Creo AI Tips n' Techniques

Check out this video on Creo AI from PTC Application Engineers 

Presenters: Lino Tozzi (Director, CAD Segment Hub) and Tom Quaglia  (Solution Consulting, Fellow).

Overview

This 63-minute PTC Tips & Techniques webinar, presented by Lino Tozzi of PTC, explains the Creo AI Assistant in Creo 13.4.1 and its three levels of capability: Advise, Assist, and Automate. It is aimed at Creo users and CAD administrators evaluating AI in Creo, and includes live demos of model queries, automated material assignment, dimension optimization, and AI rendering.

Chapters

This video has chapters. Open the chapter menu in the player to jump straight to a topic.

• 0:00 to 4:36: Welcome and upcoming PTC user group events
• 4:36 to 8:51: Crawl, walk, run: PTC's vision for AI in Creo
• 8:51 to 12:58: Hype vs. reality: what AI can and can't do in CAD
• 12:58 to 17:20: Creo AI Assistant tiers and the free Advise tier
• 17:20 to 19:16: Advise demo: Creo-specific and engineering answers
• 19:16 to 23:15: Advise Q&A: materials, standards, and feedback
• 23:15 to 25:27: Assist tier: pricing, credits, and data flow
• 25:27 to 30:47: Assist demos: materials list, reusable scripts, MBD
• 30:47 to 35:44: Automate demo: assigning missing materials (sandbox)
• 35:44 to 38:04: Automate demo: equalizing fuel line lengths
• 38:04 to 44:53: DFM tools, company standards, and MCP connections
• 44:53 to 46:39: Roadmap: MCP and built-in AI in Creo 2027
• 46:39 to 51:23: AI rendering from a Creo screenshot (live demo)
• 51:23 to 57:10: The road ahead and what gets back-ported
• 57:10 to 1:03:01: Closing Q&A: trials, drawings, copyright, checking

Key Takeaways

• The Creo AI Assistant has two tiers: Creo Advise, which is free and shipped with Creo 13.4, and Creo Assist, a paid, model-aware tier released with Creo 13.4.1.
• Creo Advise answers from PTC's knowledge base, help, and best-practice content, and does not read the model you have open.
• Creo Assist has a list price of $480 per user per year (US dollars) and includes 12,000 credits per user. Credits are pooled, so 10 licenses share 120,000 credits.
• Questions to Advise use no credits. Actions that generate and run scripts use credits.
• Creo Assist never sends your model to the cloud. The PTC cloud returns a generic JavaScript that runs locally against your model.
• Automate changes run in a sandbox session where you review, accept, or reject them. Automate is in beta: it can modify features and dimensions but cannot yet create new features.
• Creo Assist requires Creo 13 or later and will not be back-ported to earlier versions.

What is the Creo AI Assistant, and what do Advise, Assist, and Automate mean?

The Creo AI Assistant is the AI panel built into Creo, and it comes in two tiers: Creo Advise for general help and Creo Assist for questions about the model you have open. Automate is not a separate product. It is what happens when you ask Creo Assist to make a change and it executes that change on your model. PTC describes the progression as crawl, walk, run: answer questions first, then understand the model, then act on it.

Watch: 12:58 to 14:57 (the Advise, Assist, and Automate tier overview)

What can the free Creo Advise tier answer?

Creo Advise answers how-to, guidance, and general troubleshooting questions in Creo terms, using content from PTC's knowledge base, help, and best practices. It also answers general engineering questions, such as material properties, math, and ASME or ISO standards, but it cannot see the model you have open. In the demo, asking "How do I create a loft?" inside a sheet metal model returned the Creo equivalent, a sheet metal boundary blend, with links to knowledge base articles. A misspelled question about aluminum 6061 still returned a typical yield strength of about 35 to 40 ksi.

Each user creates their own Creo AI Assistant login, separate from their PTC Technical Support account, and PTC recommends using a company email. Advise runs on an Azure OpenAI instance in the PTC public cloud, chat history is not stored, and administrators can turn off the Creo AI Assistant button with a configuration option.

Watch: 14:57 to 19:16 (Advise data flow and the live loft and aluminum questions)

How much does Creo Assist cost, and how do credits work?

Creo Assist is sold as a per-user annual subscription with a list price of $480 per user per year in US dollars, which includes 12,000 credits. Credits are pooled across a purchase, so buying 10 licenses gives 10 people a shared 120,000 credits. Questions answered in Advise mode use no credits, while actions that generate and run code, such as automations and renders, deduct credits. At the time of recording, PTC had not published how many credits each action uses.

Watch: 23:15 to 24:29 (pricing and credits slide)

Does Creo Assist send my model to the cloud?

No. Creo Assist sends only your request to the PTC cloud, which writes a short, generic JavaScript using the Creo APIs and sends it back to run locally against your model, so model data never leaves your machine. Assist can read the model tree, the working directory, feature information, runtime session information, and current selections, and you can attach files such as CSV or text files. JavaScript scripting is free to every Creo user, so you could write the same scripts yourself. Assist saves you the time spent coding, testing, and debugging.

Watch: 25:50 to 27:14 (the script round trip explained during the materials demo)

What can Creo Assist do with an open model?

