Hexagon launches Nexus for Developers, enabling manufacturers to build innovative digital reality solutions

Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division today announces Nexus for Developers, a dedicated development environment that anyone can use to build native SaaS applications and connected solutions for engineering and manufacturing that utilise the Nexus digital reality platform and its ecosystem.

The Nexus open digital reality platform allows manufacturers to connect Hexagon and third-party engineering, manufacturing and quality assurance products and solutions. It enables real-time collaboration and feedback between engineering and manufacturing in a way that has never before been achieved in the industry. Nexus for Developers will provide the tools to help anyone connect equipment, data and processes to build digital realities where insights are available to people in real time, in context and in one place so they can make better-informed decisions.

Nexus for Developers provides a platform framework via Software Development Kits (SDKs) to easily connect products and solutions to the Hexagon portfolio. An application only needs to be connected once – afterwards it can talk to any other application plugged in to Nexus and share or receive relevant manufacturing data using standard data models. This simplicity helps users to establish and maintain connectivity easily and to quickly improve common workflows and remove manual import and export between SaaS or desktop applications, enabling innovative new digital reality solutions that connect and synchronise disparate tools for real-time collaboration.

The new toolset is intended to supercharge development – democratising access to powerful platform applications with libraries to help connect these applications to back-end services and to quickly build user interfaces, making it easy for an engineering team to solve problems and allowing professional developers to rapidly deploy new, unique services via Nexus. This will include a library which offers reusable user interface (UI) components that accelerate UI development, enabling developers to efficiently build high-quality, feature-rich user experiences, and SDKs that allow developers to enrich their own cloud or desktop applications with the SaaS experiences enabled by Nexus.

Nexus for Developers helps technology and software providers

With Nexus for Developers, Hexagon aims to make it easy for technology vendors to connect their applications to the Nexus platform, creating an ecosystem where third-party tools combine with Hexagon products to deliver powerful manufacturing solutions for customers. Altium is the first company to connect its cloud platform to Nexus, integrating thermal simulation capabilities from Hexagon’s computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software with printed circuit board (PCB) design tools via its Altium 365 platform. Electronic engineers designing the board benefit from Altium’s best-in-class PCB design capabilities using Altium 365. This will provide immediate efficiency savings for Altium customers.

Leigh Gawne, CTO, Altium commented: “We were able to build this proof of concept in just a couple of weeks. By bringing together data from Hexagon’s complementary engineering and manufacturing applications Altium 365 customers are able to speed up product development and reduce waste, clearly demonstrating the value of the Nexus open platform and its capability in connecting different products and platforms together to deliver innovative, connected smart digital realities.”

Nexus for Developers helps engineering teams

Engineers in small and large companies globally must solve problems every day: systems that don’t talk, enterprise platforms that only IT can change, a mix of office tools like Excel; scripts, engineering or operational technology running from locally stored files that can be distributed ad hoc throughout teams. Nexus for Developers provides easy-to-implement solutions to these problems too.

Hexagon’s Applied Solutions engineering team specialises in design and optimisation of electro-mechanical systems, a job which requires specific calculations and reports repeatedly. These calculations reflect the expertise and intellectual property of the team and can be spread across a range of tools and applications and written with a variety of programming languages. Nexus for Developers helps drive productivity for the Applied Solutions team by allowing them to convert these many different calculations into a unified cloud-native application with modern UI that is accessible by all teams, wherever they are in the world.

Chris Halse, Head of Engineering for the Applied Solutions team at Hexagon, comments: “Our first application built with Nexus for Developers is a revelation for the team, replacing a number of scripts and spreadsheet files with a robust modern web interface where any of our global team can perform routine calculations. We use CAE applications such as Romax, MSC Nastran, Adams and Cradle CFD every day, it’s a no-brainer to use Nexus to connect these applications and drive significant efficiencies. I don’t think it will be long before we can manage the majority of our calculations through apps built on Nexus and publish them to all our teams to access through their Nexus login.”

Arno Zinke, Senior Vice President, Software Engineering at Hexagon, commented: “Nexus is helping manufacturers to develop a new kind of workflow, one which brings real-time collaboration to the fore, removes silos and promotes innovation at speed. With Nexus for Developers, we want to supercharge productivity, empowering teams to build these connected solutions without in-depth programming knowledge and without having to worry about the underlying platform that facilitates it. Hexagon and third-party applications alike can be connected, providing true flexibility for users to self-serve and build new applications and solutions with minimal support from the Nexus platform team.”

Early access to Nexus for Developers is now available, with a full launch scheduled for late 2023. Customers interested in onboarding to Nexus for Developers are encouraged to register for the opportunity to use the platform and tools available and to work with Hexagon to build on the capabilities of the platform, technology partners and connected systems and data.