Does anyone else think pen tables are a little out of date?

[sdesaulles]

OK, so we are almost in 2017, can anyone out there remember using a plotter that used pens?  If so then you probably remember when pen tables made sense. 20 years on and perhaps just being able to control line weights directly - as with almost every other CAD program in the world might be a step forward.

In stead we have yet another configuration file to get the main configuration file to point to, how many options files does Creo 3 have dotted about?  I'm aware of about 10 different ones I think.

Am I the only one who thinks its an unholy mess that belongs in the dark ages of CAD pre 2000, or might it be a good idea to consolidate all the options in one place with meaningful names.

Just a thought, interested to hear if anyone likes the existing system.

Cheers

Stephen

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[MartinHanak]

Hi,

I agree that current pentable functionality is not perfect. But .. I was always able to set pentable properly to get requested output.

MH

[sdesaulles]

I haven't used SW since I did a beginners course over 5 years ago, since posting previous, I thought, OK, what happens if I export a STEP, import to SW, create a drawing and see if I can control the pen weights - so blooming easy, just bumped about for a few mins and I have a better drawing than Creo that  I use for far tooooooo many hours a day.

Lucky its a 1/3 the price of Creo so I can keep a license maintained just for drawings!

Luckily I'm confident that PTC will have ironed out such woeful UI elements in Creo4 lol.

Frustrating really

[sdesaulles]

Oh, sorry, and copare this to the help file for Creo which kicks of with how to reconfigure two sections of the config file to point to a pentable,  and then:

The line style may be customized for each pen using the following convention:

pattern (first line segment length) (first space length) (second line segment length) (second space

length) (units)

Example: pen 3 pattern 0.1 0.05 0.025 0.05 in

1. ARGgghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Really?  Is this a 21st century interface?

[RonSt.Pierre]

"Really?  Is this a 21st century interface?"

Must be, its the 21st century and it's working...

[sdesaulles]

Very true, it is for some lucky folks...... but that makes my great grandfather's pocket watch 21st century too.

Unfortunately, it isn't working for me. I get things like leader lines that all look the same colour that then all print some in one colour some in another to PDF.

[MartinHanak]

Hi,

I think that this discussion does not help you to solve any problem with setting pen weights. If you are really searching for a help, please open new discussion and describe, what problem do you need to solve. Then I can try to provide some solution.

That's my last reply inside this discussion.

MH

[sdesaulles]

Vey true, it won't help me solve the riddle of pen tables, but it wasn't supposed to.

It was about canvassing opinion on whether the PTC UI is woefully out of date and difficult to navigate, I've asked my support contract for help, they sent me several PDFs to try to assist.  They are trying, but can only do so much to help.  I compared to SW. I know there isn't an easy way to do it in PTC, so no point in asking for "help" as such, I'm asking "do you think that pen tables are out of date" i.e. need updating, not can you help me decipher the maze of a UI that I feel PTC have woven, or rather tangled, over the last 20 years.

[TomU]

Apparently you can still by them. 

The AxiDraw Drawing Machine

[sdesaulles]

Thank You Tom,

That's good, It looks as if changing line weight on that would be intuitive, straightforward, clear colour indication is provided, which is a lovely feature, I think called WYSIWYG back in the day, (not by PTC obviously) , so I just use that, scan in and save as a PDF. Might still be quicker, so many thanks for the suggestion.

Stephen

[BenLoosli]

Maybe it is time for PTC to throw away the whole plotting structure and integrate in a third-party one that can handle different formats and even pens for those that still use them. Most other CAD vendors have done this recently and it seems that PTC is among the last to hold onto their own plotting code. Maybe a new plotting method could be integrated into Creo 5?

[StephenW]

I would suggest writing up an product idea (enhancement request) with specific requests.  Then users can vote on it. Then PTC can ignore it like all the other product ideas...at least it makes you feel like you tried.

[sdesaulles]

Yep, I think I first did one of those about 12 years ago. Let's just pretend I did it again and it will save me the time of doing it and have the same effect, Creo saps enough of my time as it is.

Unfortunately, only users swapping to other systems has any influence I suspect. 

[TomU]

In all fairness to PTC product managers, much of the issue is lack of resources, not lack of ideas.  I would imagine that changing the pen table behavior is going to be near the bottom of the list when having to decide what their very limited development resources will actually be working on.  Changing the pen table behavior won't sell any new seats of software (like most of the other changes desperately needed.)  Unfortunately, the need for sales drives (almost) everything.

I've been using SolidWorks lately to migrate data from a recent acquisition.  Their usability, intuitiveness, VBA integration, and documentation absolutely kills Creo.  (And I love Creo.)  I wish PTC were willing to invest back into Creo all the maintenance fees and subscriptions they take in (for Creo.)  Maybe even spin Creo off as a separate business unit and let it stand (or fall) on it's own.  I think that kind of change would generate the resources necessary to spur major improvements to the many different areas that desperately need attention today.

[dgschaefer]

Yeah, it's a bit archaic, but I love that I can manage it for my entire install base and when I update it, all my users have the change immediately.

With SW, I can't do that.  I have to change it on each machine individually.  Good thing it's easy to do since I'll have to do it over and over again.

I'll take archaic and globally managed over slick and easy but locally managed every time.

[sdesaulles]

Apparently, SW can do that too, so a common set of prefs across a network.  I'm not an IT person, but how does slick, easy to understand UI and globally managed sound?

I've just spent another hour trying to adjust pen tables, pointing the config file at things, making sure the PDF export settings have pen tables ticked, the only thing I've managed to do is get the ends of lines to join up with rounds - still massively fat lines, so thick they overlap and obscure any detail.

I now have a work around. Take every PDF from Creo into Adobe Illustrator, make it look halfway decent and re-save, but its painful to do, just less painful than trying to configure Creo.

Tom's reply is very fair, but yes, when the software that is 1/3 the price is 3 times as quick to get to the professional and controlable result I'm after I have to question the ROI.

[dgschaefer]

Stephen de Saulles wrote:

Apparently, SW can do that too, so a common set of prefs across a network.  I'm not an IT person, but how does slick, easy to understand UI and globally managed sound?

It sounds good, but if SW can do it even the SW community doesn't know how.  I spent a lot of time, admittedly a couple of years ago, trying to do just that and was told by the SW community that it wasn't possible.  You can create an "admin image" that sets it all at install, but there aren't really any tools to either prevent users from changing it themselves or for managing it remotely.

Though we have SW here at my new job, we aren't using it now so it's a bit immaterial for me at this point.

[dschenken]

The main thing that does not make sense is that PTC prioritized the pen table over on-drawing specific changes. If I want an item to be thicker it requires either setting the item to a particular pen width in the pen table or skipping the table and setting all item thicknesses.

It was originally correct, but somewhere along the way it was changed to be broken.