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

[BrianMartin]

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.

[BrianMartin]

Hi Mark...

Even better... it looks like you're going to get your wish. The type of functionality you're discussing above is planned for Creo 4.0. I realize it's not as good as saying "It'll be out in Creo 3.0" but that product is pretty much locked down at this point. Now we're focusing on development of new features and capabilities for 4.0.

PTC was already on this and improvements to shell, thicken, and offsetting complex surfaces in general is definitely on the way.

Thanks!!

-Brian

[dgschaefer]

Yay Creo 4! Should only be 2 - 2 1/2 years until it's available and only another year after that until my clients adopt it!

/sarcasm

[BrianMartin]

Yeah, I know Doug... the wheels of change turn slowly. Sometimes painfully slowly... but hey, they're turning!

[rohit_rajan]

Accurate Prediction!

[jfrankovich]

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

[BrianMartin]

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

[BrkYrdSS]

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.

[dschenken]

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.

[BrkYrdSS]

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.

[dschenken]

Mark G., ignore my advice on this - it is posted for other users.

One has never been able to rescale after geometry has been placed in Sketcher, but there used to be a cosmetic sketch that did not require dimensions or constraints until PTC took away that capability**.

One can re-import the geometry for a datum curve; it can be rescaled by rescaling and re-IGESing the drawing, so gaining the effect of being able to rescale the sketch. If nothing else changes, the ids of the curves will match and the resulting geometry will still work.

Another method is to use a bitmap as a decal, which can be scaled, rotated, and replaced, though it requires more than a single step and can't be used as a geometry basis.

see http://communities.ptc.com/docs/DOC-2847 for bump mapping in PTC software.

see http://communities.ptc.com/community/creo/blog/2010/05/13/advanced-rendering-extension for ARX info

There are other applications where a bitmap can be used as a bump map or a displacement map. See 3DS Max, Maya, Mudbox, Rhino, Blender, et all.

**Unless it is hidden somewhere. I don't recall being able to base other geometry on cosmetic sketches.

[BrkYrdSS]

David,

Thank you for your reply. what I was really looking for is a simple way to:

1. Import a logo (iges, dxf, ai, etc)
2. Scale and position it
3. Extrude the logo to an emboss height (or reference it in future sketches)
4. Be able to re-scale or re-position it.
5. Ideally, all in a single feature (or two)

The cosmetic sketch, bump map, or decals would be fine for presentations, but not for creating SLA's or for tooling purposes.

An additional method would be:

1. Import a bitmap
2. Scale and position it
3. Auto-trace it to create curves (multiple colors producing separate curves)
4. Extrude the auto-traced sketch for an emboss

[BrkYrdSS]

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.

[BrianMartin]

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

[BrianMartin]

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!