Optimize Product Development with Teamcenter

In aerospace and defense, every kilogram counts. Whether it’s Airbus advancing next-generation composite wings, Boeing investing in high-rate composite production, or defense primes like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman developing lighter mission platforms, weight reduction is now a strategic imperative. And modern aerospace CAD software and defense platform CAD tools play a central role.

Lightweight design enables lower fuel burn, extended range, greater payload capacity, and reduced logistics burdens — all while helping A&D organizations meet decarbonization targets and mission requirements.

With sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) still covering less than 1% of global demand, lightweighting and efficient aerodynamics remain among the few immediate levers for CO₂ reduction. At the same time, programs face accelerating demand, defense modernization, and tightening oversight from regulators and accreditation authorities such as FAA, EASA, ITAR, and NATO.

The result: OEMs and suppliers are forced to shorten development cycles, prototype faster, and deliver certified designs to market or deployment without delay.

Emerging technologies like AI-driven generative design, simulation automation, and digital twins are helping meet these challenges, but they also increase the need for robust digital traceability.

That’s why lightweighting and safety must be treated as inseparable imperatives. And companies that align both in their design philosophy and toolset will be the ones able to meet sustainability targets, satisfy regulators, and capture market share in an industry that is moving faster than ever.

Siemens NX CAD: Powering Aerospace & Defense Design Excellence

Meeting aggressive demand and speed targets while maintaining rigorous safety standards requires an integrated approach that connects design, simulation, materials data, and compliance documentation. Siemens NX CAD offers exactly that.

By delivering a holistic environment for modern aerospace development, it enables engineering teams to maintain control over every stage of design, respond quickly to changing market and regulatory demands, and keep compliance processes integrated into their daily workflows without slowing innovation.

Let’s take a closer look into the features Siemens NX offers in terms of lightweight design and safety and how they can empower A&D companies to operate effectively in a fast-paced, highly competitive environment.

Lightweight Design with Strength and Confidence

1. Topology Optimization & Generative Design

NX CAD’s topology optimization and generative design for aerospace engineering modules enable the creation of weight-efficient geometries that are tailored to withstand extreme aerospace and defense load cases while maintaining safety margins.

This allows airframe and mission platform structures to be optimized for minimal material use while still meeting the demanding requirements of aerodynamic stress resistance and fatigue life. For aerospace and defense design teams, the result is lower fuel burn, extended mission range, increased payload capacity, and progress toward sustainability and readiness targets. All achieved without jeopardizing certification or accreditation timelines.

2. Material Libraries with Lifecycle Assessment

Within Siemens NX, aerospace- and defense-specific material databases, combined with environmental lifecycle analysis, support the selection of alloys, titanium, or composite systems that achieve both weight savings and sustainability objectives.

For A&D engineers, having this capability inside the design environment enables informed trade-offs between performance, cost, mission impact, and environmental considerations. It ensures every decision aligns with technical requirements and regulatory or accreditation demands without leaving the platform.

3. Fibersim Composite Integration

Siemens NX offers direct integration with Siemens Fibersim, bringing comprehensive composite layup data (such as ply geometry, fiber orientation, stacking sequence, draping behavior, and curing parameters) straight into the CAD environment.

This seamless link ensures that CAD geometry reflects true manufacturing intent, eliminating costly mismatches between design and production. For aerospace and defense, this is especially critical, as it allows engineers, manufacturing specialists, and certification or accreditation managers to work from the same source of truth, with ply schedules, draping simulations, and curing data readily available for certification- or accreditation-ready documentation and downstream processes. This positions NX as a top composite design CAD aerospace and defense solution.

Built-in Safety from Day One

1. Embedded Structural & Fatigue Simulation

Advanced finite element analysis (FEA) solvers, modal analysis capabilities, and fatigue life prediction are all available within Siemens NX, allowing aerospace and defense engineers to run stress, fatigue, and vibration analyses directly within the CAD model. This ensures that design and simulation teams can effectively assess structural integrity, detect resonant frequency risks, and evaluate long-term fatigue behavior, making NX not only an essential aerospace structural analysis software, but also a trusted military aircraft design software.

