Manufacturing

PTC sets new CAD standards with Creo

4 January 2011

Mike Campbell presents Creo at the launch event in Boston, Massachusetts

Prime takes a closer look at PTC’s new suite of design software and finds out how it will enable the company to redefine the world of CAD

The computer aided design (CAD) software market has been in somewhat of a technology slump in recent years, with the early innovations of the 1990s tailing off to leave a series of unresolved problems in their wake. Companies using CAD technologies have long been troubled with the same old problems, which they have been by and large putting up with. But this wasn’t good enough for PTC; the company saw these problems as an opportunity to showcase its innovative product development capabilities. That is why, on 28 October 2010, PTC unveiled its new Creo product family of CAD software, which was first introduced as Project Lightning back in June at the PTC/USER World Event. Karen McCandless talks to Michael Campbell, divisional vice president of design and visualisation products at PTC, to find out more.

What led you to launch this new family of products?
The CAD market is pretty large, it’s worth about US$3-4 billion, but it’s largely flat. That might lead some to think that the market is mature and there is nothing left to be done. But we at PTC took a closer look and realised that users are facing some fundamental problems that have not yet been resolved. This includes problems around usability (in the past users have just accepted that CAD is hard to use) and also around interoperability and moving data between different CAD systems. We were also seeing challenges to do with more sophisticated assembly management activities. In today’s world, customers are trying to tailor their products more and more; everyone wants a personalised product, whether it’s for a customer or a market. We developed the Creo family of design apps to really address these problems and make things easier for the user.

What do you think is the most important feature in Creo?
I think that would have to be AnyRole Apps. The idea behind this technology is that instead of providing a big, monolithic product that does all kinds of things, we wanted to provide more specific, tailored applications – this means smaller design applications that are optimised for specific tasks. People find CAD hard to use because the programs are packed with all kinds of functionality; all kinds of different tools are bundled together, which can be really overwhelming for many users. As an analogy, its like if you were going to plant a tree in your back garden. The right tool for the job would probably be a shovel, but CAD vendors would turn up with an excavator. It has all kinds of power and sophistication but it’s too much for the job. So the idea is to give all the different people involved in product development, whether it be the project manager, the mechanical engineers or someone in marketing, the rights apps to access the data and get their job done. This is something that is really unique to our solution.

What else makes Creo stand out in the market?
One of the other things Creo can deliver is more flexibility in terms of user approach to CAD. There are different paradigms in CAD programs: there is a 2D approach, a 3D direct modelling approach and advanced 3D parametric. Creo supports all of those approaches and makes sure they all work well together. The thing that is new, innovative and a differentiator is the ability to use these different paradigms and have them all work well together.

The idea is to give all the different people involved in product development the rights apps to access the data and get their job done

Michael Campbell, PTC What role does Microsoft technology play in all of this?
Creo is part of PTC’s Product Development System (PDS), our complete suite of integral solutions to support product development processes. Because of the importance of our partnership with Microsoft, we’ve made a long-term commitment to Microsoft products as part of our technology strategy. Specifically, Creo integrates with both Windchill, our PLM system, and Windchill ProductPoint, our product data management solution for small and medium businesses. Windchill can run on SQL Server as a database platform, and can allow access to product data through Microsoft SharePoint via either our Windchill Web Parts for SharePoint or Windchill PPMLink products. Windchill ProductPoint is a SharePoint-native application. The recently released Windchill SocialLink built on SharePoint also integrates with Creo. So this makes it very easy for an engineer working on a CAD model to collaborate with his team, to understand what other skills people have and to reach out and network.

It’s also worth noting that Microsoft, as a PTC customer, designs 90 per cent of its hardware using Creo… that is Creo Elements/Pro and Creo Elements/View.

So companies already running PTC solutions can be assured these will work well with Creo?
Absolutely, that is a key part of our strategy. It is easy to build individual products, but the challenge is to build products that are designed and developed to work together.

What kind of effect will this have on the industry; do you expect a lot of companies to replace their CAD systems with Creo?
Yes, we do. We think it will have an energising effect on our existing user base and put us in a very good position with companies that are evaluating new CAD technologies. Our goal is to reset the standards for mechanical CAD.

You have rebranded other PTC products to reflect this new release, is this part of your overall CAD strategy?
At PTC, we already have three products that are design and visualisation based. These are Pro/ENGINEER, CoCreate and ProductView. We rebranded these to send a message to users and the market that these existing PTC products are the foundation for Creo. We’re building Creo from the elements of existing technology. That’s an important message for us; we want people to know that there is something new, exciting and different coming, but they are already on the programme to get there.

When can we expect to see the product come to market?
We’re planning on a production shipment in the summer of next year and then we will have a 2.0 release in autumn of 2011. So it’s a very aggressive schedule.

Please note, the timing of any product release, and any features or functionality thereof, are subject to change at PTC’s discretion.

This article first appeared in the Winter 2010 edition of Prime. To read the rest of the magazine, check out the digital edition.

Add a comment