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Pro/Engineer

PTC announces Creo 2.0, Windchill 10.1, and shake-and-break 1.0

April 12, 2012 By Evan Yares Leave a Comment

This week, PRC announced Creo 2.0 and Windchill 10.1. These aren’t big releases in the grand scheme of things, but they are important releases, and show that PTC is working hard to deliver on what it’s promised.

Creo 2.0

This release includes fresh and updated releases of the 9 existing Creo apps, and adds a 10th new app called Options Modeler, which supports design-to-order and assemble-to-order. Picture, if you will, the kind of capabilities that major PTC customers such as Caterpillar and Deere might need, and you’ll get an idea of what Options Modeler is about. It integrates with Windchill, and can handle arbitrarily large and complex assemblies. It’s available today an extension to Creo Parametric and will be available as a stand-alone app in June.

With the new release, PTC is offering the free Creo Sketch app for Apple devices, and Creo Layout for doing 2D layouts as a front-end to 3D design.

Overall, PTC has added more than 490 enhancements througought the Creo like. PTC says that the quality, performance and usability of version 2.0 of the entire Creo family is dramatically improved from version 1.0.

Windchill 10.1

PTC has integrated Integrity with Windchill, and are leveraging it for comprehensive requirements management. Integrity is the tool PTC customers will use to capture and, ultimately, trace customer requirements across the product development lifecycle to ensure the product delivered most perfectly matches the product desired. Of particular note: PTC is using Integrity to manage requirements in its own development processes.

PTC has enhanced Windchill in several key areas, adding capabilities to help users ensure compliance with government relations and with industry quality standards. One important enhancement is the ability to monitor for the use of “conflict minerals” in a given product. They’ve also improved how reliability analysis is communicated, to ensure faster resolution of issues stemming from customer complaints.

With the introduction of Windchill Mobile, PTC is now supporting the iPad and iPhone. The software includes the “shake and break” feature demonstrated at last year’s PlanetPTC Live, in which users can “explode” the diagram of a product assembly by simply shaking their mobile device to see the internal parts in greater detail. I suggested an Etch-a-Sketch function, where turning it upside down and shaking it would erase your project files—but the PTC people told me that Microsoft already had a patent on that function, back from the days of Windows ME.

The official press releases follow:

 

 

PTC Advances MCAD Strategy with Release of Creo 2.0

Latest Release Introduces New App for Modular Product Design, Enhances Apps for Concept Design, and Improves User Productivity Across Creo Family

NEEDHAM, MA. – April 9, 2012 – PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) today announced Creo® 2.0, the latest release of its revolutionary new generation of product design software.  Last June, PTC challenged the industry paradigm with the introduction of the first nine “apps” in its Creo family – conceived, in part, to enable a much wider range of roles to contribute to the design process with a set of integrated, purpose-built tools.  With Creo 2.0, PTC introduces a new role-specific app supporting modular product design that extends how organizations can approach concept design, and delivers significant productivity enhancements to its existing Creo apps.

“The release of Creo 2.0 demonstrates PTC’s unwavering commitment to deliver against our Creo strategy and solve the chronic challenges customers face with traditional CAD tools,” said Michael Campbell, divisional general manager MCAD segment, PTC.  “Built on PTC’s heritage of innovation, Creo rethinks the very nature of product design, increasing collaboration and protecting data fidelity across any user role, any design mode, or any data source.  Today, PTC is also delivering the first technology component in its vision for managing modular product designs driven by the bill of materials.”

Modular Product Design

With Creo 2.0, PTC introduces a 10th app to the Creo family – Creo Options Modeler™ – a new role-specific app built for designers who need to create or validate modular product designs in 3D early in a design cycle.  The new app, available this summer, delivers a dedicated, easy-to-use, powerful set of capabilities to build accurate, up-to-date, precise 3D-based product assemblies, irrespective of size or complexity. When used with Creo Parametric™, Creo Options Modeler enables teams to validate precise mass, center of gravity, and even check and resolve critical issues like interference for modular designs.

Creo Options Modeler contributes to PTC’s AnyBOM™ Assembly technology vision, which promises to give teams the power and scalability needed to create, validate and reuse information for modular product architectures.  By combining Creo Options Modeler with PTC’s Windchill® product lifecycle management software, manufacturers can generate and validate precise 3D representations of product configurations defined by an individual bill of materials.

By enabling easier reuse of existing 3D models and through innovative interface tagging, the new app can reduce process errors and engineering rework.  As a member of the Creo product family, Creo Options Modeler also seamlessly leverages and shares data between other Creo apps, and with other people involved in the design process and beyond, further increasing detailed design and downstream process productivity.  