Identifying these safety-critical issues early on enables informed design adjustments before physical prototypes are built, significantly reducing the risk of costly late-stage rework and helping teams maintain aggressive certification or accreditation schedules.

2. Simcenter Aerodynamic & Thermal Analysis

Through direct integration with Simcenter, design teams gain access to high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for aerodynamic analysis and advanced thermal simulation capabilities, supported by robust meshing, solver options, and real-world environmental modeling. These capabilities help aerospace and defense engineers evaluate airflow patterns, drag and lift characteristics, heat distribution, and thermal management strategies under flight-relevant and mission-relevant conditions, which is especially important in safety- and mission-critical programs.

By revealing potential performance or safety concerns already from the design process, engineering teams can make targeted refinements, align with stringent safety, efficiency, and accreditation standards, and reduce reliance on expensive physical test campaigns.

3. Version Control & Digital Traceability

When Siemens NX is integrated with Teamcenter, aerospace and defense teams can capture every revision, design decision, and associated documentation in a centralized, auditable record, while also leveraging powerful configuration management. This means that teams can link design data directly to certification or accreditation requirements, track the impact of engineering changes across complex assemblies, and ensure that compliance evidence is always up to date.

This level of traceability is vital for regulatory and defense authority alignment, especially in programs where safety-critical components undergo multiple iterations, making NX a powerful certification-ready aerospace design tool and a reliable defense compliance engineering software for ITAR, DFARS, and NATO standards.

NX Enablers for Streamlined Product Development

Beyond these core features, Siemens NX includes capabilities tailored to aerospace and defense realities, helping teams manage the complexity of large-scale airframes and mission platforms, coordinate across disciplines, and innovate regulation- and accreditation-ready systems faster.

These enablers span every phase of product development to create a seamless, connected process from concept to certified or accredited delivery. Let's see what those are and how they keep both weight and safety under control.

1. Seamless Design-to-Analysis Workflow

Siemens NX enables aerospace and defense engineers to move effortlessly from creating 3D models to running simulations without leaving the environment. Engineers can quickly set up structural, thermal, or aerodynamic analyses directly from their design models, feeding results back into the geometry for immediate refinement.

For lightweighting, this means supporting rapid weight optimization decisions by enabling immediate iteration on geometry and materials. For safety, it allows early validation of structural integrity, reducing the risk of late-stage failures—all while maintaining the pace needed for rapid prototyping and accelerated validation cycles.

2. Design Reuse for Faster Cycles

With Siemens NX, aerospace and defense teams can draw on a library of preapproved design elements and integrate them into new programs without starting from scratch. This is achieved through intelligent part and assembly templates, parameterized models, and managed libraries that ensure components meet established design rules and standards.

By leveraging these proven lightweight and pre-certified components, mass can be kept under control and risks reduced, supporting OEMs with both sustainable aerospace design software and defense platform CAD tools for mission assurance.

3. Partial Loading & Memory Optimization for Large Assemblies

Inside the Siemens NX environment, teams can open, navigate, and edit massive digital mockups, such as full aircraft structures or defense platforms, without overwhelming computing resources. Engineers can selectively load only the parts or subassemblies they need, while retaining full‑fidelity detail when required.

For lightweighting, this means teams can perform complete weight assessments on complex assemblies without performance bottlenecks. For safety, it ensures that system‑level evaluations of load paths and critical structures are addressed early, before they escalate into costly, time‑consuming liabilities.

4. Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration Tools

Last but not least, structural, systems, and manufacturing teams in aerospace and defense can work from the same dataset, minimizing integration issues and ensuring that all disciplines remain aligned throughout development.

This prevents incremental weight creep and reduces integration errors, ensuring all teams work from the same verified dataset and maintain the integrity of safety-critical requirements across programs.

Why Choose Siemens NX and CLEVR

Siemens NX is more than a CAD tool. It’s an integrated CAD platform for aerospace and defense, built to address the sector’s most pressing needs.

From lightweight structures to rigorous safety validation, it equips organizations to innovate faster, meet sustainability and mission targets, and satisfy certification or accreditation requirements.

