Aeroform – NX CAD for advanced surfaces

Aircraft and aquatic vehicle R&D has engaged most of the professional life of entrepreneur and effective flight engineer Dan Borgström. He began working at Bofors in Karlskoga after graduating as a civil engineer at KTH in 1984.

Six years later he established his first company and accordingly needed to invest in CAD tools. On meeting representatives of aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas at a trade show, he realized that their tools were ideal for his purposes, and he purchased the necessary software and a Linux server to run it on. Dan had invested in what we nowadays call NX, a powerful product development tool from Siemens Digital Industries.

Dan Borgström’s first company applied the CAD tool for developing marine propellers and other ship designs. They also designed massive aircraft details for both foreign and domestic manufacturers. The company’s engineers worked in NX versions 4, 5, and 6.

“NX is an incredibly powerful application. Its surface modeling is excellent for designing large and complex form-tools,” Dan Borgström explains. “It’s a complete software package that provides almost everything required in R&D work.

Dan Borgström is now CEO of Aeroform Fuel Cell, a Karlskoga-based company that develops renewable energy systems. He also tackles consultancy assignments for other companies, helping them with product design. The new technologies of Convergent Modelling and Reversed Engineering found in NX version 11 have revolutionized his working methods.

“NX11 includes a module called Convergent Modelling that handles STL files created by scanning objects, and converts them to polygon geometry,” Dan Borgström explains. “Previously I had to pick the individual points after scanning a model, but this new technology generates surfaces and solids directly from STL files, which makes it very easy for me.

Dan Borgström is watching with satisfaction as larger companies switch their existing CAD tools for NX.

“Progress is ongoing, and it’s great to see how major corporations in the automotive and other industries are shifting to NX. It all comes down to shape, especially with aircraft and cars. You must be able to curve surfaces and create streamlines. I think this development is largely driven by the automotive rather than the aerospace industry. Most firms work with solids, but I need B-splines and surfaces, and NX is superb in this context.