Rethinking Concept Design

Many companies prefer to start concept designs in 2D to quickly explore multiple options before moving to build more complex 3D models.  With Creo 2.0, PTC delivers on its vision for enabling companies to make the most of this early stage of their product development process.  The new releases of Creo Parametric, Creo Direct™, the free Creo Sketch™ (now available on Mac OS X with this release), and Creo Layout™ combine to greatly enhance collaboration, innovation and design exploration during concept design.  Since all Creo apps share a common data model, 2D geometry and design data can be easily shared by all users and apps and can be re-used later in the design process to accelerate the transition to the detailed design phase.

In Creo Layout 2.0, PTC is helping to solve the specific problem of transitioning from 2D to 3D, allowing users to easily create a layout of complex assemblies, quickly explore design alternatives, import a variety of 2D CAD file types, sketch and modify 2D geometry, organize information with groups, tags and structure as well as dimensions, notes and tables.  Once created, a 2D design in Creo Layout can serve as the basis for 3D models, allowing users to create assemblies in 2D or reference 2D geometry to create part features, and any changes made in 2D are reflected in 3D upon regeneration.

Productivity Enhancements

In the new release, PTC delivers more than 490 enhancements to the Creo app family, all designed to optimize the user experience and increase design productivity. 

Creo Parametric enables increased productivity and streamlining of the overall product design process with:

·        Freeform Surfaces – With the enhanced freestyle capabilities, designers can quickly and easily create more refined surfaces with higher levels of detail while still maintaining top level control over the general freeform shape. This significantly reduces the time to move concepts to precise, highly-detailed aesthetic product designs.

·        Cross-sections – Designers working in 3D cross-sections gain complete product insight with new, intuitive, and fast ways to create and dynamically re-position the sections, including instant access directly from the model tree.  Real-time interference detection within a section together with 2D visualization helps designers fully visualize the design, design changes, and detect and address potential issues early.  The new tools significantly enhance productivity when working in cross-sections and provide a rich design environment that accelerates the overall design process.

·       Measure – The new streamlined measure tool offers significant performance and usability improvements.  Designers can quickly gain detailed insight into key dimensions and measurements of any selected surface.  By controlling how and where measured results are displayed on-screen, and allowing for simple re-use of the displayed values into other applications, such as a Word document, designers can improve the efficiency and accuracy of leveraging precise measurements during the design process.

·        Track Changes – The new track changes capability in Creo Parametric allows designers to view, accept or reject model changes made by others using Creo Direct.  Designers can now work with a broader range of roles across the company while still maintaining full control of how changes are reflected in the parametric model.  This ensures design intent is fully maintained. Irrespective of modeling approach or Creo app, teams can now truly work together.

Overall, Creo Parametric delivers state-of-the-art user experience, new capabilities, automates common tasks, improves performance with streamlined workflows and enables dramatically improved overall design productivity.

Beyond Creo Parametric, PTC delivers significant enhancements to other Creo apps.  New capabilities in Creo Direct help accelerate bid-proposals and early concept design.  Casual users can now quickly and easily create new compelling 3D designs.  They also can easily modify models by reference to existing geometry of available parts and assemblies or quickly, but precisely place multiple parts and assemblies into position with the new intelligent snapping capabilities.

And as Creo Direct seamlessly works with Creo Parametric and other Creo apps, any 3D design can be shared by users across the enterprise design process.

In addition, this latest release greatly simplifies the installation process for Creo, only downloading and installing the Creo apps specific to a customer’s environment and license entitlement. This speeds download and significantly simplifies installation and configuration enabling teams to get up and running with Creo more quickly than ever before.

More information will be shared at PTC’s upcoming annual user event, PlanetPTC Live.

Additional Resources:

·        Creo Product Page  (website)

·        Creo Options Modeler  (website)

·        Creo Parametric  (datasheet)

·        Creo Layout  (datasheet)

·        Creo 2.0 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

·        Creo 2.0 Top Ten Reasons to Upgrade (datasheet)

·        Introduction to Creo Layout  (video)

·        Images & Captions

·         Creo Ready Software and Hardware Partners

Availability

Creo Options Modeler is available for purchase today as an extension of Creo Parametric.  It is expected to be available as a stand-alone app in June 2012.  All other Creo 2.0 apps are available now.

About PTC

PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) enables manufacturers to achieve maximum value from their product strategies with software and services designed to optimize key business processes throughout the entire product lifecycle – from conception and design to sourcing and service. PTC’s integral solution portfolio enables customers to unleash product innovation, improve collaboration and ensure product data integrity within engineering and across the enterprise, supply chain and service partner networks. Founded in 1985, PTC employs over 6,000 professionals serving more than 27,000 customers worldwide. More information can be found at www.ptc.com.

