Measuring Excellence: On the Ground at Hexagon Live in Fabulous Las Vegas

Two weeks ago, I drove approximately 66 miles from Dayton, Ohio to the Cincinnati airport in northern Kentucky. I then flew about 595 miles to Minneapolis, Minnesota, switched planes, and flew another approximately 1,296 miles to the desert of Las Vegas. An Uber picked me up at Harry Reid International Airport and drove me another 4.8 miles to the beautiful and blissfully air conditioned Fontainebleu Las Vegas, with its 150,000-square-foot casino that I did not enter a single time except on my way to dinner or the sessions at Hexagon Live.

“To measure is to know.”

That’s what Ola Rollén, CEO of Greenbridge and the Chairman of the Board for Hexagon AB, said in his opening keynote. From cubits and furlongs to feet, miles, and kilometers, measurement technologies are integral to our way of life.

Hexagon, the global leader in measurement technologies, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Rollén gave a brief overview of the company’s history, from sensor development in 2000 to the “watershed moment” in 2010 of “bridging the physical world with the digital” through the use of digital twins.

“Use your capabilities in the software world to simulate and make better before you create the physical product,” he explained.

He shared the example of Dr. Andrew Tallon, who was given permission in 2015 to use laser scanners to capture the intricate details of Notre-Dame Cathedral. Nothing was done with the data until 2019, when the historic Gothic building caught on fire. Dr. Tallon had sadly passed away by this point, but his widow shared his scans with the project team, so they could better reconstruct the cathedral through the use of a digital twin.

Hexagon Announcements

Rollén shared two big Hexagon announcements during his keynote, starting with a decision the Board of Directors made to spin off two of its older acquisitions—ETQ and Bricsys—along with the company’s Asset Lifecycle Intelligence (ALI) and Safety, Infrastructure and Geospatial (SIG) divisions, into a separate company. He welcomed Mattias Stenberg, the president of the ALI division, to the stage, and announced that he would be the CEO of the resulting industrial software and SaaS business, Octave, launching in early 2026.

“We’re taking it up an octave!” Stenberg told us.

He explained that Octave will have “the flexibility to accelerate innovation and establish a powerful platform for future M&A.” Stenberg also said that with 7,500 employees and €1.5 billion in revenue right off the bat, it’s a unicorn company from the first day. Octave will be focused on designing, building, operating, and protecting the world’s most mission-critical assets, like data centers, electric generation and grid infrastructure, critical transport hubs and corridors, and more.

Rollén returned and told the gathered crowd that the future we’re headed for is true autonomy. He asked attendees to raise their hands if they had two or more children, and congratulated them on helping to ensure our future, explaining that people are having fewer children, which will eventually “cause a global economic crisis.” As someone who is childless by choice, I was a little taken aback (and mildly offended) by this, but I understood his point when he welcomed Arnaud Robert, President of Hexagon Robotics, to the stage for the second big announcement: AEON.

The humanoid robot, which zipped out onstage a few minutes later and waved to everyone, combines Hexagon’s sensor suite with advanced locomotion, spatial intelligence, and AI-driven mission control to address labor shortages and meet real-world customer needs. Robert said that robots need to be multi-purpose and adaptable, able to sort small pieces one day, like nuts and bolts, and then larger, bulkier parts the next.

AEON, which is powered by NVIDIA technologies, is meant to complement the human workforce, able to complete tedious, even dangerous, tasks alongside people. The Robotics division is partnering with Schaeffler and Pilatus to pilot the robot across manipulation, reality capture, machine tending, and part inspection use cases.

Wyve’s 3D Printed Surfboards

While Hexagon is not a 3D printing company, its many solutions, like Geomagic, are often used in tandem with 3D printing. There were a few presentations at the event that showcased these applications, starting with one about French company Wyve, which makes bio-based surfboards. By utilizing FFF 3D printing, the surfboards last longer, are more lightweight, and less expensive.

“We’d like to adjust the skeleton of every surfboard, that’s what we’re working on,” explained Wyve surf scientist Paul-Élie Charles.

Charles was joined by Benjamin Ostré, Associate Professor at the University of Toulon’s Mapiem Laboratoire (Polymer Materials Interfaces Marine Environment Laboratory). They said that Wyve’s 3D printed surfboards, which measure about 2 meters long, are more durable than traditional surfboards because they’re made out of strong plastic, rather than fiberglass and epoxy laminate.

