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pmoore-21-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 11, 2015
Question

Creo 2 and Creo 3 running on the same laptop?

As a trainer I need to have different versions of Creo on my laptop.

 

Is it possible to run both Creo2 and Creo3 on the same laptop without any licensing issues?

19 replies

LukaszMazur16-Pearl
16-Pearl
January 11, 2015

Right now I have Pro/E WF 4.0, WF5, and all Creo releases (from 1.0 to 3.0) installed on my laptop, all running without any problems. All versions are set up to use different startup folders with different config.pro files.

One thing you might consider is changing default AppData folder (%appdata%\Roaming\PTC\ProENGINEER\Wildfire\.Settings, IIRC) for them, because by default all installs will use the same one, so you might have Creo UI customizations common to all Creo versions. You can change location of this folder using PTC_WF_ROOT environment variable for every Creo version you have installed.

There is also no problem with parallel running two different versions of Creo, so you might be running Creo 2.0 and Creo 3.0 simultaneously. All you need is proper number of licenses - if you have only one license you'll be able to run one instance of software, but still be able to run Creo 2.0 and Creo 3.0, just not at once.

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pmoore-21-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
January 11, 2015

Lukasz

Thanks for your input, will give it a try

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TomD.inPDX17-Peridot
17-Peridot
January 27, 2015

Many may not believe it but i finally got Creo 3.0 M020 on my machine with Creo 2.0 still running.

Creo 3.0 picked up my menu customization from Creo 2.0. I hope this will remain stable if I only update the UI from Creo 2.0. Time will tell.

Just in case... Lukasz; The environment variable you mentioned; PTC_WF_ROOT... are you setting this differently for each version to keep them segregated? I will be working with both Creo 2.0 and Creo 3.0 for the foreseeable future. I just want to get ahead of issues before something stops me dead in my tracks.

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TomU23-Emerald IV
23-Emerald IV
January 27, 2015

As Lukasz mentioned, it's very possible to have multiple versions installed at the same time. There are several very important things you want to do to make sure they all stay separated from each other:

  • Use a different startup (working) directory for each one. This is set by the "start in" location on the shortcut you use to launch the program.13.PNG
  • If working with Windchill, set the PTC_WF_ROOT to a unique location for each one. This is easiest to set at the end of the PSF file located in the \bin folder for each installation. (If you have multiple license configurations then you need to add this line to each one.)

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  • For Creo Parametric, set the config.pro option "load_ui_customization_run_dir" to "yes". This tells Creo to look in the working directory for the config.pro file instead of somewhere buried in the user's profile.

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  • It also can be helpful to set "startup_check_for_visualization" to "no" if you don't want to be prompted about each version of Creo View Express.
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TomD.inPDX17-Peridot
17-Peridot
January 27, 2015

Thanks Tom.

I don't have Windchill. It is easy enough to keep my projects separated from Creo 2 to Creo 3, and I use local working folder config.pro pretty much universally.

I find it somewhat disturbing that you cannot simply set a UI folder other than working folder. I do tend to have a lot of project dedicated working folders so a single dedicated UI folder for each version is definitely preferred.

I did back up the UI folder just so I can step back quickly if things go funny. So far, it looks like Creo 3 has maintained the Creo 2.0 UI intact. I do not plan to do any customization in Creo 3.0 for the time being. I just needed Creo 3 for the collaboration features with SolidWorks for a new client.

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LukaszMazur16-Pearl
16-Pearl
January 28, 2015

First, congratulations on giving it a try, Antonius

As for your questions Tom answered all of them, I'd just add one thing regarding UI customizations.

As you know, with Creo PTC decided to ditch config.win as a way of keeping UI customizations and introduced file creo_APPNAME_customization.ui (so it's like creo_parametric_customization.ui). And they keep this file by default in profile directory, the same you can set with PTC_WF_ROOT variable. That way you can keep separate UI customizations for different versions of Creo even when you're not using Windchill.

I see it this way: if you're not working with Windchill and want to keep separate UI customizations for different releases of Creo (eg. Creo 2.0 and 3.0), setting PTC_WF_ROOT will keep them that way. If you want to have different UI customizations for different projects made with the same release (like Creo 3.0), config option Tom mentioned comes in handy. Of course you can always use load_ui_customization_run_dir without ever setting PTC_WF_ROOT and it will also work.

Actually I ended up recently with modyfing psf files in our classrom by adding PTC_WF_ROOT for every release of Creo and ProE just to be sure they won't share any UI customizations or Common Folders additions.

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rbirch1-Visitor
1-Visitor
November 22, 2015

Hi

I am relatively new to Creo, I prefer Creo 2 so use that most of the time but have to use Creo 3 also as my school use that version. Looking through the posts I get that this is possible to run different versions of Creo on the same laptop, however can anyone explain the method simply please? I don't understand all of the folder names and file names.

Thanks

Ryan

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BenLoosli23-Emerald III
23-Emerald III
November 23, 2015

Just install them in their own directory structure. Simple.

Create a start-in folder for each version.

Move or install the shortcut icon to each version's parametric.bat on your desktop and go to work.

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rbirch1-Visitor
1-Visitor
November 24, 2015

Thanks for this Ben

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