PTC Extends Windchill Capabilities, Integrates with Integrity

Company Leverages Integrity for Comprehensive Requirements Management

NEEDHAM, MA. – April 9, 2012 – PTC® (Nasdaq: PMTC) today announced the latest version of its Windchill® product lifecycle management (PLM) software, which is now also integrated with PTC’s recently acquired Integrity™ software system lifecycle management technology.  Windchill 10.1 introduces sweeping enhancements to the product’s capabilities in a wide range of areas, while integrating Windchill with Integrity raises the bar for how manufacturers gather and manage requirements and trace related changes.  In addition, Windchill Mobile™ is now available from the Apple iTunes store for the iPad and iPhone.

“At PTC, our goal is to help manufacturers find new ways to compete in their markets, and to make their success repeatable over time,” said Brian Shepherd, executive vice president, PLM Segment, PTC.  “With this new version of Windchill, we’ve not only enhanced a number of critical functional areas, but we’ve also made major improvements to the user experience and serviceability of the product across-the-board.  We believe that PTC is continuing to set the pace for the value companies can generate when they deploy enterprise-class PLM technology.”

Do More: Comprehensive Requirements Management from Integrity

Less than a year after being acquired by PTC Integrity is dramatically expanding PTC’s footprint of capabilities.  Specifically, PTC has integrated Windchill and Integrity to combine the rich, collaborative requirements authoring and management capabilities of Integrity with the powerful “flow-down” traceability offered in Windchill.  This combination delivers powerful, comprehensive requirements management capabilities and enables manufacturers to improve product quality, reduce rework and improve time to market.

In addition, Windchill now integrates with the software change and configuration management capabilities of Integrity – and other leading tools – to manage defects and issues, as well as enable software releases to be synchronized with product configurations.

Requirements gathering and management is one of the most critical aspects of a product’s lifecycle.  According to industry analyst firm CIMdata, “Requirements management is all about balance—preventing one class of requirements from overriding another is critical. Effective requirements management ensures that the voice of the customer is captured and managed throughout the lifecycle of the product. This enables a company to design, build, and deliver products and services that meet or exceed their customers’ needs and expectations.”[1]

In addition, Windchill’s core configuration management capabilities have been further enhanced to provide advanced support for configurable products.  Together with new digital mock-up capabilities in Creo® 2.0, these enhancements in Windchill contribute to PTC’s AnyBOM™ Assembly technology vision; promising to give teams the power and scalability needed to create, validate and reuse information for modular product architectures. 

PTC is also extending the breadth of product-related content that can be managed in Windchill for retail and consumer product companies.  With a new version of its FlexPLM technology, companies can now reference CAD models managed in a Windchill environment – giving retail product designers much greater visibility and understanding of how to work with products that have both hard and soft goods (e.g. a chair’s frame and fabric).

Know More: Track Compliance, Quality, Cost

In the critical area of compliance, PTC has extended Windchill’s capabilities for tracking and monitoring regulated materials use.  For example, the recent Conflict Minerals legislation passed by the US Government drove the introduction of new management and reporting capabilities to help manufacturers identify and assess the compliance status of products containing the regulated minerals of tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold and their many derivatives. This allows companies to effectively protect their corporate brands, mitigate risk of non-compliance with government regulations and customer requirements, and avoid possible fines and penalties.

To further assist manufacturers with their quality initiatives, PTC has enhanced how Windchill analyzes the latest product structure information to provide early and accurate insight into product reliability.  For example, critical-to-quality characteristics identified in Creo are automatically communicated to Windchill Quality™ offerings for risk and reliability analysis, associating these characteristics with the test plans and manufacturing controls designed to ensure their quality.  A new Windchill Customer Experience Management™ module provides a highly-structured and automated process flow to trace and respond to customer complaints about product quality.  This enables a company to consistently resolve quality issues in a manner compliant with government regulations or quality management standards.

PTC has also enhanced how companies can accurately track product cost estimates and maintain related historical information by managing and displaying product cost information in multiple currencies.

Get More: Windchill Goes Mobile

With the new release, PTC is introducing a new Windchill Mobile app, giving users instant “anytime, anywhere” access to current product and process information.  Windchill Mobile includes an innovative “shake and break” capability that allows users to explode a product assembly by simply shaking their mobile device to see the internal parts in greater detail.  This helps companies improve worker productivity, regardless of whether they’re on the road, the manufacturing floor, or visiting a customer.  Windchill Mobile is available today to download from the Apple iTunes store for both the iPad and iPhone.  Windchill also now supports Apple users even if they aren’t on a mobile device with support for Mac OS X.

