By the end of the year, NX X Manufacturing users will have access to an AI assistant to help them quickly program parts.
Welcome to Engineering Paper. Here’s all the design and simulation software news you missed last week.
… Is what I’d normally say, but software news has been slow this Labor Day pre-kend, weekend, and week-in. Which gives me a perfect opportunity to cover something I’ve been meaning to write about for months, and you’ve been meaning to read about for just as long (though you didn’t know it).
AI is coming to Siemens NX X Manufacturing (again)
Back in July I was in Detroit for Realize Live 2025, Siemens’ annual user conference. I covered the highlights at the time, but I didn’t get around to an interview that I had with Siemens’ Michael Taesch, senior director of product management, and Sashko Kurciski, marketing director for digital manufacturing, about AI for NX CAM.
“We’re trying to see how we fuse AI into our manufacturing process,” Taesch told me.
One result of that fusion is an upcoming AI tool that generates machining strategies for NX users. It’s not available yet and it doesn’t have an official name, but for the sake of conversation Taesch and Kurciski called it the CAM Copilot within NX X Manufacturing. For the sake of this article, I’m going to call it NX CAM Copilot.
With a couple clicks, NX CAM Copilot—not its official name—will generate three possible ways to machine a given feature (and more if needed). The user can take these as a starting point to develop their program. The AI will debut with 2.5 and 3-axis machining strategies and expand from there.
“We’re not here to replace the manufacturing engineer,” Taesch said. “We want to give him multiple processes, and it’s up to him to pick the right one based on his knowledge.”
With a familiar thumbs up/down system, users will be able to rate the suggestions and, in theory, the AI will learn their preferences and improve over time.
“Manufacturing is complex,” Kurciski said. “You can machine a single feature in—I’m not exaggerating—10 different ways with 15 different tools. So you have your own company best practices, and capturing this is very important.”
In that sense, Siemens sees NX CAM Copilot—again, not its official name—as a tool for knowledge capture, one that can help bridge that engineering skills gap that technology vendors keep talking about.
“Company A will program their way. Company B will have a completely different process,” Taesch added. “You cannot have a generic solution. You need to have something that’s tailored, personalized to the customers.”
But the more direct utility of NX CAM Copilot is in its efficiency. Like anything, CAM programming takes time, even for the experts.
“Though I’ve been 10 years in NX CAM, I always make mistakes when I start the programming,” Taesch said. “Here, in a couple clicks, I get a result, and then all I have to do is just fine tune, use my knowledge to adjust a little bit.”
Taesch estimates that NX CAM Copilot can save 80% or more of the time that users would otherwise spend on CAM programming. “I can quickly program a part. Might not be perfect, but if I wanted to quickly quote it, in five minutes I can get something up and running,” he said.
NX CAM Copilot is currently in beta, but Taesch said Siemens plans to release it by the end of 2025. Taesch expects the AI tool to be an add-on to NX X Manufacturing through Siemens’ value-based licensing program, though that isn’t a final decision. (There’s an extant NX X Manufacturing copilot, which is just a chatbot, that’s currently available as a value-based add-on. Perhaps this new tool will be integrated into that.)
NX CAM Copilot, which is a placeholder name, reminds me of Toolpath, which sounds like a placeholder name but isn’t. Toolpath is a web-based platform that uses AI to generate toolpaths (and as I covered last week, it just announced Autodesk as an investor). I brought up the comparison to Taesch and Kurciski, who offered the opinion that Toolpath is more of a black box solution focused on quoting, while NX CAM Copilot provides more tailored manufacturing choices.
“We have another project that is working in parallel where we automatically ingest for quoting,” Taesch added. “It’s going to be tied into NX CAM. And the idea will be to leverage this tool to provide some simple quotes. Not there yet, but we have it in mind.”
So there you have it—an AI engineering tool from Siemens that’s a lot more interesting than Design Copilot NX. I’ll bring you more on NX CAM Copilot, or whatever it will be called, as soon as I learn it (or several months later, whichever comes first).
One last link
Ever wonder what’s inside a 1950s Heathkit vacuum tube oscilloscope? EE World’s Martin Rowe reveals all in his latest teardown—but he needs your help to put it all together.
Got news, tips, comments, or complaints? Send them my way: malba@wtwhmedia.com.