This makes it an ideal solution for OEMs, Tier‑1 suppliers, and engineering leaders seeking to balance sustainability, safety, and speed in product development. And at CLEVR, we have seen firsthand how it can help aerospace companies achieve exactly that.

With 30+ years of experience implementing the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, we know how to tailor Siemens NX to each company’s unique requirements, ensuring the platform is aligned with your workflows, certification processes, and operational priorities.

By combining deep industry knowledge with cutting‑edge technology, we help A&D manufacturers accelerate prototyping, optimize designs, and position themselves as leaders in a fast‑moving market.

Take the Next Step

If you’re ready to align lightweighting, safety, and speed in your aerospace and defense programs, now is the time to act.

Contact CLEVR to discover how our expertise can help you deploy Siemens NX to its fullest potential and tailor it to give you a competitive edge in today’s rapidly evolving industry.

For decades, complexity has been the norm for the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry, and most organizations have learned to navigate it with ingenuity, rigor, and grit. But what’s changed most in recent years is the pace, making PLM for aerospace and defense and modern aerospace PLM software a strategic necessity, not just an engineering tool.

Programs have become more ambitious—not just in scale, but in complexity and integration. Today’s aircraft, spacecraft, and defense platforms are expected to be smarter, more autonomous, and more environmentally responsible, while meeting mission-critical standards for safety, security, and interoperability. Electrification, fly-by-wire systems, AI-enabled decision-making, and digital battle management are no longer emerging technologies—they are rapidly becoming program requirements.

Yet each innovation adds layers of data, interdependency, and verification that must be managed in parallel across multiple teams and tools that often lack proper integration, standardization, or context.

In practice, managing this complexity manually or through isolated systems leads to slow decision-making, rework, and certification or accreditation challenges that ripple through the entire lifecycle. While many A&D organizations have modernized select engineering capabilities (e.g. simulation tools, digital twins, system modeling), these efforts often remain disconnected from the broader product and program infrastructure.

What makes PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) essential isn’t just managing this complexity. It’s turning it into a competitive advantage. And with increasing pressure from regulators, defense ministries, customers, and program timelines, PLM is increasingly seen not just as an engineering tool, but as a core enabler for cross-functional agility, mission assurance, and integrated program delivery.

5 Reasons Why PLM Is Essential for Aerospace & Defense

Let's break down the reasons why PLM has shifted from a support tool to a strategic necessity:

1. Rising Product and System Complexity

Modern A&D platforms now handle integration across hundreds to thousands of system interfaces, spanning across mechanical, electrical, software and mission systems. These aren’t just technical challenges, they’re organizational and systemic as well.

Each domain typically uses its own specialized tools, standards, and processes, making it difficult to manage and validate system-wide changes, particularly when teams rely on manual updates and lack real-time visibility.

A robust aerospace PLM software allows aerospace and defense companies to centralize engineering data, enforce process consistency, and enable real-time collaboration across all domains. This ensures changes are validated early, integration points are understood, and downstream implications are fully visible.

2. Accelerated Development Cycles

It's no secret that building and certifying A&D products is inherently complex. These systems are safety-critical by design, require strict adherence to evolving global regulations (e.g. DO-178C, ARP4754A, ITAR, DFARS, NATO standards, etc.), and they must meet rigorous performance, durability, and operational standards—often across extreme environments.

In addition, certification is a year-long process of exhaustive documentation, iterative testing, and multi-stakeholder validation, whose cost and time investment, in many cases, can exceed the cost of design itself.

At the same time, according to Deloitte, sustained growth in commercial aviation is placing intense pressure on OEMs and suppliers to accelerate design, development, and certification cycles, often compressing timelines by 20–30%.

Modern defense PLM software brings all critical teams (design, simulation, manufacturing, and compliance) into a shared environment where they can collaborate in real time, using consistent, version-controlled data. This unified approach ensures traceability and transparency across the entire lifecycle, allowing aerospace companies to accelerate development without compromising on safety, compliance, or quality standards.

