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BrianMartin13-Aquamarine
13-Aquamarine
January 21, 2013
Solved

Enhancement Requests for Creo - Now's the time to speak up!

  • January 21, 2013
  • 30 replies
  • 38560 views

Hi Everyone...

 

 

Starting tomorrow January 22 through the 24th, PTC/User is holding it's bi-annual "face to face" Technical Committee ("TC") meetings. These meetings are held twice a year- once at PTC Headquarters and again at the PTC Live World Event (or whatever we're calling it this year).

 

Volunteers from PTC customers and other interested individuals comprise the membership of these Technical Committees. Working closely with PTC, the Technical Committees provide product feedback, enhancement requests, and other information that helps to influence future software development. At the face-to-face meetings,Technical Committee members have direct access to PTC software developers and Product Line Managers. These are the people responsible for enhancements, upgrades, and future functionality for all PTC products including Creo/ProE, Windchill, and Creo View.

 

There are well over a dozen different TC's of which I'm a member of about 6 of them. Originally, I joined with the intention to share NASA's feedback, comments, and concerns with the software developers and other committee members. But having spent a tremendous amount of time interacting with users on PTC Community, I'd like to throw the door open for everyone to submit their feedback, insights, comments, concerns, and enhancement requests.

 

The goal is to make positive contributions and hopefully influence future enhancements to the software. This isn't intended to be another "gripe" thread. Let's please focus on bringing something positive to the discussion. These are professional meetings held at PTC Headquarters and we're invited guests.

 

To be blunt... I can't just go into a TC meeting and start ripping the PTC people a new one because I don't like the ribbon interface. However, I can go in there with a reasonable request supported by sound logic and a true business need and make a case for a software enhancement.

 

The last time I attended one of these meetings, many people just sat there quietly taking in the scenery and munching on free snacks. You could hear crickets chirping in some of the sessions. Sometimes PTC Product Line Managers were standing there asking for feedback and people just stared at them. That absolutely cannot happen! How often do you get these people in a room giving you their time and attention? This kind of opportunity cannot be squandered.

 

I realize we have the "Ideas" section of the PTC Community and we've been assured that those enhancement requests do make it to the developers. But this is a chance to speak directly with the software developers. If there's an enhancement you really need... or a problem you're having... or some piece of feedback you really want to make it up the chain of command, now is the time to say something!

 

Add to this thread and send in your feedback and requests. I'll do my best to get it in front of the developers. They might be sick of hearing from me by the end of the meetings... but I've never been afraid to speak up.

 

Remember to keep it positive if possible... but let's hear what you have to say!

 

Thanks!!

-Brian

 

PS: I am currently a member of the following Technical Committees so I can address topics in any of these areas:

  • Routed Systems - Cabling/Piping & Schematics
  • Core Modeling
  • Model Based Definition (ASME Y.14.41 Standards)
  • System Administration
  • Detailing
  • Creo View / Visualization
  • Windchill

 

PPS: If you're interested in joining a TC, go to the PTC/User Website, create a login, and sign up!


This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.
    Best answer by BrianMartin

    I'm posting the wrap-up notes from the Technical Committee meetings as an attachment to this thread. I'm also going to write a blog post to tie things up. I'll also respond to each person individually (in the thread) so everyone understands the disposition of their requests.

    Thanks!

    -Brian

    30 replies

    Show previous replies
    R
    rohit_rajan15-Moonstone
    15-Moonstone
    January 25, 2013

    Hi Brian,

    so which all suggetions did you give to PTC? I guess the only way to know is to ask you directly..

    .

    Thanks in Advance.

    J
    JPenner1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    January 25, 2013

    I know the meeting is over. But here are few more enhancement suggestions.

    1. double click in a window to activate it,

    2. a larger window for "appearance" selection

    3. allow the user to switch windows wihout having to close a sketch. ( so one can go maeasure another part while sketching a new part.)

    Patriot_1776
    Patriot_177622-Sapphire II
    22-Sapphire II
    January 28, 2013

    Major props to my friend Brian for stepping up to the plate to do this. Bravo!

      B
      BrianMartin13-AquamarineAuthor
      13-Aquamarine
      January 30, 2013

      Thanks Frank... now I just owe everyone a final wrap up to tell you how it went last week.

      I actually made a large spreadsheet with everyone's enhancement requests. Although I wasn't able to get all of them in front of the developers, I was able to at least bring up about half of the ideas suggested here. There were literally 5 or so meetings for different topics going on at one time. I simply couldn't be everywhere at once so I tried to go where I could be most effective while hitting a good cross-section of the various topics.

      I will write back again and attach the spreadsheet and a status on each item suggested. I'll need to get on this tomorrow. I'm getting clobbered by the instructor in my new Javascript class at the moment. For some reason she's decided to make her class unreasonably complex... almost like she's doing it to see who will wimp out and quit.

      Anyway, I really did run as many of those suggestions up the flagpole as possible. Tomorrow I'll try to get the spreadsheet up. Anything that didn't make it will not be lost... we'll get it in front of the technical committees another way.

