Editor’s Pick: PTC Updates Creo

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

IMHO, when PTC announced Creo, they set a bar high for themselves—which, of course, means good things for you—so I’ve been interested to see where they’d go with it. Well, PTC recently released version 2.0 of the Creo product design system, and the company seems to have moved the bar up yet again by making this release a tough act to follow. Version 2.0 sees more than 490 enhancements across the Creo app family—much more than I can hope to mention here. Suffice it to say, whether your gig is parametric or direct modeling, moving from 2D to 3D design,  or all the above, Creo 2.0 has some goodies for you. Here’s a few that turned my head.

An interesting new role-specific app introduced in Creo 2.0 is called the Options Modeler. It’s the tenth app in the Creo suite. What struck me about the Options Modeler is how it can help create and validate modular product designs early in the cycle. These modular designs can be large or small,  complex or simple 3D assemblies. Doesn’t matter. What does matter to you is that you can create re-usable product modules and define how they interface and assemble. Later, you can take the model and quickly re-use it to create and validate a new customer-specific product. When you combine Options Modeler with PTC’s Windchill product lifecycle management system, you can even generate and validate 3D representations of product configurations defined by a bill of materials.

With Creo Parametric 2.0, there are new capabilities for freeform surfaces, 3D cross sections, measurements, and change tracking. All of these are covered in today’s Pick of the Week write-up, so I’m going to skip right to the new measure tool. Changes here sound like they can help you gain detailed knowledge into key dimensions and measurements of a selected surface. Basically, what it does is give you control over how and where measured results display on-screen. Then, this I like, it allows for simple re-use of the displayed values into other applications, even a Word doc.

Also very interesting is the new track changes capability in Creo Parametric 2.0. This lets you view, accept, or reject model changes made by others using Creo Direct. That is a cool addition that will speed up processes. It means that you can spread a design around the company—say, to manufacturing—and they can move on with their work and make model changes to their heart’s content using Creo Direct. Or sales engineers can modify a design in Creo Direct on the fly with a client. None of that, however, makes a change to your design intent. You retain full control over what changes are reflected in the parametric model because you can yea or nay them.

Out of room and I just barely scratched the surface. You can read more about Creo 2.0 in today’s Pick of the Week write-up. There’s lots of links to get you started learning more. Also, you’ll find some details on PTC’s new version of Windchill that was announced at the same time as Creo 2.0. It has new integration with the company’s Integrity software system lifecycle management technology, which creates some pretty neat sounding requirements management capabilities. Windchill 10.1 also has a new mobile app for access to current product and process information from anywhere.

Thanks, pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s pick of the week write-up.

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