Creo Assist extracts and checks information from the open model and returns it as tables or files. In the demos, it listed every part with its assigned material and exported the list to CSV. On an MBD model, it extracted all annotations into an Excel bill of characteristics, checked that annotations were on a combined state, and found geometric tolerances with no referenced geometry. You can keep a useful script and run it again later:

1. Run the request: Ask Assist for the result you need, for example "List me all the parts and the assigned material."
2. Download the script: Prompt "Download the script that did this" to save the JavaScript file. Assist does not keep a history, so save anything you want to reuse.
3. Reuse it on another model: Upload the saved file in a later session and ask Assist to run the script.

Watch: 25:27 to 30:47 (materials list, script download, and MBD bill of characteristics demos)

How does Creo Automate change a model safely?

Before Creo Assist changes your model, it describes what it will do and waits for you to click Proceed. It then applies the changes in a sandbox session, marked by a blue bar, where you can review the before and after, then accept or reject the changes. In the demo, a simulation could not run because some parts of a mini excavator assembly had no material assigned, and Automate fixed this in one prompt.

1. Describe the change precisely: For example, "Apply material steel to only parts that are not steel. Strictly use the material steel from my working directory or from my library." Name where the material comes from.
2. Review the plan: Read the actions Assist lists, then click Proceed.
3. Accept or reject: Check the result in the sandbox session and accept the changes to keep them.

Automate is in beta. It can modify features and dimensions and run optimizations, but it cannot create new features yet.

Watch: 30:47 to 35:44 (blocked simulation, then the automated material fix in the sandbox session)

Can Creo Automate optimize dimensions?

Yes. Automate can iterate on existing dimensions until a target is met, and it writes its own optimization logic to get there. In the demo, three piped fuel lines on a diesel engine had different lengths. Lino Tozzi selected the visible dimensions and asked for each line's center length to be 280, regenerating after each iteration. Assist ran the iterations and brought all three lines to within 1% of 280. You can add constraints to the prompt, such as a tolerance or a clearance check between pipes on each iteration. This works today in Creo 13.

Watch: 35:44 to 38:04 (live iterations, including one pipe briefly shooting off into space)

Can Creo AI check my model against company standards or DFM rules?

Not out of the box today, because your company's standards live in your own documents, spreadsheets, and systems such as ERP, and PTC's AI cannot see them. Many requests are already covered by purpose-built tools, such as design for manufacturing (DFM) tools and Creo Harness Manufacturing for flattened harness drawings. PTC plans to connect Creo to your own AI agents and data sources through MCP (Model Context Protocol). That would let an agent check, for example, whether the holes in a sheet metal part match the drill sizes available on your shop floor.

Watch: 38:04 to 44:53 (the sheet metal standards example and the MCP explanation)

What AI features are planned for Creo 2027?

As presented on October 1, 2026, PTC planned client-side MCP server support around November to December 2026, starting with publicly available APIs. The next Creo release is named Creo 2027, and future releases follow the same pattern (2027, 2029), always releasing in November. Creo 2027 was planned to include three built-in AI features: predictive sketching, predictive assembly placement, and AI rendering. AI rendering takes a screenshot of the Creo window plus a text prompt and returns a photorealistic image. The demo returned an excavator arm being welded in a factory jig in about two minutes.

Watch: 46:39 to 51:23 (live AI rendering demo of an excavator arm in a welding jig)

Which Creo AI features work on older Creo versions?

Creo Assist requires Creo 13 or later and will not be back-ported. Improvements to the PTC cloud back end reach every supported version automatically, but features that need user interface changes, such as AI rendering and predictive sketching, will only be available from Creo 2027. Customers can already connect their own MCP servers to Creo 10, 11, and 12, limited to the runtime APIs those versions expose.

Watch: 55:34 to 57:10 (the back-porting question and answer)

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can Creo Advise tell me the material of the part I have open?

A: No. Advise does not read the open model, but it answers material property questions when you name the material, for example the yield strength of aluminum 6061. (answered at 20:20)

Q: Does Creo Advise answer questions about ASME or ISO standards?

A: Yes, for general questions about a standard. It cannot check whether your model complies with that standard. (answered at 21:36)

Q: How do I give feedback on Creo AI Assistant answers?

A: Use the thumbs up or thumbs down under each response, and add comments if you want. PTC uses this feedback to improve the responses. (answered at 21:00)

Q: Can I use Creo Assist in Creo 12 or earlier?

A: No. Creo Assist is available from Creo 13 onward and will not be back-ported. (answered at 49:31)

Q: Can Creo AI build a 3D model from a 2D drawing?

A: Not out of the box today. (answered at 49:49)

Q: How can I try Creo 13.4.1 if my company uses an older version?

A: Ask your company and IT to approve a non-production installation of Creo 13.4.1, or request a Creo trial license on the PTC website and install it on a personal computer. (answered at 57:15)

Links & Resources

• About Creo AI Assistant (support.ptc.com)
• Creo Advise (support.ptc.com)
• Creo AI Assistant - Advise tutorial (learningconnector.ptc.com)
• About Creo Harness Manufacturing (support.ptc.com)
• Creo Launchpad Trial (ptc.com)
• PTC Community events (community.ptc.com)