PTC has also simplified the Windchill system administration tools to improve reliability and lower overhead associated with running a Windchill installation.  For example, the new PTC System Monitor continuously checks the Windchill production environment to give administrators greater visibility into system performance, allowing proactive detection of potential bottlenecks before they impact end users, and reducing time to repair.

Finally, Windchill continues to build on the dramatic improvements PTC introduced in its user experience, making great use of graphical information and further simplifying workflows to accelerate tasks.  For example, the new Relationship Explorer allows users to visually navigate between related parts, documents, CAD designs, requirements, and change objects.  This allows users to quickly navigate across product structures to find the information they need.

More information will be shared at PTC’s upcoming annual user event, PlanetPTC Live.

Additional Resources:

·        What’s New in Windchill  (web site)

·        Windchill Interactive Experience(web site)

·        Windchill product page  (web site)

·        PTC’s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Resource Center (web site)

·        PTC’s Quality Lifecycle Management Resource Center (web site)

·        PTC’s Product Analytics Resource Center (web site)

·        Windchill 10.1 Frequently Asked Questions ( FAQ)

·        Images & Captions

·        What’s new in Windchill 10.1 (video) 

·        Requirements Management (video)

·        Windchill Mobile (video)

Availability

The Windchill capabilities described above are available now, with the exception of integration with Integrity (available in early May 2012), FlexPLM (available in May 2012) and Windchill Quality offerings (available in July 2012).  The timing of any of these remaining product releases, and any features or functionality thereof, are subject to change at PTC’s discretion.

About PTC

PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) enables manufacturers to achieve maximum value from their product strategies with software and services designed to optimize key business processes throughout the entire product lifecycle – from conception and design to sourcing and service.  PTC’s integral solution portfolio enables customers to unleash product innovation, improve collaboration and ensure product data integrity within engineering and across the enterprise, supply chain and service partner networks.  Founded in 1985, PTC employs over 6,000 professionals serving more than 27,000 customers worldwide.  More information can be found at www.ptc.com.

PTC, Windchill, Windchill Quality, Windchill Mobile, Windchill Customer Experience Management, Creo, Creo Options Modeler, FlexPLM, and Integrity are trademarks or registered trademarks of Parametric Technology Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Filed Under: Evan Yares, Featured, Pro/Engineer, PTC News Tagged With: Creo, PTC, Windchill

Autodesk provides real-time DFM for plastic part design

April 3, 2012 By Evan Yares 1 Comment

There’s a lot of benefit to be had by doing manufacturability analysis (DFM, Design for Manufacturing) early in the design process, rather than waiting until later, when design changes are far more expensive.

A couple of years ago, Autodesk Labs previewed a product, Project Krypton, which ran inside of 3D CAD programs (including Autodesk Inventor, DS SolidWorks, and PTC Pro/E), and gave real-time feedback on manufacturability, cost, and sustainability of plastic injection molded parts.


Project Krypton has now reappeared, in commercial form, as Autodesk Simulation DFM (Design For Manufacturing.) It works as a plug-in, running in a number of versions of Inventor, Inventor LT, Wildfire, Creo, and SolidWorks. It is available as a subscription benefit for Autodesk Simulation Moldflow Adviser 2013 subscribers, or as a stand-alone product, at US$2,000 for a license to run on any of the supported CAD platforms.

It’s reasonable to argue that engineers who are designing plastic parts should know enough to be able to recognize manufacturability, cost, or sustainability problems. And, if they don’t, they should take the time to learn (for example, by taking a few hours to read any of the many freely available books on the subject, such as General Design Principles for DuPont Engineering Polymers.) Even though that argument is reasonable, it doesn’t recognize human nature. People, even engineers who should know better, don’t always take the time to “read the manual.” Often, it makes sense to build the “manual” into the tools that engineers use every day. Simulation DFM does that, and quite a bit more.

For inexperienced designers, Simulation DFM provides quick feedback to help them avoid rookie mistakes. It’s sort of like an “idiot light” on a car’s dash, that warns you when something is wrong. And while old-hands might say they prefer gauges to idiot lights, experience has shown that idiot lights are useful to experts (even F1 drivers and fighter pilots) for catching their attention, and getting them to actually look at the gauges.

Simulation DFM doesn’t require that users have any background in molding simulation. It uses “green is good, yellow is not so good, and red is bad” indicators to identify potential manufacturing, cost and sustainability issues, showing the source and location of the problem. Any issues that pop-up can be expanded upon, to provide more detail on the exact source of the problem, even showing, for example, mold filling analyses.  The software requires no additional training, and doesn’t require much user input.

