Creo Flow Analysis - Using CFD in Creo to Accelerate Prototypes Webcast Replay

Chapter Summaries

• 0:00 – Welcome & Speaker Introductions Dana kicks off the "Using CFD in Creo to Accelerate Prototypes" webcast and introduces the presenters from Simerics (Rich Moore, Alex Jang, Lei Shi) and PTC (Todd Kraft, Tom Quaglia), along with instructions for submitting Q&A.
• 0:43 – Creo Flow Analysis Overview: Scalable Analyst-Level CFD Tom Quaglia introduces Creo Flow Analysis (CFA) as an analyst-level computational fluid dynamics product embedded directly in Creo, positioning it as scalable both upward for analysts and downward for designers doing digital prototyping.
• 3:02 – PTC–Simerics Partnership & Simerics MP/MP+ Platform Rich Moore explains why PTC selected Simerics, describing how the underlying Simerics MP and MP+ solver was embedded into Creo as CFA to make high-end CFD usable, affordable, and prototype-accurate for the Creo user community.
• 4:51 – Old vs New Prototype Process: Moving Simulation Upstream Rich contrasts the traditional handoff model (5M engineers, 500K CFD analysts) with a designer-led workflow where CFA moves simulation iterations to the front and middle of the design process to cut hardware prototype cycles.
• 7:01 – Real-World Examples: Pumps, Valves, Cavitation & Digital Fluids Walkthrough of CFA use cases including gear pumps, hydraulic valves, and micron-scale closing gaps, with one-click activation of physics like cavitation and roughly 1,500 digital fluid properties for gases, oils, water, heat, and vortices.
• 9:36 – Three Packages: Base, Plus & Premium (Particles, Radiation, 6DoF) Overview of the CFA package tiers: Base (fluids, conduction, convection), Plus (particle erosion, surface-to-surface and solar radiation, moving/sliding mesh), and Premium (cavitation, multi-phase/multi-component, six degrees of freedom fluid-solid interaction).
• 10:58 – Value Propositions & Integrations with Creo Simulate, Vuforia, Windchill Rich highlights ROI for managers and IT plus out-of-the-box integration with Creo Simulate for FEA load transfer (pressure/temperature), Vuforia Studio for AR-published streamlines, and Windchill PLM — with ~800 customers and 3,000 users adopted.
• 12:20 – Body-Fitted Top-Down Mesher vs Bottom-Up High-End CFD Deep dive on why CFA's top-down, body-fitted Cartesian cut-cell mesher — with automatic moving/sliding mesh sewing and lattice/gyroid meshing for additive manufacturing — removes the traditional blocker to designer-led CFD.
• 16:34 – Todd's Pump Demo: Fluid Volumes, Rotational Frame & Real-Time Painting Todd Kraft builds a pump simulation from scratch in Creo 9, showing fluid volume extraction with caps, splitting the domain with planar and rotational cuts for a moving reference frame, turbulence + streamlines modules, outflow boundary at 720 RPM, isosurfaces, section views, and the new real-time probe.
• 29:34 – What's New in Creo 9: Multi-Project, View Panel, Units, Lattices, BMX Rundown of Creo 9 enhancements including multi-project batch mode, redesigned view panel UI, per-quantity unit control, improved tessellation, quilt (non-watertight) support, working-conditions overlays, draggable cross-sections, interactive legend, formula-driven lattice geometry support, and Behavioral Modeling Extension (BMX) integration for sensitivity and optimization studies.
• 34:14 – Creo 10 Roadmap & Deep Technical Q&A: EMAG, Turbulence, Binary Tree Mesher Preview of Creo 10 (improved streamlines/XY plot, expression editor, fan-curve/natural-convection/real-gas wizard templates, EMAG e-motors package, real-time flow) followed by extended Q&A covering k-epsilon turbulence with wall functions, finite-volume solver, subsonic/transonic/supersonic capability, non-Newtonian polymer flow, conjugate heat transfer, binary tree mesher for thin fins and small gaps, one-way FEA coupling, and Design Premium / Premium Plus packaging.
• 45:44 – Alex's Heat Sink Demo: Power Inverter Baseline with Streamlines & Section Views Alex Jang retrofits a power inverter by meshing an enclosing box around the assembly, applying a static fan flow rate, atmospheric pressure inlet, and a 5 W thermal chip heat source, then uses streamlines, temperature contours, and Y-plane velocity sections to identify a downstream dead zone at ~315.6 K.
• 52:59 – Gyroid Lattice Redesign: Additive Manufacturing Extension & Performance Gains Alex replaces the traditional finned heat sink with a gyroid-style custom lattice cell using the Additive Manufacturing extension's Lattice feature plus a shell, re-meshes with the binary tree mesher, and demonstrates a full 2.2 K improvement (313.4 K) by opening flow paths that push air through more efficiently.
• 57:49 – Resources & Wrap-Up: Tutorials, Community Videos, Online Training Rich closes with pointers to the Creo Help tutorials, CFA manual and validation cases, the two-to-four-minute "how to use Creo Flow Analysis" video series on the PTC Community, and Simerics-led online training sessions covering CFD refreshers plus hands-on prototype iteration setup.