For the second year in a row, Develop3D, an international publication focused on new product development technologies, has named Creo among the 30 best of the year.
Selected entirely on merit, Develop3D believes that each of their top 30 selections will change the way the industry uses technology to design, engineer, and manufacture products.
For 2021, the magazine specifically cited new Snapshot commands in Creo 8 for the honor. With Snapshots, Develop3D writes, PTC surpasses the state of the art. “Snapshots… provide a quick insight into a model’s history and allow you to reuse any of the geometry from that history in just a couple of clicks.”
Video: Show Snapshot command in Creo 8 demonstrated.
In a recent review, editor-in-chief of Develop3D Al Dean, praised Creo 8 overall, saying that it continues adding “brand new tools and technologies, without being afraid to revisit existing tools and workflows and improve them.” He notes that those same qualities landed the 3D CAD software on the top 30 list last year.
In the review, Dean spotlights several advances in Creo 8 such as the following:
While updates to core modeling don’t grab headlines, Dean writes that these changes are among his favorites.
Indeed, he launches his review with a look at “seemingly minor but key improvements” in the Creo 8 core user interface. He then spotlights two new capabilities in Creo 8 “that look set to impact almost every user’s workflow and efficiency”:
Dean cites both capabilities as examples of PTC revisiting old workflows without fear. He even suggests other vendors should think about adopting that approach themselves!
Further, Dean covers Creo 8’s new inseparable assemblies functionality, which is particularly useful for purchased parts and subassemblies. He then devotes several paragraphs to updates for working on holes. For example, support for wider hole types, including NPT, PTF and ISO 7 standards…”
Moving into some specialized areas of the software, Dean writes, “PTC has been ahead of the MBD curve for quite some time, pouncing on it before many of its competitors.”
Creo 8 further expands users’ options with a symbol gallery and a newly streamlined placement and editing workflow added to its MBD capabilities.
Dean noticed. “While other software companies are still trying to get their houses in order to support these processes, PTC is already tackling some of their nuances and finer points, ensuring that users who choose to go down this path have the tools they need,” he writes.
Simulation technology has taken great strides in Creo in recent years, largely due to PTC’s partnership with industry leader, Ansys.
As for Creo 8? “Once again, we’ve seen the partnership with Ansys bearing fruit and extending Creo’s simulation capabilities,” writes Dean. “This applies to both the real-time Simulation Live tools and the more traditional tools, and now extends to including the Ansys Mechanical solvers directly in the Creo interface. If you’re going to partner with a simulation vendor and take advantage of its knowledge and capabilities, Ansys is a pretty solid bet, right?”
Work in generative design continues as well. The Develop3D review illustrates how Creo and cloud computation work together to create multiple design alternatives: you set up loads, constraints, and design criteria to generate a design locally using topology optimization. Then, you can also send the same study to the cloud to simultaneously generate multiple designs, even apply filters and compare alternatives to select the best option, and more.
If you’re curious about how generative design works in product development, the illustrated workflow included in the article provides a quick education. (You can download a copy of the review here.)
Dean reviews manufacturing updates in Creo 8, citing, among other things, 5-axis operations for both roughing and automatic deburring and capabilities for converting toolpaths into 5-axis operations.
Last but not at all least: the review examines additive manufacturing. “PTC offers a set of AM tools that’s better than most,” writes Dean. “The last few releases have seen latticing tools added into the system for lightweighting and the development of more structured parts/materials. For the Creo 8 release, this work continues with … simulation driven lattices and formula-based lattice structures.”
To read the entire Develop3D review of Creo 8, download a PDF copy of Al Dean’s review.
Cat McClintock edits the Creo and Mathcad blogs for PTC. She has been a writer and editor for 15+ years, working for CAD, PDM, ERP, and CRM software companies. Prior to that, she edited science journals for an academic publisher and aligned optical assemblies for a medical device manufacturer. She holds degrees in Technical Journalism, Classics, and Electro-Optics. She loves talking to PTC customers and learning about the interesting work they're doing and the innovative ways they use the software.