3. Sustainability Demands

Sustainability in A&D isn’t just about SDG compliance. It’s about managing growing expectations from regulators, investors, and OEM customers who demand transparency, verifiability, and measurable action. Lifecycle assessments (LCAs), material passports, and recyclability scores must be tied back to specific components, suppliers, and product versions, which presents a massive data challenge.

Additionally, directives like the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the broader European Green Deal are ramping up expectations for full lifecycle transparency and environmental accountability. For aerospace companies already navigating complex regulations (like REACH, RoHS, ISO 14001, NATO and dual-use compliance), this adds a new layer of pressure to integrate sustainability from the earliest stages of design and development.

PLM systems make this possible by integrating sustainability KPIs directly into product and process workflows. This allows A&D companies to track, quantify, and align engineering and sourcing decisions, supporting PLM for sustainability reporting in aerospace especially when regulatory requirements are evolving, while generating auditable, report-ready ESG data.

4. Digital Transformation Enablement

Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. It’s actively reshaping how A&D companies design, test, and manage their products. When integrated with technologies like digital twins, robotics, and smart factory systems, AI can significantly accelerate aerospace development cycles, helping teams uncover insights faster, reduce costly physical prototyping, anticipate risks earlier, and drive intelligent design reuse across multi-domain systems.

However, for AI to deliver on its potential, it requires an environment where data is centralized, structured, and contextual.  This is precisely where PLM becomes indispensable.

With AI, modern PLM systems evolve from static systems of record into dynamic systems of intelligence, providing the structured and connected backbone required to train AI on governed engineering data. They enable the digital thread in aerospace and defense programs and support advanced practices like MBSE, enabling real-time insights for design optimization, sourcing decisions, and production flow simulations. In this way, data becomes trustworthy, accessible, and interoperable across every stage of the lifecycle.

5. Global Supply Chain Complexity

A&D companies depend on vast, multi-tier supplier ecosystems to deliver critical components, subsystems, and increasingly software-driven systems. In today’s environment, where post-pandemic disruptions persist and aircraft programs demand unprecedented levels of customization and integration, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to coordinate design and engineering changes across dispersed suppliers without introducing delays, inconsistencies, or compliance risks.

Add to this the pressures of geopolitical instability, shifting trade alliances, and export controls, and the cost of poor coordination quickly becomes unsustainable.

PLM systems serve as the foundation for PLM supply chain management in aerospace and defense programs, helping manufacturers regain control. They offer centralized, version-controlled platforms for collaboration that support structured approvals, real-time data traceability, and synchronized BOM updates—ensuring that supply chain orchestration scales as complexity grows.

PLM Is the Foundational Layer for Aerospace & Defense Innovation

What started as a "nice-to-have" system for managing engineering data is now becoming a strategic investment, essential for staying competitive in the aerospace industry. According to CIMdata, over 65% of A&D OEMs are actively implementing digital thread strategies, with PLM platforms like Siemens Teamcenter at the heart of these transformations.

Let’s look at some of those examples:

• ‍Bye Aerospace used Siemens Teamcenter and NX to streamline their design and certification process, achieving a 66% reduction in engineering resources required, while accelerating time to compliance. This demonstrates how a unified PLM system can eliminate redundant work and ensure seamless data continuity across the development lifecycle.‍
• Northrop Grumman leveraged Siemens Teamcenter to establish a digital thread across defense programs. By connecting virtual and physical testing workflows, they improved traceability, accelerated certification cycles, and reduced weight in critical subsystems. This shows how Siemens solutions support defense organizations with mission assurance, compliance, and agility in highly regulated environments.

Accelerate Product Development with CLEVR & Siemens Teamcenter in Aerospace & Defense

Siemens Teamcenter for aerospace and defense is one of the most robust and widely adopted PLM systems. As part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, it integrates seamlessly across engineering, manufacturing, and enterprise ecosystems—including ERP, MES, MBSE, and simulation environments. This enables A&D manufacturers to digitize and orchestrate every phase of product development, from concept through certification and into sustainment.

