Lightweight, durable, and endlessly adaptable, composites are redefining what’s possible in product design. Once limited to aerospace and defense, they’ve now become a strategic material across nearly every industry, from automotive and industrial equipment to energy, recreation, and consumer products. And thanks to advanced digital engineering tools like PTC Creo, what was once a complex and fragmented process is now faster, smarter, and more connected than ever.
A Rising demand
According to Grand View Research, the global composites market was valued at $93.7 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a 7.2% CAGR through 2030. Similarly, other analysts, including Future Market Insights and Credence Research, forecast double-digit growth for high-performance and advanced polymer composites.
For manufacturers, the drivers are clear: strength-to-weight advantage, energy efficiency, and sustainability. A 10% reduction in vehicle weight, for example, can improve fuel efficiency by up to 8%, a huge impact on transportation, aviation, and renewable energy where every pound counts. Lighter materials also mean smaller motors, lower emissions, and longer lifespans.
With these advantages and more, it’s no surprise that composites have evolved from a niche material to a core enabler of lighter, stronger, and more sustainable designs.
Why composites matter
As Paul Sagar, Vice President of CAD Product Management at PTC, explains, the push for lighter and greener products is driving a new design mindset.
“Manufacturers want to design the optimal engineered part, and composites provide the means to do that,” says Sagar. “Because they’re lightweight and increasingly adaptable, composites are central to improving efficiency and reducing carbon footprint, especially in transportation.”
That flexibility is exactly what today’s engineering demands. From wind turbine blades and hydrogen tanks to tennis rackets and prosthetic limbs, composites enable a combination of strength, stiffness, and low weight that metals simply can’t match.
They also help advance sustainability initiatives. By tailoring strength to where it’s needed most, engineers can minimize waste and extend product life, making composites not just a high-performance choice but a responsible one.
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Composite Design in Creo
The challenge of complexity
But for all their benefits composite-based products aren’t simple to design. Their anisotropic behavior, where strength varies depending on fiber orientation, makes analysis and simulation far more complex than for metals. Design engineers must define every ply, orientation, and stacking sequence, all while ensuring manufacturability. A slight change in layup can shift stress paths, alter stiffness, or even affect how the part cures. And when projects involve hundreds of layers and multiple zones, manually managing this data becomes a major bottleneck.
Traditional workflows, where CAD, CAE, and PLM are disconnected, add new challenges to an already time consuming and complex process. And physical prototypes simply can’t keep pace with today’s accelerated digital development processes.
To truly capitalize on what composites offer, engineers need an integrated workflow.
Creo: Redefining composite design
PTC’s Creo brings composite design, analysis, and manufacturability together in one connected environment. Engineers can move from concept to production, without leaving their digital design space.
Starting with Creo 10, PTC introduced a complete composites toolkit: ply layups, draping visualization, and automated manufacturing documentation. Designers could model how materials conform to complex geometry and see in real time whether a part could actually be built.
With Creo 11, these capabilities expanded to include zone-based design, enhanced transitions, and laser projection support for precise, traceable hand-layup or automated fiber placement.
Introduced earlier this year, Creo 12 has raised the bar even higher. Key enhancements include:
- Faster, more accurate 3D laminate modeling for large and complex parts
- Associative manufacturing reference models to ensure design-to-build alignment
- Merged-zone capability to simplify and optimize layups
- Enhanced draping and transition controls for more realistic simulation
With these and other improvements Creo 12 is a leap forward in both speed and precision, bridging the gap between digital design and real-world manufacturing.
“Creo 12 shows how far we’ve come,” says Sagar. “Designers can now move from idea to manufacturable model in a fraction of the time and do it with full traceability and confidence.”
The road ahead
With demand for composite-based products accelerating, PTC is already looking to what’s next. Future releases of Creo will extend support for composite inserts, deepen simulation integration, and incorporate AI-driven automation to streamline design and validation.
“Our goal is to make composite design as intuitive as traditional materials, while giving engineers real-time insight into performance and manufacturability,” says Sagar.
That future is already taking shape. Digital engineering and composites are converging as generative design, AI-based optimization, and connected PLM systems like Windchill and ThingWorx create a continuous digital thread from concept to production. Imagine designing a composite component where every decision, from fiber direction to resin type, is guided by live simulation feedback, supplier data, and sustainability metrics.
Shaping the future of composite innovation
As industries pursue lighter, stronger, and more sustainable products, composites have become a strategic enabler. Combining these materials with Creo’s integrated digital toolset allows manufacturers to accelerate development, enhance performance, and reduce waste.
The future of composite-based products isn’t just about lighter or stronger, it’s about smarter. AI-assisted modeling will evaluate and recommend optimal ply orientations. Cloud collaboration will connect global design teams in real time. Embedded simulation will validate manufacturability as designs evolve and connected PLM systems will ensure an integrated workflow from the design desk to the manufacturing floor.
This is where PTC is headed: empowering engineers with intelligent, connected tools that enable confident design, streamlined collaboration, and sustainable innovation.
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