The open question with Simulation DFM is “how good is it?” Since it’s based on the Autodesk Moldflow simulation engine, it should be quite good, even for relatively complex parts (though it doesn’t support multi-body parts.) Yet, even if its capabilities were modest, it would still be of value, in either helping beginning designers to learn good design practice, or helping old-hands catch mistakes they might have otherwise missed.

As an engineer, I’ve long had the habit of using the “anything I can see” test to evaluate the usefulness of software. I look around the room, looking at anything I see, and ask myself “would this software have helped the engineers who designed these things?” In this case, as I sit in my office, I can see at least 20 items (without even turning to look behind me), each with multiple injection molded parts, that would have been quicker, easier, and less-expensive to design, had their engineers had access to up-front DFM software, such as Autodesk Simulation DFM.

The most significant benefit of Autodesk Simulation DFM comes not from its detailed capabilities, but rather from its clean integration into the design workflow. A user need not press a button, or take any specific action when designing a plastic part to benefit from it. All they need to do is notice, as they design, whether the software has picked up any obvious red-flags.

That Autodesk decided to make Simulation DFM available for Pro/E, Creo, and SolidWorks (as well as Inventor) shows that rational minds sometimes do prevail: There are untold thousands of PTC and SolidWorks customers who design plastic injection molded parts, and who are unlikely to switch primary CAD tools any time soon. The challenge Autodesk is going to face is in getting Simulation DFM in front of those users (since PTC and SolidWorks sales reps and dealers are not likely to recommend it.) Maybe not so much of a challenge: Many of Autodesk’s existing Moldflow customers are Pro/E and SolidWorks users.

There’s a certain charm to software that does something of great value, but does not impose any extra demands on its users. Autodesk Simulation DFM looks like it may be that kind of product.

Autodesk www.autodesk.com

Autodesk SimSquad simsquad@autodesk.com

Filed Under: Autodesk, Autodesk News, Creo, Evan Yares, Featured, Inventor, News, Pro/Engineer, Simulation Software, SolidWorks Tagged With: Autodesk, CAE, Creo, DFM, Inventor, Moldflow, Pro/E, simulation, SolidWorks

Black thumb: How to bring a CAD system to its knees

March 5, 2012 By Evan Yares 1 Comment

I open up Creo Parametric, and load up a part model.  Not too complex — some bosses, holes, and a bunch of blends.  I select a blend (or “round,” to use PTC parlance), then click and drag its resizing handle.  And wait.  And wait.  Eventually, after several seconds, the blend resizes.   I wait some more, and the blend resizes again.  Ad nauseum.

Why so slow?  Because Creo was recalculating the blend on the fly, as I was dragging.  Since the blend was in the middle of the feature tree, with a bunch of other dependent geometry, each time I moved the cursor, it had to do a very time consuming recalculation.  The right way of resizing the blend would have been to click on the blend radius text, and type in a new value.  Presto… the blend is resized exactly as I wished.  Alternatively, I could have used Creo’s flexible modeling tools, which would have recalculated the blend more quickly (though, when I tried to interactively drag the blend radius using flexible modeling, I still found the dynamic response to be unsatisfying.)

Is there a way to fix the problem I’ve described?  Yes.  Were I moving a boss across a surface that forced topological changes, Creo would have switched to a simplified representation of the boss, rather than recalculating it accurately on the fly.  So, Creo does know how to adjust it’s dynamic response depending on the needs of the situation.  It just doesn’t do it with blends.

The point of talking about this isn’t to beat up PTC. Other CAD vendors have similar problems. Creo is a very powerful product, and expert users can make it sing.  But put a user with a black thumb in front of it, and they’ll often do things that will bring it to its knees.

If PTC were building Creo expressly to satisfy expert users, the kind of experience I’ve just described wouldn’t be an issue. Expert users are smart enough not to do dumb things.  Yet, PTC is going to increasingly find that its products are used by normal folks (not Pro/E gurus), who are less likely to understand the program’s nuances, and who are less likely to be accepting of its quirkiness.  It’s important to get the little details right, so that all users, and not just the experts, can get the most out of their CAD programs.

 

 

 

Filed Under: 3D CAD Package Tips, Evan Yares, Pro/Engineer Tagged With: cad, Creo, Evan Yares, PTC, Usability

Creo 2.0 is near

March 2, 2012 By Evan Yares 1 Comment

PTC will soon be releasing Creo 2.0, and, in anticipation of this, invited me (along with three other blogger/editors) to their corporate headquarters for a preview. Unlike a formal release presentation, which would be heavily scripted, our experience was much more extemporaneous. We got to see a good chunk of what’s new, hear about PTC’s underlying goals, and even talk about things we thought they should be doing better.

