Collaboration and connection in earlier ages happened slowly, with business lunches and meetings and towers of paperwork. The world moves faster today. You give design reviews and feedback in real-time over the internet. Transfer and email files in seconds. Checking data from IoT sensors and making design changes takes minutes.

Lunch. That’s still an hour (hopefully).

To smooth your design processes and boost product quality, use the Creo extensions that give insight into third party assemblies, hand you direct sensor feedback, and improve collaboration between systems and people.

Product Insight Extension

Few things threaten design quality more than assumptions. To make evidence-based decisions, you need data. And field testing should leave you with results and clear direction, not guesswork. ThingWorx, the industrial IoT platform, makes it easier to collect and share data about how your products perform, and use that data to improve products faster than ever before.

The Creo Product Insight Extension lets you set up digital sensors and connect them, via ThingWorx technology, to physical sensors on your test models. A machine as simple as a bicycle can have IoT sensors that collect data about speed, aerodynamics, reaction to rough surfaces, and tire pressures. Learn how the frame holds up under stresses, and how quickly the brakes wear. All that data affects how you design the product to make it higher quality and more desirable in the market.

Collaboration Extensions

Not everyone uses Creo (even if we think they should!). CATIA, Siemens NX, Autodesk Inventor and SolidWorks are used in design shops all over, and you will probably need to work with files from one or several of them. The truth is, often a single product includes pieces that started out in multiple CAD products. But integrating the pieces into a single vision, without losing data or design intent, is tricky if you don’t have the proper tools.

Creo Collaboration Extensions helps you integrate, edit, and share data from those third-party products. Preserve the design intent built into the models when you bring them into Creo. And when you need to share Creo models with outside stakeholders, you can save your work in CATIA v4 and v5, Siemens NX, and SolidWorks formats.

The Creo Collaboration Extension for Autodesk Inventor, introduced in Creo 5.0, keeps files updated in Creo, even when changes are made to the original Inventor file.

 Augmented (AR) Reality: Creo Design Share

What if you could point your phone or table at a machine and see both a live view and a 3D overlay of its inner workings? Even better, wear special glasses that project the overlay right into your field of view. With a quick command, you pull up part numbers or see how to do routine maintenance and troubleshoot common problems. Creo out of the box makes it easy to turn your models into AR experiences.

And now new AR extensions for Creo give you more control over how you share your models and with whom.

If AR isn’t already part of your product development plans, it should be.  Check out this video from Sysmex and see how they arecombining IoT data with AR to improve the efficiency of their biotech and medical equipment technicians:

Present and Future Collaboration

The old silos are gone. To survive in today’s market, you need accessible data and real-time-collaboration. Employees need tools that collect actionable data, work with popular platforms, and serve as building blocks for the future. The PTC trio of connectivity extensions do all those, while helping you get ready for a smart, connected future.

The Future of Design

With technology always changing, it can be difficult to know where product development is going next. Download Creo’s “10 Expert Insights: The Future of Product Design in the Age of Smart & Connected Devices.” Learn from industry leaders as they predict how you will be designing products in the near future to help you stay ahead in our rapidly changing industry.