Enhancement Requests for Creo - Summer 2013 TC Meetings

[BrianMartin]

Hi Everyone...

Starting directly after the PTC Live Global conference in June (9th-12th), PTC/User is holding it's bi-annual "face to face" Technical Committee ("TC") meetings. These meetings are held twice a year- once in January at PTC Headquarters and again at the PTC Live Global (in Anaheim this year).

For those of you are not familiar with what these committees do, here's a description:

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 7 of them. Obviously my main goal in joinging was to share NASA's feedback, comments, and concerns with the software developers and other committee members. In January, I sent out an open solicitation to all users on PTC Community to submit their feedback, insights, comments, concerns, and enhancement requests. I gathered those contributions and took them to the meetings with me. Many of them made it in front of the developers and were well-received.

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 the pleasure of PTC and it's employees and we're invited guests. Please remember that ultimately I'm representing my employer and I need to maintain a professional demeanor. I can't just go into a TC meeting and start tearing into the PTC people for every complaint and issue you have with Creo. 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 first time I attended one of these meetings, many people just sat there quietly. The second time, we had some really productive conversations and I feel we made some real progress. The goal is to continue this trend. We have the PTC Product Line Managers standing there asking for feedback and we want them to hear our concerns and note them for future consideration. This is a rare opporunity to speak directly to the programmers, managers, and those in charge at PTC.

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. I'll catalog the requests and post a synopsis and a final report after the meetings similar to what I did the last time. 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!

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[TomD.inPDX]

• Allow internal sections to become visible for subsequent features such as offsets or references in newer sketches and sections.

• Show feature created axes as features in the model tree as axis feature type. This aids in layer assignment selection. Often, these need to be hidden separately from "primary" datum axes. This is particularly true if you have show_axes_for_extr_arcs yes turned on by default.

• Allow deletion of axes created by show_axes_for_extr_arcs yes when the user decides they are not neccesary.

• Allow toggling of arc created axes show_axes_for_extr_arcs (on/off).

Do you get the idea that the axes-for-arcs feature is not fully developed

[dveljkovic]

Another Unix feature. This is somehing that goes on my nerves. See attached. Is it really "Not Responding" or is it working on something? I know the answer but there should be a better way to manage this.

[LukaszMazur]

I wouldn't call it a "Unix feature", since I've seen Window Explorer (explorer.exe) behaving exactly the same way. More like it's "Windows feature" and I don't think it has much to do with Creo itself, when you can get almost every application to "stop responding" like that.

[dveljkovic]

Take a look at the CPU load while I am wating for this STEP file to open:

I have 4 cores CPU and only 14% of load on them! I know Creo is using only 1 core but this tells me that Creo is not optimized at all for Windows OS.

And, this is the CPU load when Creo finally opened STEP file:

They should put some HARD work on this.

[dveljkovic]

This one is a big one.

Wouldn't be nice, when you choose "Select component item", all other planes, axes and points to become invisible, so you can easily select features or datums from inserted detail? Then, when you choose "Select assembly item" if you hold CTRL key you can select detail (either in model tree or in model view) which will show datums only for selected one or if you do not hold CTRL key everything is shown like on this picture?

[RadovanMíček]

Hi Brian

Weld like solid feature is big challenge for me and one for my customer now. This could be useful for process where is necessary to show removing materials after welding.

[BrianMartin]

Hi Radovan...

What tool were you showing in that video. We need that thing like... NOW!

I've never seen that before. The welding module is really pretty dated and bad. Whatever you showed was pretty amazing.

Thanks!

-Brian

[RadovanMíček]

It is only group of the fetures in Creo Parametric.

The inspiration was SmartWeld from Sigmaxim

http://www.sigmaxim.com/Products/SmartWeld-3D/smartweld-3d.html

[BurtLand]

Symbols are stroke rendered in drawings - how about CREO using a True Type font for GD&T and other symbols eg Ø

Easy selection and editing of NOTES in drawings

to HIGHLIGHT a note you have to click exactly on one of the LINES of text

between the letters is OK, between the lines is NOT, end of lines NOT

once its highllighted you get a green rectangle around the text

but then you again cant just click anywhere in the rectangle to drag it - above rules apply

Whats worse, if you click in any of the NOT regions you end up deselecting the Note and

selecting the VIEW behind, you then have to get out of the VIEW context. But if you are

zoomed in, you dont know you have selected the VIEW and on it goes.

At first I thought I was a klutz but when you disect it its the programmer thats the klutz

This interface behaviour is very unforgiving - its basic low level stuff and its not right !

The basic code that governs this behaviour needs reviewing.

[BrianMartin]

I agree Burt.... absolutely ridiculous. I'll bring it up today.

[amitshah]

Hi Brain,

I have one suggestion for enhancement request in Creo

Whenever the Family table instances are called in Drawing BoM, only instance are available though 2Dregion, but generic part is not added.