What is Creo?

Creo was rolled out in the Fall of 2010. It was, at the highest level of abstraction, a bet-the-company rethink of PTC’s CAD strategy, based on a recognition that not all users (or enterprises) have the same needs.

While I can’t say, with certainty, what brought on this revelation, I can speculate that PTC’s 2007 acquisition of CoCreate was a big eye opener. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that PTC’s legion of salespeople would have swarmed into CoCreate’s 5,000 customer accounts, seeking to convert those people to Pro/E users. Like that was ever going to work.

The reason people (and companies) used CoCreate software was precisely because it was not Pro/E (or any other history-based solid modeler.) CoCreate’s dynamic modeling (more commonly called direct modeling these days) was comparatively easy to use, especially for people who weren’t CAD gurus. Companies with product lines that fit within the capabilities that CoCreate offered had no motivation to change at all. CoCreate customers that needed history and parametrics in their CAD software had long since moved on to other tools (including Pro/E).

I imagine that a number of CoCreate customers took the time to explain to PTC management why dynamic modeling fit their needs so well. At the same time, PTC management was likely watching the former CoCreate marketing people (who now worked for them) telling a compelling story that didn’t exactly jibe with the PTC’s historical “parametrics will solve all your problems” message.

What to do? How to rationalize these seemingly irreconcilable things? The only reasonable answer is to offer customers what they want. For PTC, this required a new strategy: Offer a range of products sharing a common data model and a common user interface design, and allow users to choose whether they want to use history-based, direct, or any other form of modeling that might come along in the future.

It’s a good vision. But getting there is the challenge.

The first phase in the Creo strategy was launched, with quite a bit of fanfare, in the Fall of 2010. The next phase was originally due to launch in the Fall of 2011. It’ll launch next month.

I can’t give PTC any grief about being a few months late in shipping, given the immensity of the task before them. Taking several very disparate and complex products and merging them into a family of interoperable apps is not easy. Truth is, CAD is hard. Developing a professional CAD system is about an order of magnitude harder than, for example, developing a product such as Microsoft Office.

It’s going to take some time for PTC to fully deliver on the Creo vision. No problem with that, if they really deliver what users need.

Creo 2.0

I’m not going to do a review of Creo 2.0, or even tell you in any detail about what’s new in it. What I will say is that it looks like PTC is making solid progress, and is delivering useful capabilities that will help their users to get their jobs done better.

In the pantheon of Creo products, Parametric (formerly known as Pro/E), and Elements/Direct (formerly known as CoCreate) are maturing nicely. Creo Direct—the new product that essentially merges Pro/E and CoCreate capabilities—is taking some time, if only because it’s a much bigger job. Users with a long history (so to speak) with CoCreate should look carefully, to see whether Creo Direct has reached their particular threshold of “good enough.”

The big news in Creo 2.0, beyond maturation, is PTC’s delivery on their AnyBOM strategy. They are shipping the Creo Options Modeler, which works with Windchill to support assemble-to-order processes in a way that PTC’s largest customers (e.g., Caterpillar) will certainly appreciate.

PTC will be talking a lot more about Creo 2.0 in the very near future. For now, what I can say is this: It looks good so far.

PTC www.ptc.com

 

 

 

Filed Under: Evan Yares, Featured, News, Pro/Engineer, PTC News Tagged With: AnyBOM, Creo, Direct, Evan Yares, Parametric, PTC

Analysis linked to CAD

October 25, 2011 By Laura Carrabine Leave a Comment

Comsol’s latest update to its flagship multiphysics software Comsol 4.2a includes enhanced LiveLink capability. The new associativity to between Comsol and Creo packages means any changes to a feature in the Creo CAD model automatically updates the geometry in Comsol Multiphysics while retaining physics settings.

All parameters specified in Creo can be interactively linked with your simulation geometry which enables multiphysics simulations involving parametric sweeps and design optimization to sync up with the CAD program. The LiveLink for Creo includes all the capabilities of the Comsol CAD Import module and enables import and defeaturing of CAD files from all major CAD packages.

In addition, the Parasolid geometry kernel from Siemens PLM Software is now the default geometry kernel for those who use the CAD Import module and the LiveLink products for CAD. Parasolid enables the handling of more advanced geometry objects for any of the LiveLiink products, including versions for AutoCAD, Inventor, Creo Parametric, Pro/E, SolidWorks, and SpaceClaim.