Using Hexagon’s laser scanning capabilities, the researchers captured data from the body of a traditional surfboard and created a digital twin to reverse engineer it. Charles and Ostré explained the importance of placing just the right amount of material for the Wyve board exactly where it’s needed; as we know, 3D printing is perfect for this. Several of Hexagon’s software solutions were also used during the process, such as Digimat and ESPRIT EDGE. Ultimately, the core of each Wyve surfboard is printed with variable geometry, with the structure’s densities and thicknesses optimized, as the company explains on its website, “in relation to the surfing style proposed by the board’s shape.” The core is printed in one piece, and it takes roughly 40 hours of printing to fabricate a board that’s 5′-6′ long, while a 7′-8′ board is more like 60 print hours.

Several PhD students with the Mapiem Laboratory worked with Wyve on the 3D printed surfboards, and two scientific papers were published about the work as well.

“We’re trying to find the perfect mechanical characteristics of the board so every surfer, everywhere in the world, can use it, with materials that won’t affect the environment,” Charles said.

3D Printed Scapula Reconstruction

Medical AM applications are one of my favorite things to write about, so I was excited to attend a presentation by Hexagon’s Mathieu Perennou, Global Strategy and Business Development Director, Additive Manufacturing, and Lee Goodwin, Principal Application Engineer at PTC. They shared a case worked on by Dr. Solomon Dadia with Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and Dr. Ronen Ben Horin, PTC’s VP of Technology, regarding a 16-year-old girl with Ewing sarcoma, a very rare cancer that causes bone degeneration. The patient was experiencing significant pain and swelling in her right shoulder, and an MRI showed significant bone loss.

Goodwin explained that the scapula, which is connected to nearly 20 different muscles, is “a very crucial bone,” making a person’s arm work “from a macro standpoint.” So a personalized implant was crucial for the patient to maintain a working arm. There were several important design considerations to take into account for the 3D printed implant, including:

• preserving the patient’s original anatomical shape, volume, and kinematics (how it moves)
• minimizing weight while optimizing mechanical properties
• implementing an advanced lattice structure to facilitate connective tissue and muscle regeneration
• using advanced mechanical simulations to verify the implant’s load-bearing capacity

They chose titanium for the implant, which is nine times stronger, four times stiffer, and three times more dense than human bone. This material was also chosen because much of the weight can be removed from the final implant. In an earlier conversation, Perennou had explained to me that if an implant is too strong, the surrounding bone will become weaker and degenerate, because it essentially thinks that the implant can take on all of the stress. So a weaker implant can be better.

Using MRI scanning, the team captured the basic shape of the healthy scapula, and then did a mirror image. The implant was designed using PTC Creo CAD software. Goodwin explained that a lattice structure was used so bones would attach to the implant. Analysis capabilities in the software were used to find stresses and deformations in the implant to ensure that it was flexible as well as strong. The Creo design was then brought over to Hexagon’s AM STUDIO build preparation software to determine the ideal printing position and generate a slice file. Simufact Additive software, which Perennou called a “virtual printer,” was used to calculate the distortions “so you can compensate and mitigate any manufacturing issues ahead of time.”

The implant was printed on an EOS M290, and after post-processing, Hexagon’s VGStudio Max was used to scan it for qualification and inspection purposes. Finally, the surgeon signed off on the 3D printed implant, and the young patient once again had a working arm; Goodwin said she is currently undergoing rehabilitation.

The whole process, from scanning and design to 3D printing and inspection, took just four days. If that isn’t a ringing endorsement for 3D printing in the medical sector, I don’t know what is!

Boeing Leveraging an AM Digital Thread

Nick Mulé, Director of Additive Manufacturing for Boeing, shared how the aerospace giant achieves quality at scale by leveraging an AM digital thread.

“Additive has been flying the Boeing platform for over 20 years,” he told us.

Since 2016, Boeing has been 3D printing for critical applications, like satellites, command horn antenna, and engine mounts, to name a few.

Mulé’s Boeing AM team (BAM) is on the digital integration side of things, with a wide range of portfolios, including build file development, modeling and simulation for additive, machine learning, and digital twins. While a lot of work is being done in the polymer space for applications like tooling, Boeing’s heaviest focus is on metal powder bed fusion and DED. He explained that when it comes to using AM, Boeing is looking for value add: will the technology enhance performance, increase quality, enable producibility and reduce assembly? The company has recently seen a lot of AM value add in the satellite space, such as heat exchangers and smallsats.

“So, why is digital transformation important?” he asked us.

