Hexagon MI Releases Cloud Platform with Design for Additive Manufacturing Solutions

Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence (Hexagon MI) is releasing Nexus, described as an open cloud platform to connect Hexagon and third-party tools to enable real-time collaboration.

"If companies are to reap the benefit of smart manufacturing, we need to change the way we work," said Parth Joshi, Chief Product and Technology Officer for Hexagon MI. "With Nexus, our aim is simple--to bring innovative minds together across disciplines and empower them. By leveraging Hexagon’s expertise in innovation, and by connecting people, technologies, and data we can help businesses bring ideas to life faster than ever before. We’re excited to see what customers will do with the technology from today.”

"In our smart, connected future everyone will be on someone's digital thread," said Stan Przybylinski, VP of the analyst firm CIMdata. "At the same time, industrial companies are increasingly looking to the cloud to support their critical business needs. With Nexus, Hexagon helps their customers to more easily consume their considerable digital solution portfolio in the cloud, helping them to optimize their digital threads as part of their overall IT landscape."

Hexagon MI's Nexus app shows the desktop software MSC Apex Generative Design connecting and sharing data with the other apps that make Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM). Image courtesy of Hexagon MI.

Nexus is engineered with Microsoft's cloud technologies. The first four available Nexus four products are:

• Metrology Reporting: an app to connect Hexagon and third-party metrology data sources in Nexus’ secure cloud environment;
• Materials Connect: a cloud-based library for material data;
• Materials Enrich, an app that uses machine learning and cloud computing to simulate material behavior;
• Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM), a pre-configured solution for teams to jointly develop an optimal metal 3D-printed part and prepare it for a powder bed fusion (PBF) printing.

Detailing the DfAM solution in Nexus, Hexagon said the Nexus web interface connects Hexagon’s MSC Apex Generative Design and Simufact Additive software with AM Studio from CADS Additive and Materials Connect via the cloud for easy project management. With Nexus, Hexagon MI hopes to bring more transparency and visibility to the collaborative teams working on DfAM projects. 

Wohlers Associates, an analyst firm that publishes an annual report on the Additive Manufacturing industry, wrote, "In the last three years, organizations have begun to appreciate the importance of design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) ... When a part is designed for conventional manufacturing, it is usually more expensive to produce by AM in typical production quantities ... However, when a part is redesigned for AM, costs can be competitive or even lower, depending on quantities."