Teamcenter offers:

• Unified, multi-domain data and bill-of-materials (BOM) management
• Cloud-native deployment via Teamcenter X cloud PLM in aerospace and defense for scalability and faster time to value
• Built-in support for MBSE, sustainability metrics tracking, and digital twin enablement
• Secure, role-based collaboration across dispersed design and supplier networks
• Robust change and configuration management tailored to regulatory-intensive programs

At CLEVR, we have seen first-hand how A&D companies scale and future-proof their operations with Teamcenter. With over 30 years of experience implementing PLM in aerospace and defense, we help organizations navigate every stage of the transformation journey—from strategy and planning to system integration, data migration, and long-term support.

Our team specializes in guiding companies through the complexities of integrating Teamcenter into highly customized, multi-system landscapes, especially where legacy tools, compliance obligations, and distributed teams present unique challenges.

Whether you're optimizing traceability, enabling cross-domain collaboration, or unifying design and production workflows, CLEVR ensures that your PLM foundation is built with your needs in mind, embedding resilience, agility, and long-term growth into your operations.

Key Takeaway

The aerospace and defense industry are undergoing a period of rapid transformation, driven by technological disruption, rising regulatory demands, evolving sustainability targets, and increased pressure to bring smarter, more integrated products to market faster.

In this context, where traditional tools and siloed systems no longer meet the demands of modern aerospace programs, PLM for aerospace and defense has emerged as a critical backbone.

From accelerating development cycles and supporting AI adoption, to ensuring traceability across sustainability metrics and global supply chains, PLM enables organizations to manage complexity, drive innovation, and maintain compliance in one connected ecosystem.

At CLEVR, with decades of domain expertise, we help aerospace and defense companies unlock this potential, turning complexity into competitive advantage through smart PLM implementations tailored to their goals. By combining deep Siemens Teamcenter knowledge with agile development expertise, CLEVR helps organizations build secure PLM foundations while developing intuitive and compliant applications.

Whether you're starting your PLM journey or scaling an existing system, our team can advise on best practices, guide your system integration strategy, and support complex migrations, ensuring long-term success and faster ROI.

Get in touch to learn more or schedule a consultation.

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Product development teams must design and deliver innovative products faster than ever before. Customer expectations for performance and quality keep climbing, while manufacturing costs and time-to-market are always scrutinized.  It’s no surprise, then, that choosing a computer-aided design (CAD) platform has become a make-or-break decision.

Two names consistently come up in the CAD conversation: Siemens NX and SolidWorks. While both are powerful tool options with advanced 3D modeling tools, they cater to different segments of the engineering world. Which is right for you? This guide breaks down the key differences between these two CAD giants to help you make the best choice for your business needs.

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Short on Time? Here’s a Brief Overview

• Performance: NX is engineered for massive assemblies and complex geometries, delivering enterprise-grade performance. SolidWorks remains effective for everyday mechanical design but is less suited for very large or highly complex projects.
• Learning curve: SolidWorks offers faster onboarding with its intuitive interface, while NX demands significant training investment but rewards users with deeper capabilities.
• Industry focus: NX dominates aerospace, automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and precision-heavy industries. Meanwhile, SolidWorks serves the broader mid-market manufacturing and supplier ecosystem.
• Integration: NX integrates deeply with Siemens’s Teamcenter PLM, while SolidWorks connects to Dassault’s 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

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Core Modeling & Functionality

1. Software overview

NX

Siemens NX is a high-end platform that excels in complex industries such as aerospace and automotive. It’s known for its exceptional power in handling massive assemblies, its advanced surface modeling, and its integrated computer-aided engineering (CAE) capabilities. 

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SolidWorks

SolidWorks leads the mid-market with its intuitive user interface and robust ecosystem, enabling rapid design iteration and a faster learning curve for teams of all sizes.

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2. Complex geometry & hybrid modeling

NX

Siemens NX wins for sophisticated modeling challenges. It combines parametric, direct modeling ability, and subdivision techniques within a single environment. 

The platform’s Synchronous Technology enables engineers to modify any geometry, including imported “dumb” solids, without feature history constraints. Its direct modeling approaches and direct modeling methods also prove invaluable when working with multi-CAD environments or when rapid design iterations matter more than parametric control.

Additionally, NX’s surface modeling capabilities set industry standards for Class-A surfaces required in automotive and aerospace applications. It can achieve G2 and G3 curvature continuity through accurate modeling, which is essential for aerodynamic surfaces and premium consumer products.