Comsol

www.comsol.com

Filed Under: Autodesk, Creo, Inventor, Pro/Engineer, Siemens PLM, Simulation Software, SolidWorks Tagged With: AutoCAD, CFD, COMSOL, Creo, FEA, Inventor, LiveLink, Multiphysics, parametric CAD, Parasolid, PTC, Siemens, SolidWorks, SpaceClaim

PTC congratulates Penske Racing team for unprecedented weekend of race track wins

August 31, 2011 By Laura Carrabine Leave a Comment

PTC congratulated its customer and performance partner, Penske Racing, whose cars are designed and developed with the help of PTC’s design software, on its banner racing weekend. The Team Penske IZOD IndyCar Series team swept the podium on August 28 as its three drivers claimed 1st, 2nd and 3rd place at the Indy Grand Prix in Sonoma, California and 1st place at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Irwin Tools Night Race in Bristol, Tennessee on August 27.  Often referred to as the “New York Yankees of motorsports,” these recent victories add to Penske Racing’s impressive record of over 330 race wins and 23 national championships.

The Penske Racing Team uses PTC’s design and development software in all aspects of race car design, engineering, testing, and manufacturing, which enables Penske Racing and the Penske Technology Group to develop everything from concept to manufacturing within one solution.  In addition, PTC design technology allows the team to design, prototype, and test in a virtual world which enables them to quickly produce parts in the constantly changing competitive racing environment.

 

PTC

www.ptc.com

Filed Under: 3D CAD Package Tips, Creo, Pro/Engineer, PTC News, PTC/CoCreate Blogs Tagged With: 3D CAD, Creo, NASCAR, PDM, Penske, PTC, Windchill

Mechdyne Corporation Announce the Release of Conduit™ 3.0

August 12, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Mechdyne Corporation announced the release of Conduit™ 3.0, an immersive software solution that enables desktop 3D applications to operate on PC clusters, virtual environments, and tiled high resolution displays.

mechdyne-conduit

This latest version of Conduit supports a wide variety of desktop applications, including: NX, TeamCenter, ENOVIA/CATIA/DEMIA V5, Pro/ENGINEER, Maya, Blender Game Engine, Google Sketchup, Navisworks, Google Earth and VisIt. Conduit enables use of these desktop applications with 3D and high resolution displays and provides real-time viewing perspective for simpler reviews and faster data analysis. These benefits can reduce a product’s time to market, improve decision-making, let users see more details, and enable users to navigate through designs. With this impressive package of benefits, Conduit is especially useful for simulations, engineering design reviews, seismic interpretation, system analysis, architectural walk-throughs, and urban planning that fuses GIS data and 3D models such as buildings and infrastructure.

Conduit 3.0 also provides support for multiple users and motion capture capabilities. Developed in partnership with Haption, Conduit 3.0 enables a user to be “inside” a Dassault Systemes V5 avatar rather than “puppeteering” the human model from an outside perspective, as has been available in the past. “This new level of motion capture support will allow multiple participants in a shared virtual environment to collaborate and interact with their engineering designs, assemblies, and process simulations, all from the first person perspective,” said Julien Berta, Vice President of Innovation and Technology for Mechdyne’s Software Division.

Conduit’s new motion capture capability will enable multiple users a unique view of the virtual environment, each from their own perspective. This new feature will be especially helpful for situations like engineering designs, architectural walkthroughs, and urban planning.

Other features of Conduit 3.0 include a web-based launcher, immersive panels for interactions within a VR display, and VNC support for viewing of a desktop.

According to Matt Szymanski, Vice President of Products for Mechdyne’s Software Division, “One of the key advantages of Conduit is that it helps save time, reduce risk and eliminates dependencies because it enables users to work with their native applications and data. No time is wasted and data integrity isn’t jeopardized by porting to different formats. Instead, Conduit intercepts the data and redirects it to multi-channel and 3D displays.”

“Not only are Conduit users able to simply click a button and view their desktop visuals on any immersive display, but using Conduit 3.0 you can have more than one person interacting with the data. Also, the new motion capture capabilities enable multiple motion capture users to interact with the data, while other participants can watch from an out-of-body perspective and observe their performance,” said Szymanski.

