Welcome to the September edition of our Ask an Applied Engineer series! Each month, our engineers answer your most pressing questions. Whether you have a technical question about Siemens software, a licensing question, or are just looking for industry advice—we’re here to help.
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This month, we’re answering questions about Mendix and the future of AI in aerospace.
Question #1
Q: How does Mendix help software engineers accelerate development compared to traditional coding?
A: Mendix cuts down on repetitive, boilerplate work by giving us a drag-and-drop environment, reusable components, and pre-built templates. Instead of hand-coding every workflow or interface, I can assemble applications visually and focus my time on architecting solutions. For complex logic, I can still extend Mendix with custom code, but the baseline productivity gain is huge.
Answered by Chris Ochs, Software Engineer
Question #2
Q: What advancements in AI do you think will have the most impact on aerospace in the next 5-10 years?
A: I think there are several elements to this:
- Training AIs on the language of engineering: This includes everything from the vast datasets on material properties, to the principles of designing parts for manufacturability and developing effective datuming and tolerancing strategies. At the tooling level, it involves understanding how a CAD kernel represents geometry or how to mesh a part for finite element analysis. There is a great deal to explore, but enabling AI systems to understand these elements will unlock tremendous capabilities.
- Voice recognition and contextual awareness: Imagine a time when you will be able to speak to your engineering tools, rather than learning every sub-menu and detailed feature. This will abstract away the user interface to the point of merely describing what you want, and then the tool will create it, based on your inputs. That will remove a lot of time and friction from the process.
- 1-click CAM: Going from completed design to the part being made in a single action. Removing all the steps of NC programming, or 3D printer programming, and simply instructing the system to “make the part” will also collapse timescales.
- Higher and higher fidelity simulation, enabling increased confidence in models and thereby eliminating the need for expensive and time-consuming testing.
I think all of these things combined will result in dramatically improved product development lifecycles, which in turn will lead to faster iteration, better optimized products, lower costs, and much more in the aerospace industry and beyond.
Answered by Dale Goulding, Executive Director, Aerospace & Defense
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