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Tec spotlight report ptc creo
1. CHANGING THE CAD GAME
PTC CREO 3.0
P.J. Jakovljevic, Principal Analyst
Ted Rohm, Senior ERP Analyst
February 2015
www.technologyevaluation.com
TEC SPOTLIGHT REPORT
TEC Spotlight Reports give you an in-depth look at
leading vendors’ products, initiatives, and market
position from an analyst’s point of view.
2. PTC Creo 3.0—Changing the CAD Game
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PTC Creo 3.0—Changing the CAD Game
Computer-aided design (CAD) software is changing. With offshore divisions and
outsourced and subcontracted manufacturing more the norm than not,
manufacturers need to adapt to a diverse multi-CAD world. Traditionally, lots of
non-value-added effort was required to import non-native CAD files and create
and maintain duplicate geometry data in different CAD systems. Consequently
there has arisen the need to manage many secondary formats, and to export data
in neutral formats. But CAD software is changing to make data more reusable and
to enable customers and suppliers to collaborate more effectively.
At the forefront of these changes is product development software player PTC.
The company’s three-dimensional (3D) product design solution PTC Creo is
boosting CAD system interoperability, concept design capabilities, and user
productivity.
PTC announced the availability of PTC Creo 3.0 at its annual user conference, PTC
Live Global 2014. The excitement was palpable when Brian Thompson, VP,
Product Management, made the announcement. “PTC Creo 3 is an enormous
release that impacts every aspect of the PTC Creo product family.” The
improvements are grouped into three themes:
Breakthrough Multi-CAD Capabilities—Unite Technology
Concept Design Improvements—Empowering Innovation
PTC Creo Core Productivity Improvements
In this report, we’ll review in detail the enhancements that differentiate PTC Creo
3.0 from the competition—Unite technology and the concept design
improvements within PTC Creo Design Exploration Extension. We’ll also take a
brief look at what to expect from PTC Creo 4.0.
Click here for an introduction to Unite technology. To see more on these
differentiating features and the extensive core productivity improvements, view
the PTC Creo 3 launch presentation.
What Is PTC Creo?
PTC Creo is an industry-leading suite of solutions for product design and
development. The core philosophy behind PTC Creo is to enable the different
roles involved in the product development process in an enterprise to contribute
effectively and to work with the same set of data. Parametric 3D design (modeling)
is best undertaken by experienced design engineers committed to capturing
3. PTC Creo 3.0—Changing the CAD Game
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critical design intent, while designers working with two-dimensional (2D)
sketching tools tend to be more concept-oriented. Instead of the contributors to
product development working on different CAD systems and exchanging data in
different formats, PTC Creo lets everyone work using his or her preferred
environment (e.g., 3D solid, 3D surface, 2D sketch, 2D layout, etc.) while looking
at the same data. The goal is to provide the right tool to the right person during
the product design and development process. Figure 1 depicts the current PTC
Creo suite.
Figure 1. PTC Creo product suite
PTC Creo 3.0—Changing the Game Again
Unite Technology
Unite technology is an industry-leading capability that allows users to easily
incorporate non-PTC CAD files into PTC Creo. Using Unite technology users can:
1. import common 3D CAD formats, including SolidWorks, CATIA, Siemens NX,
Solid Edge, and Autodesk Inventor, without the need for any additional
software;
2. open key 3D CAD formats, including SolidWorks, CATIA, and Siemens NX;
3. automatically update new versions of non-PTC Creo data within product
designs; and
4. save designs in non-PTC 3D CAD formats.
Unite technology in PTC Creo 3.0 enables key 3D CAD data formats to be used
directly in the PTC Creo Parametric, PTC Creo Direct, PTC Creo Simulate, and PTC
Creo Options Modeler apps.
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Unite Technology Benefits—Consolidation
A primary differentiator of Unite technology is the ability to “open” SolidWorks,
CATIA, and Siemens NX files directly in PTC Creo and maintain them in their
original format (figure 2).
Figure 2. Unite technology open and import operations
Users “open” these files directly in PTC Creo. This not only saves significant time,
it enables engineering departments working in a multi-CAD IT environment to
more easily consolidate CAD systems.
In this case, the ability to open design data in its native format replaces the need
to translate through industry standards and completely avoids the painstaking
translate-fix-validate process of traditional 100% upfront conversion (figure 3). In
fact, this activity doesn’t generate a new model file at all, and there are no new
business objects created that need to be managed from a product data
management (PDM) perspective.
Figure 3. Unite technology addresses the challenges of data migration
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PTC refers to this approach as “On-Demand Data Conversion,” which works well
for the scenario where the majority of design data needs to be moved, unchanged,
into the new CAD application.
On-demand data conversion ensures that only the files that the user really needs
to change are converted into the PTC Creo format. Only the part and the parent
assembly are converted into PTC Creo—not the entire assembly—and new
business objects are created only for these files. This minimizes the effort
required to consolidate on a single CAD platform.
While other CAD products can perform an “import” function, this typically
requires the entire model to be converted into the new format. Moreover, as soon
as the objects are imported, the 3D parametric design intent (history tree,
relationships, etc.) is lost forever. In PTC Creo, once a part has been converted, the
engineer can leverage the capabilities available in PTC Creo’s Flexible Modeling
Extension. This can be used to recreate or rebuild design intent, recognize
patterns, and to modify geometry using the direct modeling paradigm. This
obviates the need to parametrically remodel the design, saving individuals and
organizations significant non-value-added time.