Mechdyne Corporation
www.mechdyne.com 

 

 

 

Filed Under: 3D CAD Package Tips, CAD Industry News, Catia, Pro/Engineer, Simulation Software Tagged With: Mechdyne Corporation

PTC Releases Creo 1.0

June 15, 2011 By Laura Carrabine Leave a Comment

Creo is designed to solve the unaddressed problems remaining in the mechanical CAD market: usability, interoperability, assembly management, and technology lock-in. Creo provides a scalable suite of interoperable, integrated design apps- built on an architecture with patent-pending technology to meet the needs of a company’s extended product development team. PTC claims that by more fully engaging these users throughout the product lifecycle, companies can increase productivity and improve operational efficiencies, getting better products to market faster.

The first set of Creo apps are designed to optimize engineering, manufacturing, and service processes. Role-based packages are designed to help increase productivity for everyone from service planners, technical illustrators, and industrial designers to engineers who have historically driven product design processes using 3D direct or parametric modeling, while also benefiting CAD users in the extended enterprise.

Creo Sketch –for simple “freehand” drawing of ideas and design concepts in 2D

Creo Direct – for fast, flexible 3D geometry creation and editing using a direct modeling approach. Provides interoperability with Creo Parametric for greater design flexibility

Creo Simulate – delivers capabilities an analyst needs for structural and thermal simulation

Creo Schematics – for creating 2D routed systems diagrams for piping and cabling designs.

Creo Illustrate –for 3D technical illustrations, providing capabilities to communicate complex service and parts information, training, work instructions, etc. to improve product usability and performance graphically in 3D.

Creo View ECAD – for viewing, interrogating, and marking up electronic geometry

Creo View MCAD – for viewing, interrogating, and marking up mechanical geometry

Creo Layout – for capturing early concepts layouts in 2D that ultimately drive 3D design.

Availability

The majority of Creo1.0 apps are available now in ten languages. Creo Sketch and Creo Layout are planned to be available later in late July and late fall 2011 respectively.

PTC
www.ptc.com

Filed Under: 3D CAD Package Tips, CAD Industry News, Pro/Engineer, PTC News, PTC/CoCreate Blogs Tagged With: 2D drafting, 3D CAD, Creo, PTC

PTC lauds Xavier Falcons as winners of the 2010-2011 Real World Design Challenge

April 19, 2011 By Laura Carrabine Leave a Comment

The national competition for high school students is run by a public-private partnership with the goal of increasing the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce. Students from 20 states competed in elimination presentations on April 16, 2011 at the National 4-H Youth Conference Center. The top three teams presented their solutions to a panel of judges representing government, academia, and industry.

 

 

PTC

www.ptc.com

Real World Design Challenge

www.realworlddesignchallenge.org

Filed Under: 3D CAD Package Tips, CAD Package, Company News, Pro/Engineer, PTC News, PTC/CoCreate Blogs Tagged With: cad, Creo, Mathcad, PTC, Real World Design Challenge, STEM, Windchill

PTC Releases Windchill 10.0

April 7, 2011 By Laura Carrabine Leave a Comment

PTC announced the release of Windchill 10.0, its product lifecycle management (PLM) software. With new capabilities that focus on product analytics and quality management, Windchill 10.0 allows you to define, manage, and validate complete bills of material (BOMs), providing linkages across domain-specific views of product structures throughout the entire lifecycle. The product is said to be easier to use and maintain. Users managing product structures in Windchill 10.0 can take advantage of embedded visualization.

Windchill centrally manages all product deliverables including MCAD, ECAD, documentation, and service information. The product unifies its ECAD data management capabilities to offer a common user experience, consistent with its existing approach for MCAD data management.

When combined with Creo for 3D illustrated and animated service instructions and parts lists, and Arbortext for technical communications creation and delivery, Windchill supports a complete service information solution. The software supports business process optimization, most notably for Detailed Design, Variant Design and Generation, and Verification and Validation.

With Windchill 10.0, PTC’s Relex and Insight product lines have been rebranded as part of the Windchill product family to better reflect their availability as both a stand-alone offering as well as part of a comprehensive Windchill solution. 

Windchill Quality Solutions (including the former Relex products) help improve next-generation products, prevent repeat errors, and build reliability and risk management into the product development lifecycle. New offerings include solutions for CAPA (Corrective Action Preventive Action) to accelerate problem resolution through improved monitoring and root cause identification. 

Windchill Product Analytics (formerly InSight) provides early knowledge of product performance and includes new solutions for cost visibility and carbon footprint analysis. These enhancements bolster an already rich solution for materials and substance management, which includes reporting against compliance specifications such as REACH and RoHS. These solutions help companies understand environmental impacts and address potential points of failure before they occur. 

PTC

www.ptc.com

Filed Under: CAD Industry News, Pro/Engineer, PTC News Tagged With: 3D, Arbortext, Creo, ECAD, InSight, MCAD, PLM, PTC, Windchill

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