      Thanks!

      -Brian

        B
        BrianMartin13-AquamarineAuthorAnswer
        13-Aquamarine
        February 8, 2013

        I'm posting the wrap-up notes from the Technical Committee meetings as an attachment to this thread. I'm also going to write a blog post to tie things up. I'll also respond to each person individually (in the thread) so everyone understands the disposition of their requests.

        Thanks!

        -Brian

        J
        JoshH1-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        February 8, 2013

        Nice going Brian!

        I'll be looking forward to that blog!

        B
        BrianMartin13-AquamarineAuthor
        13-Aquamarine
        February 8, 2013

        My fingers are killing me from typing about 15 replies just now! I'll have to get on the blog later tonight or over the weekend! I also have a raft of Chemistry homework due by tomorrow!

        In the meantime I attached the spreadsheet to this response, too.

        Take care...

        -Brian

        D
        dwhitworth-21-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        April 11, 2013

        I know it's a little late for the conference, but I just signed up. I noticed when analysing a part or feature, namely when measuring angles between two surfaces, you can toggle between all the different angles that those two surfaces can make. The only problem with this is the curve or arc that represents that angle that shows up between the two strait lines of the angle icon is kind of arbitrary. Why does Creo not show the arc going from one surface to the next and moving around with the straight lines in line with the surfaces instead of some arbitrary direction? I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't, I could get a screen shot later.

        R
        rastheimer1-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        April 12, 2013

        David,

        Thanks for the feedback. I am the Product Manager who owns the measure tool. A screenshot would be helpful or if you stop by the Data Exchange kiosk at the conferece we could speak about your requests 1:1.

        Rosemary

        B
        BrkYrdSS1-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        January 9, 2014

        Brian,

        Not sure if this is too old of a post to submit this too, but I'll try anyway. Shelling and thickening can many times be the biggest headache in complex modeling, Creo has added some tools to work with this issue, but much more is desired. I'd like to see a usable "approximate offset" feature. CATIA has this feature, but the results can be very unexpected (usually not acceptable).

        Many parts only really need one machinable side (i.e. thermoformed, blow-molded, rotational molded). Other times, one only needs a quick part for concept exploration. Many times, a part needs a little extra thickness for an SLA build. Thermoformed parts may only need the shell feature to show on a part drawing, but the shell side will never be machined. Why then, would we need to spend so much time building a two-side machine-able model.

        It is usually very small (insignificant) surfaces that make a shell/thicken feature fail. GeoMagic (I believe to be a polygon modeler) has never had a problem thickening our ProE models to any thickness we desire. It seems that Creo's sub-division surface (Freestyle) surfaces also do not have a shelling/thickening issue. Given these observations, I propose one, or both of the following:

        1) A shell/thicken option that would create a approximate offset, with the system determining how to patch small surface that typically might fail. Possibly add some user input such as: Ignore surfaces smaller than ___. This shell/thicken feature would still be machinable both sides.

        or

        2) A shell/thicken feature that basically creates a polygon mesh on the shell side. This would be helpful when a machinable shell is not required (i.e. thermoformed, blow-molded, rotational molded parts). You could still create part drawings, place in assemblies, export to SLA, etc.

        If this capability was added, I believe Creo would have a huge advantage over other CAD systems. I know it would be a big hit in the packaging industry.

        -Mark

        B
        BrianMartin13-AquamarineAuthor
        13-Aquamarine
        January 21, 2014

        Hi Mark...

        Your enhancement requests are captured. I think PTC may push customers toward using Freestyle because, as you noted, it can thicken almost anything. I'll see if there's any chance that type of robust thicken can be implemented in shell/thicken.

        There's a great many meetings this week. I'll post an update letting you know if I got to bring the topic to their attention and what their reaction was. This will be included on the master spreadsheet of enhancements. Follow this link over to the latest Enhancements/Technical Committee Thread for Winter 2014. That's where I'll post the spreadsheet.

        Thanks!

        -Brian

        Patriot_1776
        Patriot_177622-Sapphire II
        22-Sapphire II
        January 21, 2014

        Thanks for being Da MAN! Brian! It is appreciated my friend.

          J
          jfrankovich12-Amethyst
          12-Amethyst
          January 23, 2014

          Hey Brian,

          Kudos to you for opening up the TC experience for all and being an engaged advocate for the community!

          As long as I am posting, I wanted to thow in one issue that we have for your June list. Because of the "constant thickness" constraint of sheetmetal modeling and the physical thinning of the bending process, the volume of a formed part and flat part are different. So it follows that the calculated weight of the formed and flat part end up being different, which can occassionally cause issues with assembly weight, COG, etc. Obviously the flat part/starting weight should be the same as the formed/final weight, so we would like a way to ensure that the formed part reports the correct flat weight.

          There are several potential ways of correcting this, from complex to "simple". It could involve calculating the bend volume weights of the formed part using the corresponding flat volumes or using a "corrected" density calculation for the bend volumes. Or, it could be an option in the mass properties to calculate the formed part weight using a temporary flat state (and disregard COG) or a relation between the formed and flat state weights.