You consolidate expertise in a company, so you can have tight control over your products. But, as we work to scale, Mulé said we “have to be mindful of additive,” because while it can be very useful, there are a lot of variables that have to be optimized and controlled so the parts come out exactly right. These include raw material variables (chemical composition, traceability, qualified suppliers), design and modeling variables (DfAM and build file generation), manufacturing process variables (robust parameters in place, quality control, machine qualification), and more.

“Once you lock those down to meet aerospace requirements, you don’t want the variables to change.”

So how do we approach the digital thread? Mulé explained that it’s possible to have terabytes worth of data without any context, which can be hard later when you’re trying to take action on something. So the goal is to transition so the data is stored on the 3D printer, with details like geometry included to add context and insight. As Mulé said, “your models are only as good as your data.” So when you’re working to develop a new additive process, you can look at the scan-level data stored in the printer, and combine it with analysis datasets to figure out more ways to optimize AM.

There are many trends at the ecosystem level that following an AM digital thread could help with, such as integrating design with simulation and scan path generation, using a thermal model for scan-level temperature gradient prediction, validating process monitoring for DfAM feedback to optimize process control, and in-process machining for better surface and dimensional control.

Americas State of Manufacturing 2025 Report

During Hexagon Live, the company shared the results of “The Americas State of Manufacturing 2025 Report.” Conducted by Dynata and commissioned by Hexagon, the report surveyed 500 professionals from the manufacturing industry, and not just CEOs, but entry-level employees and senior managers as well. I appreciated that Hexagon held a special session just for the assembled journalists to share some of the initial data.

“Manufacturing has a perception problem when speaking with Gen Z,” explained Paul Rogers, President of Americas and Asia Pacific for Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence. “They expect digital, clean, high-tech environments, with automation, and not dark, dirty factories.”

Rogers also noted that it’s a big investment to train and re-educate the existing workforce for a digital, automated environment, and can be hard to justify ROI of these efforts. The first statistic he shared was very reflective of this, as only 8% of those surveyed said that enough is being done to reskill the workforce.

Another key finding was a somewhat disturbing disconnect between leadership and their employees. 60% of respondents believe they’re doing enough to make the manufacturing industry more appealing to new talent, but while 86% of executives believe these efforts have increased interest in manufacturing, only 59% of entry-level workers agreed.

Rogers said that by 2033, there will be 3.8 million available manufacturing jobs, but only 1.9 million of those positions will be filled, which is a pretty big gap. Some of this is due to some perception challenges about manufacturing jobs, such as limited career growth, outdated or unsafe workplaces, low-skill or repetitive work, and a male-dominated culture. Additionally, 56% of manufacturing professionals are concerned about tariffs and policy changes, 45% are worried about supply chain disruptions, and 44% think that inflation will be a problem. These issues could also impact the decisions of people who might be interested in working in the manufacturing industry.

“This guides our portfolio,” Rogers said. “How do we help manufacturers reduce their reliance on employees when there aren’t enough?”

One example is the newly released humanoid robot AEON, but many of Hexagon’s other technologies can also help with this. You could see many examples on the show floor, which was referred to as The Zone. There were frequent sessions showcasing the robot at work, and I also got a hands-on look at the new Hexagon Maestro digital CMM system, as well as Hexagon TeleOp, a remote control technology designed for safe operation of heavy machinery and equipment.

Rogers shared another troubling result: 72% of respondents say that outdated technology is currently preventing them from attracting and retaining workers, which is a pretty critical barrier. But, 96% believe that their operations will be positively transformed by technology in the next five years, whether through easy integrations or time and cost savings. Plus, as previously mentioned, plenty of Hexagon’s solutions can help democratize manufacturing. The Leica ATS800 tracker helps eliminate bottlenecks associated with large parts, while ESPRIT EDGE software uses AI-driven programming to optimize toolpaths for complicated machines. The company’s fast, modular suite of robotic inspection cells, PRESTO Quality Stations, makes automated quality inspection accessible, and the Nexus platform uses cloud technology to connect manufacturing and engineering systems.

“Automation is no longer a threat to the manufacturing industry, but an expectation,” Rogers said.

Final Recap

I really enjoyed my time at Hexagon Live! The event was run incredibly smoothly, with very few glitches; at least none that I noticed. There was a good mix of main keynote presentations and smaller, more focused presentations, and I learned a lot about Hexagon and its massive portfolio of solutions. Stay tuned for more news from Hexagon Live, and until then, enjoy some more event pictures below!

 

All images courtesy of Sarah Saunders