Straw Poll - UGS NX 5 New Look a Hit

LONG BEACH, California, April 25, 2007 - At the UGS' annual user meeting, NX users got a chance to see NX 5 with its overhauled interface, fruit of an enormous effort on which UGS may have spent half a million man-hours of labor. The scene was like a Hollywood screening, where the producers wait with bated breath and hope the audience laughs in the right places.

I was wondering how ease of use improvements would be received by veteran users. Though NX had a reputation of taking a while to master, would veteran users fight change? After all, for them, once they learned it, it was easy to use.

"But even companies that have a history of Unigraphics use have to train new users," pointed out an attendee who was responsible for hundreds of users at his company. But won't your current users have to retrain, I persisted. He saw re-training as minimal. One user wanted NX 5 right away. "There's a lot to like." His company only upgraded every other release but he was going to try see if he could get them to upgrade sooner. Another user I spoke with said there'd be no retraining at all. Several other users gave NX 5 the thumbs up. I can't say it was a lovefest --engineers are not prone to overt emotion -- but the consensus was positive. Only one user was less than enthusiastic, saying the new interface was just "okay."

Overall, I think the producers can breathe a sigh of relief.