Welcome to the April 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.
Submit your questions here and get a response from an Applied CAx engineer.
This month, we’re answering questions about Teamcenter, NX, and AI.
Question #1
Q: Why do we need a PLM system if we already have CAD and ERP?
A: CAD manages design data, and ERP manages business operations like finance and manufacturing, but neither connects the entire product lifecycle. A PLM system like Teamcenter acts as the digital backbone across engineering, manufacturing, quality, and service by:
- Managing and controlling design revisions across teams and tools.
- Providing a single source of truth for product data, BOMs, documents, and changes.
- Bridging CAD and ERP to ensure accurate handoffs and reduce rework. Without PLM, companies risk siloed data, inconsistent product information, and poor change traceability.
Answered by Jamie Griffis, Executive Director, Partner | Digital Innovation Services at Applied CAx
Question #2
Q: I need to copy an assembly that includes multiple subassemblies and components. What’s the best way to duplicate the entire structure so that the copied assembly and its subassemblies reference the new, copied components rather than still linking back to the original files?
A: Use the Create Clone Assembly command to create a new assembly or related assemblies that share a similar assembly structure and associations.
Cloning provides a way to modify the components referenced in an assembly by establishing default actions for the majority of the assembly components and exceptions for the remaining components.
For example, you could create versions of an assembly with a core set of common components, but with some modified or replaced components. Cloned assemblies are always cloned from the last saved assembly file.
After the cloning is performed, a cloning log file is created. The cloning log file summarizes the activities performed during the cloning operation, including the mapping from the input to the output assembly. You can save log files and use them to set up future operations.
Answered by Jeremy Shooks, Design & Manufacturing Application Engineer at Applied CAx
Question #3
Q: Can you share some insights into how AI is transforming different industries? How can my business leverage AI to stay competitive?
A: AI is transforming every industry, whether we realize it or not. Companies that adopt and experiment earlier will ultimately yield a competitive advantage. I believe it’s non-negotiable at this point. Here’s what I’m seeing in terms of how it is transforming industries, as well as how businesses can leverage it to stay competitive:
- All industries are gaining unique insights from leveraging data through AI, whether that’s by absorbing vast datasets and predicting maintenance requirements or connecting previously disparate data sources with each other to realize efficiencies or unique opportunities.
- Additionally, in hardware-type industries like aerospace, AI is already helping to iterate on the design process in ways that engineers can explore the design space much more completely than we could in the past. We can simulate thousands of configurations, assess different material types and their impact on structural loading, optimize system architectures, and more to arrive at the best-optimized solution.
- The speed of design is being accelerated through co-pilots guiding engineers during the design process. This will continue to grow more powerful as we further integrate LLMs and voice recognition into the process.
- Next, I think there are three layers to how businesses are leveraging AI to stay competitive:
- Using tools available today, out of the box, like a large language model or an AI note-taking app, to boost productivity in day-to-day activities.
- Developing unique applications to improve operational efficiency in the core products that a business already specializes in. This might mean developing AI tools to remove highly repetitive tasks that humans do today, freeing them up to do higher-order or more creative tasks.
- Developing new applications that open entirely new revenue streams. Often, these are at the intersection of converging technologies, or they leverage previously separated data systems or applications, to generate something uniquely new.
- In the future, your strongest competitors will have fully embraced AI workflows or built their businesses to be “AI native.” That will allow them to invent from the ground up the systems and processes in a way that leverages the best-in-class technologies and will be unencumbered by legacy systems and modes of operation. Thinking through where those disruptive angles might appear and positioning your business to be ahead of them is an imperative that will become more and more acute as the power of these tools rapidly accelerates and gets integrated more readily.
Answered by Dale Goulding, Executive Director, Aerospace & Defense at Applied CAx
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