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SolidWorks

SolidWorks’s strength is parametric modeling with its intuitive FeatureManager Design Tree, which works well for basic to mid-level mechanical design. However, teams often encounter limitations when scaling up to advanced freeform or hybrid modeling needs. SolidWorks does offer capable surfacing tools, but they lack the depth and control required for the most demanding freeform applications.

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3. Efficiency & Toolset Breadth

NX

NX’s architectural design requires fewer steps to execute complex tasks once users master its extensive toolkit. The breadth of available tools means engineers rarely need external software for advanced modeling challenges.

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SolidWorks

SolidWorks optimizes efficiency for standard engineering tasks, with workflows designed for productivity on common parts and assemblies. However, its architecture can introduce ceilings in capability as project complexity grows — areas where NX’s broader toolkit proves decisive.

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Performance & Handling Large Assemblies

NX and SolidWorks use the same Parasolid geometric kernel, yet their performance diverges dramatically. The difference lies in how each application layer manages data and its direct modeling engines.

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NX

NX was designed for enterprise-scale complexity, handling assemblies with hundreds of thousands of components while maintaining interactive performance. 

It’s robust and stable even with massive datasets, largely due to its sophisticated data management and lightweight representations that scale efficiently.

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SolidWorks

SolidWorks faces well-documented challenges with large assemblies, often leading to performance degradation and heavy RAM consumption. This makes it less reliable for enterprise-scale projects, where NX continues to deliver stability and interactive performance even with hundreds of thousands of components. This is partly due to SolidWorks’s linear FeatureManager Design Tree. It’s intuitive for smaller projects but creates performance bottlenecks when feature dependencies cascade through complex assemblies.

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Usability & Learning Curve

NX

NX has a more significant learning curve, typically requiring additional training before teams achieve full productivity. However, organizations report that the investment pays off with deeper capability, long-term efficiency, and confidence in handling complex projects.

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SolidWorks

New SolidWorks users typically achieve productivity within weeks, making it ideal for organizations requiring rapid skill development. 

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Industry Use Cases

1. Aerospace

NX

Siemens NX dominates the aerospace sector alongside CATIA, with major OEMs relying on its advanced surface modeling and large assembly capabilities. The platform’s composite design tools and certification workflows are essential for modern aircraft development.

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SolidWorks 

SolidWorks serves the aerospace supply chain effectively for component design, tooling, and ground support equipment, where its cost-effectiveness and ease of use matter more than full-aircraft complexity management.

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2. Automotive 

NX 

NX powers major automotive OEMs, including General Motors, where complete vehicle design from Class-A body surfaces to complex powertrain packaging demands the platform's integrated capabilities. The connection to Teamcenter PLM proves important for managing global automotive programs.

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SolidWorks 

SolidWorks has a role within the automotive supplier ecosystem, particularly for smaller components and subsystem validation. However, OEM-level vehicle design, Class-A surfacing, and global program management remain domains where NX sets the standard.

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3. Industrial & heavy machinery

NX

NX is often used when machinery involves extreme scale and complexity — entire automated production lines, large packaging machinery, or heavy construction equipment. Its superior large assembly performance and integrated CAM capabilities offer decisive advantages here.

In fact, JCB leverages NX and Teamcenter to manage over 200,000 product variations across its equipment portfolio.

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SolidWorks

SolidWorks’s robust part modeling, excellent weldment tools, and cost-effectiveness align perfectly with most industrial equipment manufacturers. Fittingly, 13% of SolidWorks’s user base is in machinery — by far its biggest industry segment. 

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Ecosystem & Integration

NX integration with Siemens’s Teamcenter

NX's integration with Teamcenter represents the industry benchmark for CAD-PLM connectivity. Engineers can access comprehensive data management, revision control, and change workflows directly within the NX interface through embedded Active Workspace clients. This eliminates context switching and maintains design momentum.

The broader Siemens ecosystem connects natively to Simcenter for advanced simulation and NX CAM for manufacturing. The June 2025 release introduced NX CFD Designer, embedding fluid flow analysis directly into the CAD interface for design engineers without specialized CFD expertise.