There are work around suggested by Tech support, but not the exact way to go for.

Once the BoM table is created, it sould contain Generic part and all its intances.

Thanks

Amit

[XXX]

Amit,

Good suggestion. However, the 2D region should give you the option of including or excluding the generic or any of the instances. Sometimes there are instances (or the generic) that you don't what shown in a table.

Tim

[TomD.inPDX]

1: Warp tool needs a careful review. The tool needs significant upgrades on control of axis and full wrap warps fail to meet on the ends. If this tool is meant to one day replace Spinal bend or Toroidal Bends, control and accuracy must be improved significantly.

2: Allow a constant twist angle with the Warp tool. As implemented, the twist maintains a normal and has a graduated deform. Although useful as a real world deformation, it misses the mark when a constant twist is required. Applications include features as helical gears or even screw threads from a simple extrude.

[gkrishna]

....Applications include features as helical gears or even screw threads from a simple extrude.

yes some simple application or module to make all sorts of gears and sprockets, Siemens NX has it by default built into it.(which should be in base package of creo)

here we have to keep UDF. no fresh gears for us .

[TomD.inPDX]

gopal krishna wrote:

....Applications include features as helical gears or even screw threads from a simple extrude.

yes some simple application or module to make all sorts of gears and sprockets, Siemens NX has it by default built into it.(which should be in base package of creo)

here we have to keep UDF. no fresh gears for us .

That would be an optional exten$ion

[James62]

Hello,

I'm testing SpaceClaim these days. Not trying to fully replace Creo Parametric, but I find it pretty neat in the field where I work. That is mostly manufacturing.

These may all seem to be just bells and whistles, but I would like to see some of these things implemented to Creo Parametric in the future.

1) The user should have the ability to change color of an entire part just by clicking on it's face inside an assembly, and choosing the color from a pop-up menu of predefined colors. Pop-up menus next to cursor are kind of Creo Elements/Pro or Co-Create thing right now, they are not in Creo Parametric yet afaik. The part should change it's color on PART LEVEL also, not just on the ASSEMBLY LEVEL, so the user doesn't have to open each and every part just to change it's color.

2) Another nice feature would be to be able to click on a part inside an assembly, and change it's display to transparent from a pop-up menu. I know there is an option to do that in assembly mode, by choosing the part, and then clicking on Model tab --> Model Display dropdown --> Component Display Style --> Transparent, but in this case the black edges of the transparent model aren't visible. The user can actually see what's inside the model but it's rather annoying to look at this transparent model alone as the edges are too hard to see. Also, it changes or creates some temporary display style thing, which takes bunch of clicking in case you want to restore it back to it's original state. Yet, this display state doesn't get saved with the assembly model. So, everytime Creo crashes you have to set the transparency again, just so you can see all the changes you are doing.

3) When measuring a distance between two paralel tubes or tube/hole+wall, it would be nice if it could show the minimum distance between these two objects. Not just the distance from the center of the hole or tube, which then requires the user to know the diameter of the tube that the measurement is being taken from.

4) When switching to Geometry filter the user should be able to select the geometry of a part just by dragging a box over the surfaces or edges of the model, and so should be able to make a box selection just with the mouse, and not any other aditional option such as 3D Box Select, that takes so much clicking.

Brian, can you also report bugs, that arised lately in Creo Parametric, in these Committee meetings? I am not able to report any since I am out of maintenance for now, and I don't think my VAR would care enough to do that.

It requires me to reproduce the issues, which can take me some time, and I am not fond of my VAR taking these issues to PTC support or wherever required if I bothered handing them over just to my VAR.

I wouldn't be suprised if PTC support didn't even care if my VAR would ever try to have concerns like these, but what do I know? Anyway, I already told my VAR not to bother with bugs I found in Creo. They have more important things to do, that they actually can do.

Regards

~Jakub

[BrianMartin]

Hi Jakub...

I am far behind in responding to many posts on this thread. At the TC's you can report problems, enhancements, etc. If the problem is something like "my screen goes blank when I switch to a new Creo window on my Dell laptop with xxxxx graphics card" then that isn't really actionable.

If the bug is something like "I can't create a reference dimension anywhere the way I did in wildfire 3" well then THAT is a bug I can take to the TC's.

Many times they still want you to be able to reproduce the problem. If you have bugs, go ahead and let me know what they are. We have one day of TC meetings left. If there's something I can bring to PTC's attention, I certainly will!

Thanks...

-Brian

[James62]

Hi Brian,

Actually in the time since I posted that message, Tom (Antonius Dirriwachter) has contacted me, asking me if I could describe one of the bugs I catched, and so I did that. Then he managed to deliver the report I made to PTC support, and they were able to reproduce it.

