UGS, a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, today announced immediate availability of NX 3, the latest release of the company's software solution for digital product development. With NX 3, UGS introduces a new look and feel with a streamlined user interface, which has been designed to focus on user workflow, speeding simple design tasks and allowing organizations to easily customize their user environment to enhance productivity. "There are some terrific advances in NX 3 with an obvious focus on the user interface," said John Clauson, CAD Support Manager, Indak Manufacturing. "NX 3 provides more productive ways to use the interface and will enable our users to turn their attention even more to what they can do rather than thinking about ease-of-use." NX 3 provides industry-leading model navigation tools that provide access to all feature information including design parameters, relationships and dependencies. Embedded knowledge can be accessed through the navigators to give a full understanding of product and process definition. Attributes of the new user interface include: -- Workflow-based design - focused on customer best practices. -- On-screen interaction - direct geometry manipulation and dynamic previews allow users to stay focused on task at hand. -- Power navigators - organizes all data in simple-to-use tree; provides easy to understand and reuse models. -- Use of common tools - provides consistency across commands; reduces training time. -- Maximizes graphics space - streamlined window layout and reduced dialogs provide more space for user data. "NX 3 will dramatically change the playing field," said Chuck Grindstaff, executive vice president, PLM Products, UGS. "As the industry focuses on applying the principles of proven manufacturing methodologies such as 'lean design' and 'Six Sigma' into product engineering, these advanced integrated capabilities that reach far beyond traditional CAD are key to maintaining competitiveness. With NX 3, our investments have resulted in differentiating technologies that allow our customers to transform their digital product development processes for maximum growth and success." In addition to the new user interface, NX 3 contains many new capabilities and enhancements previously announced, including: NX Industrial Design and Styling provides industrial design and styling functional excellence, scalability and full integration within NX - extending beyond individual features and functions with a focus on enhancing the complete design workflow. Companies can expect to gain significant productivity enhancements; and with the ability to integrate the styling within the development process, better quality products will result. NX Multi-Function Machining offers solutions that support more than one function or multiples of a single function within the same machine tool. The use of multi-function machines eliminates various set-up times as well as the transit and wait time between separate machines and can also significantly reduce the number of machines required - a significant saving for global manufacturers. NX DesignLogic provides users with capabilities for rapidly embedding design knowledge and engineering rules into NX product definitions, allowing engineers to build a higher level of design intent versus traditional parametric systems. Common API for NX, a new programming toolkit provides a single framework that makes it possible to support multiple programming languages with identical functional access to NX capabilities. The new Common API will initially support the C++ and .NET programming environments, followed by Java. In addition, NX 3 will include a new journaling utility - used to capture and record repetitive tasks - that is also built on the same Common API. NX Simulation Process Studio allows expert analysts to encapsulate complex processes in a way that enables non-specialists to safely and effectively benefit from the same technology. It is specifically designed to help companies increase the effective use of engineering simulation, enabling better, more informed decisions to be made throughout the digital development process. NX Managed Development Environment manages a much broader spectrum of data than ever before, including: computer- aided design (CAD); drawings; documents and spread sheets; simulation scenarios; test data and results; numerical control (NC) data and associated tooling information; embedded knowledge and validation solutions. Companies can easily scale to engineering process management by streamlining critical processes and workflows with fully integrated, synchronized management of all product data and process knowledge. "UGS' new NX 3 demonstrates that a complete PLM solution provides so much more than CAD and PDM functionality," said Monica Schnitger, senior vice president, Market Analysis, Daratech, Inc. "The NX 3 managed environment seamlessly connects diverse members of an extended enterprise with the work instructions and information they need to do their jobs - ultimately leading to better products to the marketplace in a timelier manner." UGS is a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services with more than 3 million licensed seats and 42,000 clients worldwide. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, the company promotes openness and standardization and works collaboratively with its clients in creating enterprise solutions enabling them to transform their process of innovation and thus begin to capture the value of PLM. For more information on UGS products and services, visit http://www.ugs.com/ .