Users who upgrade to PTC Creo 3.0 have the ability to import and open all
supported formats as an out-of-the box set of capabilities.
Unite Technology Benefits—Collaboration
It’s obvious that Unite technology will enable companies to more readily
consolidate design and engineering groups on a single CAD tool. However, equally
important, Unite enables organizations to collaborate more effectively with
partners throughout a product’s supply chain (figure 4).
Figure 4. PTC Creo Collaboration Extension
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Many suppliers that currently have multiple CAD systems just to handle the
drawings from their customers can now use PTC Creo to handle the collaborative
design, even when different sub-assemblies are received via different CAD
systems. As non-PTC Creo objects are updated (the likelihood of a supplier
modifying its part design during the product development process is high), PTC
Creo seamlessly updates any design dependencies—even those that impact PTC
Creo part geometry.
For example, in a truck design, a chassis and cabin can be NX objects, the fuel tank
a SolidWorks object, etc.; but these can still be opened and added in PTC Creo, as
explained in the previous section. The engineer can design new parts based
around these non-PTC Creo objects, e.g., mounting brackets for the fuel tank.
However, Unite technology will maintain and protect this design intent. If an
update is received to either the NX or SolidWorks objects, the downstream design
efforts are protected without affecting their design intent, and the geometry of
PTC Creo objects (in this example, the brackets) will update automatically any
time the reference geometry changes. This demo illustrates the concept in more
detail.
This enables design engineers to incorporate the designs of their suppliers and
partners into their PTC Creo designs much earlier in the design process, resulting
in collaboration that is more efficient than re-importing new versions of the non-
PTC Creo models, reducing the need to rebuild the associated PTC Creo design
intent and lessening the impact of late-stage design changes. It also facilitates the
early creation of downstream deliverables such as engineering drawings or
analyses with the complete confidence that the efforts expended are not wasted.
This ability to work around others’ design (and design intent) is indeed powerful
and differentiating in the market at this stage!
Finally, Unite technology provides the capability to save multi-CAD assemblies in
the SolidWorks, CATIA, and Siemens NX formats (figure 5). This further supports
company collaboration efforts by ensuring that designs can be shared in a usable
format with supply chain partners if required. These abilities, along with the
capability to seamlessly update a SolidWorks, CATIA, or Siemens NX data model,
are part of PTC Creo Collaboration Extensions; a separate collaboration extension
is available for each format. Check out this video to see collaboration in action.
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Figure 5. Unite technology supports “save as” to non-PTC Creo CAD formats
Unique Technology
PTC, understandably, is secretive about what Unite consists of, but it appears that
the associative topology bus (a proprietary data exchange technology developed
by PTC that enables associative exchange between CAD systems) plays a major
role. Additionally, PTC seems to have been hard at work developing its own data
exchange technology and enhancing it through key partnerships in the industry.
The extent of the importance of third-party libraries is unclear, but it does seem
that the bulk of the technology development involved in Unite (the treatment of
native files, the associative update with robust geometry dependencies, on-
demand conversion, etc.) was developed internally. It is likely that we will see
other CAD PLM providers following in this direction as so many modern
manufacturing companies operate in a multi-CAD environment. Other similar CAD
products are currently only about visualization and viewing others’ drawings and
objects, whereas PTC Creo Unite technology is “open” and intended for
conducting actual design in direct modeling.
Concept Design Improvements—Empowering Innovation
PTC Creo 3.0 continues to ensure that efforts undertaken at the concept design
stage are reusable in later stages of the product development process. As one of a
slew of new enhancements introduced in this release, PTC Creo Design
Exploration Extension is receiving a lot of enthusiasm from preview customers. It
provides a dedicated environment in PTC Creo Parametric for developing
alternative design concepts, investigating modeling approaches, and
understanding the consequences of design changes (figure 6). PTC Creo Design
Exploration Extension gives users the flexibility to explore multiple design
concepts, the ability to seamlessly move between the concepts in a design review
setting, and the ability to keep those concepts archived for future design
iterations or as a historical document to understand why a certain decision was
made. This significantly reduces the level of manual effort and overhead currently
required to undertake these activities.
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Figure 6. PTC Creo Design Exploration Extension
Future Directions of PTC Creo
At PTC Live Global 2014, the vendor provided a glimpse of PTC Creo 4.0, slated for
release in two years’ time. Its major theme will be model-based definition (MBD).
In 2015, expect active support customers to benefit from some new capabilities in
maintenance releases of PTC Creo. PTC hinted at better support for 3D printing,
for improved electronic CAD (ECAD) data visualization and even and integration
with PTC Thingworx, which will make PTC Creo smart and connected, enabling
more efficient administration.
Conclusion
PTC has more than 25 years’ history of improving the product development
productivity of discrete manufacturers all over the world. This, the third major
release of PTC Creo, is another example of how PTC is empowering organizations
to meet current and future challenges. The industry-leading Unite technology and
the Design Exploration Extension are further evidence of how PTC continues to
provide solutions to help organizations address global product development
challenges. The entire PTC product family, including the latest edition to the family,
PTC ThingWorx, continues to provide cutting-edge capabilities to enable a
competitive advantage for manufacturing and other industries.