This one is related to some leg breaking repeat region relations I have, and it simply doesn't let me to edit my repeat region relations from Creo 2.0 M030 and up. So, long story short: Hoooooorahh, till this time I was not able to report a bug in Creo so easily and thanks to Tom I did it. Maybe one day the newer versions of Creo are gonna be usable.

So, Brian, thank you for your offer, but for now I would like you to enjoy your last day there on the conference, and not to be troubled with bugs in Creo too much. Actually, I would also like you to have a look at Tom's ideas in this thread, and try to discuss those with some TC's, those are actually interesting.

Imagine having a ribbon that you could access in any mode. Well, right, there is this object-->action, and mode-->feature kind of like functionality constraint almost everywhere in Creo, but what if PTC just decided to get rid of that? Wouldn't that be a huge boost in usability of the software? For starters it would be great to have both object-->action, and action-->object capabilities to be there on all commands/features. Then the modes integration. Those are some big things actually.

In the future, whenever you got time, just poke me via PM, and in couple of days I can make a report of some other important bugs. I found few in FMX, some in layers, and other in regen of features inside parts.

~Jakub

[BrianMartin]

Hi Jakub,

Actually... I did not get to relax on the last day. I was having a real hard time getting any of the numerous suggestions in front of PTC. I was down to the very last HOUR of the TC meetings and I had not made significant progress.

All of the TC meetings for the day (and for the conference) had ended. Only one session remained. It was called something like "User Annoyances with Creo Parametric". By the time I got there, the room was packed but there were not many suggestions being brought up. So... I kind opened the spreadsheet and raised as many issues as I could.

I got 4 of yours up there and at least 3 or 4 of Tom's up there, too. Transparency issues, the whole show_axes_extr_arcs problems... and many more. I tried to pick a few from each user... the ones that seemed to be the biggest ones. I'll write up a better report and post it as a blog. But overall, that last session was very good.

At least I will be able to fill out the spreadsheet and let people know that many of their concerns were raised. We can only hope PTC incorporates as many suggestions and enhancements as possible. It's unreasonable to believe they can get to all... or even most of them given time, budget, and resource restrictions. But some of them seemed to be easier than others and that gives me hope that they'll make it in soon.

Thanks again...

-Brian

[James62]

Thanks Brian.

Hopefully, your efforts won't be for nothing after all, and that the people at PTC are ravenous (that's the word right?) enough to be able to build up on them.

~Jakub

[magnus.salomons]

Fill Surface

It is very limited only being able to do this feature on a planar sketch. There was a fierce discussion on this topic many years ago vs Solidworks Fill Surface command http://www.mcadcentral.com/creo-modeling/16582-simple-surfacing-problem.html

The outcome surprised many of the long time users and this I believe is an excellent benchmark feature that hopefully could be introduced in Creo SURFACE. I do not use ISDX so the request is for the surface module in Foundation or what it's called nowadays.

See page 3 for the actual comparison and images of the SW Fill Surface command.

[ptc-5044466]

yes the "surface" option in ISDX works like fill option in solidworks.you can just select the curves and it would fill it with a surface.

[magnus.salomons]

Aaah....too bad...then they won't include it in the std Surface package...

[BillRyan]

Hi Brian,

My request is related to large assembly performance in Creo Parametric and View while connected to Windchill.

Short Term - The Windchill publisher needs added capability to publish simplified reps where substitute rule was used. In Creo View, the output of Simplified Reps from the publisher are called Viewables.

Long Term - Improved Integration of the "Viewables" into the lightweight graphics rep in Parametric. Imagine being able to load a Viewable in Parametric that loads only PVZ/.ol files into session.

Note: CV2 M040 build has intelligence to only load into session what is associated with the Viewable. Basically, what WF2 did with Intralink which gave simplified reps intelligence to call for required objects from server without making the user add required dependents prior to opening assembly. Example: I have a simplified rep in a million object assembly published as a Viewable that loads in Creo View in 20 seconds to show all a-surfaces of vehicle. Same Simplified rep opens in 24 minutes in WF5.

I am a member in the visualization committee so hope to see you in California!

[magnus.salomons]

Bill,

The long term would definitely be a HUGE improvement in my opinion. In fact, that was what I was imagining when they launched Creo and it seemed that they would use technology from their present range and also solve the long term fundamental problems such as large assembly management.

So far the LW Thumbnail technology has been a disappointment.

[BrentDrysdale]

Hi Brian,

Unfortunately I am not going this year

I have four suggestions that I made back in 2010 for WF5 and I have updated for Creo 2.0

These are Powerpoint slides made into PDFs which I hope to upload here (fingers crossed)

Brent

[BrentDrysdale]

OK so seems I have to do them as images.

Extrude Enhancement #1

Open and Closed sections in External and Internal Sketches for Extrude

Brent

[BrentDrysdale]

Extrude Enhancement #2

[BrentDrysdale]

Tree Enhancement

[BrentDrysdale]

And finally (for now)

RMB/Menu Enhancement

Happy commenting

Brent