Bring Your Own Software to Flux

Priya leads mechanical analysis at a robotics company. Her team checks every bracket, housing, and gear mount in Altair before a part goes to the machine shop. On Monday, her electronics lead changed the motor controller board, and the board moved 4 mm toward the arm's shoulder joint. The enclosure changed with it. The stiffness check had to run again.

Before, that meant a long queue. Export the STEP file. Email it to the analysis workstation. Wait for the one machine with the right software and the right license. Rebuild the load case. Send a screenshot back to the team. Two days, if nobody else was in the queue.

Now Priya types one sentence into the project chat: "Run our stiffness check on the new shoulder enclosure with the controller board in its new position." Flux starts a cloud computer with her team's analysis setup on it, runs the check, and puts the results next to the design. Her electronics lead reads them in the same chat. The whole loop takes an hour.

Today, Flux customers can bring their own software into Flux. Analysis tools, vendor tools, in-house programs, and programs the Flux agent writes for you all run on Flux's cloud computers, next to your design, for your whole team.

Your tools, next to the design

Flux already designs complete devices. It does the schematic, the PCB, the enclosure, the mechanism, the firmware, the wire harness, and the simulations in one project. Every hardware team also has its own tools: the solver the analysis group trusts, the vendor programmer for a microcontroller, the FPGA simulator, the scripts that read the test-station logs.

Those tools used to live on a few desktops. Now they live where the design lives. Ask Flux for the software you need, and Flux installs it on its own cloud computer, runs it, and tests it. You do not install anything on your laptop.

• Commercial EDA and MCAD tools. Altium Designer, SOLIDWORKS, Siemens NX, and the other tools your team has licenses for.
• Analysis tools. Structural, thermal, CFD, and electromagnetic solvers, such as Altair HyperWorks, Ansys, and OpenFOAM.
• Vendor tools. Microcontroller toolchains, FPGA tools, programmers, and calculators from your silicon vendors.
• Windows-only software. Flux runs Windows computers too, so the program that runs only on Windows works from a Mac or a Chromebook.
• In-house software. The test scripts, rule checkers, and report generators your team already wrote.
• Software that does not exist yet. Flux writes it for you.

When the tool does not exist, Flux writes it

Daniel is a test engineer at the same company. Every production run of the motor controller makes thousands of test-station log files. He wanted one report: which boards draw too much current at stall, and on which station.

He asked Flux: "Write a tool that reads our end-of-line test logs and flags boards that fail the stall-current limit in this project's requirements." Flux wrote the program, ran it on last week's logs, compared the result with the limits in the project, and fixed two parsing problems it found on its own. Then Daniel asked Flux to save the computer. The next run takes one prompt.

The same thing works for mechanical work. Ask Flux for a script that sweeps the wall thickness of a housing, meshes each version, and reports the mass and the first natural frequency. Flux writes it, runs it, and keeps it.

Set up once. Use it every time.

Setup work should happen one time. When Flux has a computer with the right tools on it, ask Flux to save it. Flux shows a card in the chat with the image name, the software, and its internet access. Select Save Image, and the setup is ready for the next job.

In the next chat, and in the next project, ask Flux to use it: "Use our stiffness-check image and run it on the new gripper housing." Flux starts a computer with everything already installed. No reinstall. No setup notes. No "it works on my machine".

Your licenses and keys stay yours

Commercial engineering software needs a license, an account, or an API key. When Flux needs one, Flux asks you for it in the chat. You enter it once in a secure dialog, choose the websites that may receive it, and choose who can use it: this chat, this project, all your projects, or everyone in your organization.

Flux never sees the key. The computer holds only a placeholder. Flux sends the real value only to the websites that you allowed, such as your license server. A saved image holds only the placeholder too, so you can share the image with the team and keep the key under your control.

You control the network

Each custom image has its own internet access. When Flux saves an image, it sets the access that the software needs, and the save card shows it before you confirm:

• Full internet for software that downloads updates and libraries.
• Only listed domains for software that needs only your license server and its vendor's update site.
• No internet for analysis jobs on sensitive designs.

Change it at any time in Settings → Computers. The settings show whether Flux set the value or you changed it, and you can reset it to the value that Flux set. When you change the access or turn an image off, Flux knows it and tells your team why a download or a job does not work.

Built for the whole team

A tool on one engineer's desktop helps one engineer. A saved image in Flux helps the whole team. In a Flux organization, every member can use the team's images. Admins manage them in Settings → Computers.

• One setup for everyone. The electronics engineer runs the same analysis as the mechanical engineer, with the same versions.
• Results in the project. Every run and every result shows in the project chat, where reviewers can read them.
• Turn an image off at any time. Flux knows when an image is off and tells your team why.

The best of all worlds

You get Flux's built-in design and simulation tools, the tools your team already trusts, and new tools that Flux writes for you. All of them run in the cloud, in one project, for the whole team.

Prompts to try

• "Install OpenFOAM and run an airflow study for this enclosure at full fan speed."
• "Set up a Windows computer with LTspice and run the power-stage simulation at full load."
• "Install Verilator, write a smoke test for our FPGA module, and run it."
• "Set up a Windows computer with Altium Designer. Ask me for our license and compare the rules of our Altium board with this project."
• "Install SOLIDWORKS on a Windows computer with our license. Open our gearbox assembly and export each part as a STEP file."
• "Install Altair HyperWorks with our license server and run the stiffness study of this bracket at the new motor load."
• "Set up Ansys HFSS with our license and simulate the antenna on this board in its enclosure."
• "Install Siemens NX and our company templates, then run the interference check of this robot arm assembly."
• "Write a tool that reads our test-station logs and flags boards that fail the current limits."
• "Write a script that sweeps the wall thickness of this housing and reports mass and first natural frequency."
• "Save this computer as an image so the team can use this setup in every project."

Open a project in Flux and ask Flux to set up your software.