A team of engineers viewing the assembly of an Oracle Red Bull Racing Formula 1 car in their office in an immersive environment with Sony XR HMDs and a virtual monitor showing the design of the steering component.

CAD for industry

Immersive Engineering with NX CAD

Enhance your CAD experience with the leading immersive engineering technologies offered with NX CAD. These technologies enable you to visualize, simulate, interact with and manipulate designs in a virtual environment and enable better team & customer collaboration.

What is Immersive Engineering?

Visualize, simulate and interact with designs in a virtual environment, enhancing understanding and collaboration with Immersive Engineering. Immersive Engineering speaks to the use of extended reality (XR) immersive technologies—such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR)—in engineering practices. Applications include virtual prototyping, immersive simulations for training, augmented reality overlays for maintenance and repair tasks and immersive design in CAD workflows using VR hardware such as headsets and controllers.  

Immersive Engineering goes beyond traditional 2D practices by creating a fully-integrated, user-centric virtual space—combining both the real and digital worlds. This next step into the future of design provides you with precise 3D interaction, stunning visual fidelity and seamless virtual collaboration across the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio. 

An engineer wearing a Sony XR head-mounted display while holding a real F1 steering wheel in one hand and with the other hand,

Hardware used with Immersive Engineering technologies 

  • Headsets and displays: Key for delivering immersive experiences. XR headsets immerse users in a digital environment.
  • Haptic devices: Specialized pieces of hardware that provide tactile feedback (e.g., vibrations or forces) to simulate touch or resistance in a virtual environment. These controllers are used in VR systems to enhance realism and engagement.
  • Tracking sensors: In VR and AR setups, tracking systems (such as external cameras or sensors) monitor the user’s movements in real-time, allowing for precise interaction with the virtual or augmented environment.
Sony XR head-mounted display with the headset, ring controller and pointing controller.

Software used with Immersive Engineering technologies 

  • 3D modeling and simulation software: Allow for the creation of complex virtual environments, products, and systems.
  • Development platforms: Software development kits (SDKs) and tools that developers use to build immersive applications.
  • Rendering engines: Specialized software is needed to render highly-detailed, realistic virtual environments in real-time.
  • Interaction and control systems: Software is used to interpret input from hardware (such as hand controllers, haptic devices or eye trackers) and translate it into actions within the virtual or augmented environment.
An engineer on a desktop computer with a

Immersive Engineering when integrated with CAD

An engineer on a desktop computer with a

Enhance creativity, improve accuracy, increase collaboration and streamline development cycles with immersive technology integrated with CAD and product design processes. The combination of immersive technology with CAD enables you to interact with 3D models, or digital twins, in a more intuitive and realistic manner whether you are a designer, engineer or manufacturer.

Benefits of immersive CAD software

Combining immersive technologies, such as VR, AR and MR with CAD software provides game-changing transformative benefits. Discover some key advantages:

NX Immersive Designer

Work within a high-fidelity, three-dimensional environment that enables seamless interaction with digital models as if they were physical objects with NX Immersive Designer, a revolutionary immersive design tool from Siemens developed in partnership with Sony. It merges our NX software capabilities with Sony’s XR head-mounted display (HMD) spatial content creation system, featuring dual 4K OLED microdisplays. This setup supports real-time collaboration and precise 3D model manipulation, which is particularly beneficial if you are focusing on advanced product engineering and prototyping​. 

NX Immersive Designer features

Create tomorrow’s innovations as you stand in the same space as your digital twin—visualizing the entire process chain in a singular immersive environment before production begins. 

Product creation with precision

Experience full-featured NX in high-fidelity 3D that supports traditional mouse and keyboard inputs. Design in-context with a fully immersive, infinite canvas—where the digital world becomes indistinguishable from the real world. 

Product ideation in high fidelity

Experience unparalleled views of designs with the Sony HMD, equipped with 4K OLED Microdisplays for each eye. Use full immersion to interact with models by leveraging the NX-optimized hand controllers for precise model editing. 

Conducive work environment for product design

Work longer with the lightweight Sony HMD, featuring optimal front-to-back weight balancing and special forehead cushioning. A flip-up visor makes for easier multitasking and allows for a borderless experience. 

Collaborate globally for product design

Collaborate with your team anywhere in the world while interacting with designs in full-scale high-fidelity, as NX Immersive Designer seamlessly combines the real and digital worlds. By integrating with the Siemens Xcelerator platform, NX Immersive Designer also supports cloud-enabled, scalable development solutions, which means it can be adapted across industries, from automotive to aerospace and beyond. 

The Siemens & Sony partnership 

Siemens and Sony have partnered to enable Immersive Engineering with the introduction of NX Immersive Designer.  

The Sony XR head-mounted display is a fundamental part of NX Immersive Designer, an integrated solution that combines Siemens’ industry leading product engineering NX software exclusively with Sony’s visualization technology—delivering unmatched immersive design and collaborative product engineering capabilities. 

The tight integration of the Sony hardware with Siemens NX software gives your teams the most natural ways to interact intuitively with the digital twin, and the precision of the controls paired with stunning visual fidelity enable your teams to collaborate more, engineer better and innovate faster.  

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NX Immersive Explorer

Visualize designs in high fidelity on your desktop or in virtual reality with NX Immersive Explorer, the most recent iteration of our immersive visualization and design review technology. NX Immersive Explorer is compatible with most major HMD (head-mounted display) hardware options. 

View design changes in virtual reality 

Launch NX Immersive Explorer straight from the standard workspace in NX or NX X software. Intuitive controls make it easy for anyone to use without specific training or VR experience. 

Make modeling or assembly configuration changes in NX and see the design updates live in an immersive environment at the same time. 

Access the Assembly Navigator from within NX Immersive Explorer to change the visibility of parts within the immersive environment. 

Visualize mechatronics animations in high fidelity 

View accurate simulations of designs in motion, based on data from NX Mechatronics Concept Designer, a gamechanger for validating mechatronics designs. NX Mechatronics Concept Designer is an NX add-on module for modeling, simulation and validation of machine designs with multibody physics and automation-related behavior. 

Communicate with innovative design review tools such as in-environment annotations and sticky notes, as well as snapshots to enable users to jump right back into a saved state of the visualization in a particular configuration. 

NX Immersive Explorer is available exclusively through NX Value Based Licensing.

Editing an NX CAD design in the left window and viewing a realistic rendering updating in real-time on NX Immersive Explorer for desktop on the right window.
Token-licensing

What is NX Value Based Licensing?

Enhance the NX or NX X experience with Value Based Licensing (token licensing): a flexible, scalable and cost-effective way to access a wide range of specialized and advanced capabilities.

Receive a pool of tokens and then distribute them amongst teams to access NX modules as needed. The amount of tokens in the pool determines the amount of modules that can be accessed at the same time, with the option to add more tokens as business needs change.

A graphic representing value-based licensing: four desktop computers to represent users, stacks of

Immersive Engineering by industry

Discover how Immersive Engineering approaches are transforming a variety of industries. These technologies are being adopted across a wide range of sectors for training, product design, marketing, customer experience and other applications. 

Case Study

Natilus

Siemens solutions help startup company develop airplanes that can reduce the cost of airfreight by 50 to 60 percent
Case Study

Reducing the cost of airfreight with innovative designs

Empresa:Natilus

Industria:Aeroespacial y defensa

Ubicación:San Diego, California, United States

Software de Siemens:NX, SES (formerly Vistagy), Simcenter 3D Solutions, Teamcenter

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