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SolidWorks integration with Dassault’s 3DEXPERIENCE

SolidWorks connects to Dassault’s 3DEXPERIENCE platform through connectors that translate native files into the platform’s unified data structure. While powerful, its integration approach can feel less natural and requires additional setup, unlike NX’s seamless, embedded CAD-PLM connectivity that keeps engineers in flow.

Overall, the 3DEXPERIENCE vision aims to unify design, simulation, and manufacturing in a single cloud environment, potentially offering more comprehensive long-term integration than traditional point solutions.

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Community & Support

NX

NX’s user base is smaller, at approximately 5,700 companies, but these include industry-defining organizations that set standards for entire supply chains. This concentrated expertise provides deep domain knowledge but limits general learning resources.

Regarding support, NX offers comprehensive official support, and its users often benefit from Siemens’s broader industrial automation expertise when integrating with manufacturing systems.

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SolidWorks

SolidWorks benefits from a user community comprising more than 73,000 companies, according to Enlyft. This massive user base creates extensive learning resources, active forums, and readily available talent. The platform's popularity in academic institutions ensures a continuous pipeline of trained users.

Like NX, SolidWorks provides extensive official support.

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Pricing & Licensing

NX

Siemens NX traditionally commanded premium pricing that limited adoption outside large enterprises. However, the new NX X Manufacturing Value-Based Licensing system introduces token-based subscriptions starting around $11,000 annually for 50 tokens. This model allows access to advanced modules only when needed, potentially reducing the total cost of ownership for many organizations.

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SolidWorks

SolidWorks offers transparent subscription pricing starting around $2,820 annually for Standard, $3,456 annually for Professional, and $4,716 annually for Premium versions. Perpetual licenses remain available with higher upfront costs but potential long-term savings for stable environments.

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NX vs. SolidWorks: Pricing example

A hypothetical 50-seat deployment over five years might cost approximately $1.7 million for SolidWorks Premium versus $3.8 million for NX with Teamcenter, including implementation and training. 

While NX often requires higher initial investment, the ROI becomes evident when teams face complex engineering challenges where SolidWorks reaches its limits. NX reduces the need for third-party tools and enables enterprises to consolidate capabilities within a single platform.

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NX vs. SolidWorks: Which Should You Choose?

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CLEVR Is Your Strategic Partner in CAD Platform Selection

Selecting between NX and SolidWorks — or any of their competitors — is a strategic investment that will affect your organization for years, maybe even decades. CLEVR brings deep expertise in both platforms, helping engineering leaders navigate this decision using proven evaluation methodologies.

CLEVR has guided organizations through successful CAD implementations across manufacturing, automotive, and aerospace sectors, ensuring alignment between technology capabilities and business objectives.

Plus, its unique position as a Siemens Platinum Partner and leading Mendix expert enables CLEVR to design integrated solutions spanning CAD, PLM, and low code automation. 

Whether you're evaluating platforms for the first time or considering migration from legacy systems, CLEVR offers the strategic guidance needed to deliver lasting value from your software choices.

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Final Thoughts

There’s no universal winner in the NX versus SolidWorks debate, as each platform excels in its target domain. 

NX delivers unmatched scalability and engineering power, making it the strategic choice for enterprises that demand innovation at scale. SolidWorks remains a popular option for mid-market manufacturers seeking accessibility and fast onboarding, but organizations planning for long-term growth and complexity find NX the more future-ready investment.

Still unsure about the right choice for your organization? Contact CLEVR for a comprehensive CAD platform evaluation workshop. CLEVR’s experts will analyze your unique requirements, coordinate platform trials, and give recommendations based on proven implementation experience.

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Research Methodology

This analysis is built on data from multiple independent sources to ensure a balanced and practical perspective. 

It considers aggregated user satisfaction ratings on G2, in-depth community discussions on Siemens and SolidWorks community forums, and verified case studies from industries ranging from small machine shops to large-scale aerospace manufacturing. 

This information was cross-referenced with expert analysis and technical documentation to verify feature sets and performance claims.