          I've mentioned this to product management, and we can live without it, but if it is a problem for others, it might be a worthwhile change.

          Thanks again for your representation!

          John Frankovich

          GSI Group LLC

          B
          BrianMartin13-AquamarineAuthor
          13-Aquamarine
          February 6, 2014

          Thanks John...

          I've added your suggestion. I wish I'd had it just a few days sooner. We had two HOURS of nothing but sheetmetal discussion. I think we had the PLM for sheetmetal and maybe 8 or 9 people from various companies. Whenever you have a small audience and the undivided attention of the Product Line Manager, it's a tremendous opportunity to get every wish, whim, and nuisance brought up for discussion. The June meetings are less productive but there are still some chances to bring up new topics. I'll do my best to get this one out there.

          Thanks again,

          -Brian

          B
          BrkYrdSS1-Visitor
          1-Visitor
          January 27, 2014

          COMPLEX LOGO IMPORT

          Hopefully, it's not too late to add more. I'd like to see a better way to emboss complex logos. The methods we've tried imports the logo with thousands of dimensions (i.e. sketcher, sketcher pallet, etc), We never want to change these dimensions, just the scale and/or position. Would like to see a freese all entities feature and establish a base point. Th sketcher pallet would be a good place for this, treating the entities as a single symbol.

          D
          dschenken1-Visitor
          1-Visitor
          January 27, 2014

          Until then, you can read them into a datum curve from file using IGS (IGES) format files.

          Since logos often come in from dwg or dxf, it takes a stop off at a drawing, from which you can make the IGES file, but since there is often some cleanup required anyway, it's not a total hassle. Plus, this is where the scale and origin of the geometry can be set (Hint - it's the Grid origin) before creating the IGES.

          To make the emboss you'll Use Edge on all the parts of the datum curve, but there aren't any other Sketcher constraints. If you don't need to emboss, the leave it as-is.

          I suppose a UDF could also be an intermediate - it might let you place the curve and scale it after placing it in the model.

          What would be nice is reading PDFs into drawings, so that a trip through Ghostscript or Illustrator or Inkscape to convert from PDF to dxf isn't required.

          B
          BrkYrdSS1-Visitor
          1-Visitor
          January 27, 2014

          I have used the "Curve From file" method, but it is missing a "position / scale" option.

          I know one could scale it ahead of time and tie it to another coordinate system that can then be moved, but those are really unnessarry steps and not very user friendly. It is also a problem when the logo needs to change scale do to part modifications or marketing desires.

          B
          BrkYrdSS1-Visitor
          1-Visitor
          January 27, 2014

          PHOTOLUX RENDERING - ALPHA CHANNEL ISSUES

          PhotoLux rendering is much better than ProPhotorender, but the alpha channel export feature doesn't work.

          In ProPhotorender, selecting "Render alpha" exports a channel mask that software such as Photoshop can use to isolate the product from the background. This is great for tweaking the image only, or quickly putting it on a different background.

          The same selection in PhotoLux creates a mask of the entire image. Fairly useless, as this can be done with a single rectangular selection.

          B
          BrianMartin13-AquamarineAuthor
          13-Aquamarine
          February 6, 2014

          Hi Mark...

          I almost missed this because it's on the "old" enhancement thread. I've kind of made a mess of these discussion threads. Each time a new meeting comes up, I create a new discussion. Then those discussions continue and start crossing over into one another and it's pandemonium!

          So I apologize for the confusion. I've added your request to the spreadsheet. I'm not even sure who to take it to though. I'll see if I can find who's in charge of colors, graphics, and the rendering engines so I can ask about them in June. There are numerous things I'd like to see addressed on the visualization/graphics end of things but I never quite know who to go to. I'll work on it.

          Thanks for your feedback!

          -Brian

          B
          BrianMartin13-AquamarineAuthor
          13-Aquamarine
          February 6, 2014

          Hello Everyone...

          The link to the completed document (spreadsheet) tracking all enhancement requests is UP! This has all of the requests I've gathered from January of 2013 (last year) through January 2014.

          There's quite a bit going on in this chart... the color codes help explain what happened with each submission. The dots in the first column appear next to any item that has been updated for January 2014. As promised, I went back to the old lists. If I'd missed something from Jan '13 or June '13, I tried again in Jan '14.

          Over 80 enhancements from your submissions did get in front of the PTC developers. Many of them were well received. Some of them were either already planned, already implemented, or so popular that I imagine we'll be seeing them very, very soon.

          Everyone who submitted a request should check the chart for their name and add comments to the DOCUMENT thread so I can add keep track of everything. I'm only linking the document here for convenience. Please submit your comments and feedback to the document thread so I don't have to hunt through the longer discussion threads to see your responses.

          Thanks!

          -Brian

          PS: I'm adding this same note to all 3 enhancement threads so please forgive the duplications!

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