errors to be discovered in downstream analysis models, process plans, or manufacturing capabilities. These errors then generate feedback changes to the upstream models, requiring model changes, and thus extending the engineering design process period as proportioned to the number of feedback cycles. This inherent serial architecture can be traced to computer architectures that support only a single user, single cursor, and single active application like CAD, CAE, CAM, and CAPP. If we recognize product development as a collaborative process, involving experts from different fields with different cultural backgrounds, then the dichotomy between the serial design process and the more optimum collaborative design process is easily traced to the single user architectures in modern CAx tools. This paper introduces a multi-user CAD prototype, called NX Connect, built on the NX Siemens Application Programming Interface (API) to demonstrate that a collaborative environment is feasible with modern CAx applications and modern computers. The NX Connect multi-user prototype uses design rationale to intelligently select the information that is shared with each user in the design session. This represents an improvement upon the existing state of the art in co-design MCAD environments. NX Connect effectively converts the single user NX CAD package into a multi-user co-design environment. NX Connect utilizes client-server architectures with a thin server and strong client. The server retains all necessary information for the part file. Each of the workstations then utilizes that information to create/update identical parts on each of their respective machines. The server also retains and makes available each change made during the design session. Each client generates a local copy of the part file and utilizes information gained during the design session to locally update the part. NX Connect promises to collapse engineering design times and to integrate multi-user activities and information exchange.