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Overview of PTC Creo
PTC is a company firmly entrenched in the domain of CAD and CAE since 1988. Creo is the flagship offering of PTC. Creo was earlier known as Pro/E or Pro Engineer. Apart from the CAD domain, PTC has also ventured into other verticals like AR, PLM and IIoT through mergers and acquisitions. Creo is a high end 3D CAD software that is much popular in various domains, from manufacturing to architecture. It has been developed using an open architecture that makes it easy for other programs to gel with it. Due to its parametric nature, Creo is especially popular in high tech industries like aviation and aerospace. It is popular with the manufacturing sector as well.Creo is a parametric CAD software. What this means is that you can tweak a single parameter of the design prototype to see the effect it will have on the other properties. This feature is very useful in companies that work in R&D. Since most automobile and aerospace industries need to be competitive, using Creo saves them development time of a new product.
PTC Creo is a suite of design software that focuses on CAD prototyping. It includes a whole bunch of modules that provide scalable design solutions. Since it is robust, Creo maximizes innovation and enables designers to develop prototypes just the way they envision. The various modules and add-ons enhance the utility of the software. It allows product developers to produce high-quality product designs within the shortest time possible. Being a robust software, PTC Creo optimizes product development by allowing users to create, develop, and prepare for manufacturing using a single development environment.
The PTC Creo Suite
While there are numerous modules in the PTC Creo suite, the most popular product is Creo Parametric.
PTC Creo Parametric
Creo Parametric is the flagship product of PTC. It incorporates the insights PTC has gleaned through its years of experience in the CAD and CAE domain. Here are a few features that makes PTC Creo a popular choice for designers.
- PTC Creo is flexible. You can opt only for the features that you will need
- Creo provides 2D, 3D, optimization and cost estimation tools that makes drafting a breeze
- All products in the PTC Creo suite can work seamlessly with each other. This makes collaboration easier
- It is truly parametric, which gives PTC Creo unmatched speed and flexibility
- Creo makes part assembly and modelling easy with multi-CAD data handling capability
Creo Surfacing
Creo enables designers and engineers to optimize surfaces with robust parametric controls. And because it also supports freestyle surfacing, Creo becomes a versatile tool that allows users to manipulate sweeps, blends, and extensions that are used to acquire precise, tightly defined dimensions.
Creo Layers
While all CAD software incorporates layers, Creo Layers allow controlling the display of a few features and components, and also are extremely useful into organizing components (or features) into logical or related groups.
Creo Sheet metal
One aspect where Creo shines is the sheet metal designing. The powerful advanced sheet metal capabilities the software provides streamlines sheet metal modelling. Designers and engineers can modify sheet metal features on the fly with Creo using dynamic preview and editing tools Creo provides. This reduces time to marketing drastically. The advanced sheet metal capabilities of Creo even include persistent flat pattern preview with interference detection.
Creo Simulation
Creo Simulate harnesses Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to analyze a variety of problems. It saves and regenerates modelling features like datum points and co-ordinate systems each time you re-enter the Creo Simulate environment. You can choose to promote or not promote certain simulation features like datum points, datum curves, datum planes, and datum axes to Creo Parametric features. Unlike the traditional methods, Creo Simulate allows analysis of designs before failure is identified in testing, providing engineers and designers early insight into product performance. They can therefore discover design flaws before commencing production.
Popularity of PTC Creo
Each new version of PTC Creo offers something new. Creo 4.0 allowed direct 3D printing on locally or remotely controlled 3D printers via the Internet. Secondly, Sheet Metal got more flexible. Creo 5.0 offered enhanced AR and IoT functionality. Creo 6.0 provided better AR integration, real-time simulation, and additive manufacturing, along with numerous other key productivity enhancements. Creo 7.0, released in May 2020 in India, introduces exciting new capabilities in the areas of Generative Design, Simulation-Driven Design, Additive Manufacturing, and Multibody. The Creo Simulate Live that Creo 7.0 incorporates is built specifically for designers. It provides real time fluid flow simulation capabilities directly integrated within the Creo environment. This gives designers tremendous flexibility to design the way the want. Creo 7.0 also augments the additive manufacturing process by allowing users to add parametrically controlled lattice structures based on the Delaunay stochastic algorithm and hard-edge definition. Users can create fully-detailed parts with accurate mass properties, print tray optimization, and metal printing with support structures.
With such features, it is no wonder that Creo is getting more and more popular. You might be surprised to know that after U.S.A, India is the second largest user of PTC Creo. The software is available in India through its authorized distributors. However, it is a vast and complex software. Unless and until some formal training is available, it is not easily possible to explore and fully utilize the vast power of Creo. Luckily, there are various institutes that provide PTC Creo training in India. Needless to say, for their own safety, students need to check that the training institute is recognized by PTC. With automation on the rise, a thorough training in PTC Creo will definitely be useful for their future career.