HEEEELP! How to edit an .igs file on PTC Creo?

[joates]

Hello,

I am using PTC Creo Parametric 2.0 and I really need to edit an .igs file!

I can import it and open it but i cannot modify the geometry or like modify the original sketch...I am just able to move the parts.

What I need to do is to create another sketch over the geometry and the 3D I import, cause I need to draw and add another "piece" to it.

If anyone knows how to do it please reply!

Thanks in advance

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[ptc-4455184]

Creo is NOT pro/e. I have no beef with Pro, as i havent used it.

Creo.. Had i known how it is to work with. I would have taken the other job offer i had.

Only thing i dont like about this job.. is Creo.

btw, i dont say the features arent there. I just say its like teaching yourself magic. Things have to be clicked on 2-3/4 times, sometimes using the alt key, sometimes not, sometimes a menu will appear, tomorrow, the same thing the same parts/drawings, no menu. Sometimes you can select multiples, sometimes not.

Some days i HATE Creo other days i think i can live with it.

Lets see if M050 is better, once the support release it.

[Patriot_1776]

I've used and loved it for over 16 years, and I hate seeing what they've done to the best CAD software around. And then there's Windburn.......

[DarrinVanDeCast]

I've been on Pro/E for 20+ years now and for the first time since that first experience with it, I'm really wishing I had a different software program. They completely failed on this release.

[DarrinVanDeCast]

It's been 8 months now and guess what? I STILL FREAK'N HATE THIS PROGRAM. I've learned to navigate and be fairly efficient, but this program sucks....Complete, total GARBAGE!!!

[gkrishna]

you guys are scaring me,ultimately developers will have that surface hardening effect,just like what happened to Internet Explorer,no matter how much people bitch about it ,they are so self motivated or surface hardened that they keep making release after release after release without improvement in basic functionality.

[ptc-4455184]

In Inventor, we had poetry, about WHY oh WHY my cerefully organized menus flew around on the screen, at will.

In Creo we have magic: Sometimes things work, that normaly doesnt work for me.... and WHEN they work, its like magic : i still dont know, why it works today, or even what secret mouse movement made it work.

[L.Davis]

I started using Pro/E since about version 12, which was about 20 years ago. In general, every few upgrades, they add a few nuggets that are cool, while completely scrambling the UI for what is essentially no reason. Why do I think it's for no reason? Because you have to re-locate all your buttons, re-make mapkeys, learn new config options, etc., all to do what is essentially 95% the same work you did before the upgrade. A few years later, they change it again. It's quite annoying.

I think that certain people at PTC must justify their job by changing things so it seems like they are making things better. But mainly they are just making things different. All the while, thousands of hours are wasted around the world as people struggle to adapt.

Now that I am on Creo, I see absolutely no difference for what I do on a daily basis. I don't use the new features. I just spend time trying to learn where the old features have been moved. Thanks, PTC!

Oh, and while the graphics quality of everything in the world just gets better and better, Creo's graphics have stayed the same or gotten worse. I have lots of graphics issues on a PTC-supported set-up and Creo support has viewed my screen and verified it's working properly, glitches and all.

I will adapt and get back to full speed in a few months, but I feel like all the time spent adapting was a waste.

[Patriot_1776]

EXACTLY what I've been saying Larry.

[TomD.inPDX]

Funny how no one likes circles represented as hexegons, huh

[Patriot_1776]

Ahhhh, remember the old AutoCAD setting for that......"viewres" wasn't it?

[TomD.inPDX]

config.pro: represent_circles_and_arcs_and_splines_accurately *why_would_you_want_that definitely_for_sure

[BrianMartin]

Over 10,000 views for a thread that is essentially mutilating a very long dead horse.

No matter how much complaining we do about the interface, I can tell you it's not going to go back. Too many people say they like it. True, they probably don't know what they're talking about... or they're kids... or just new users without any experience on the legacy software. But PTC is going to hang it's hat on the opinions of those who like the new interface and they're going to dig their heels in.

They won't go back.

I've tried to suggest a few reasonable alternatives:

• Giving people the option of designing their own interface
• Making an option to allow the ribbon to slide to the left or right hand side (which could be used in conjunction with an option to hide the icons thus essentially giving you text-based menus again)
• "Skins" which could be freely shared amongst users much the way Maya works

I can tell you there is Z E R O interest in pursuing any of those things. Your best bet... and maybe your only bet... is to join a Technical Committee and try to make your voice heard that way. Figure out what we can do to make the current interface less painful and suggest it as an enhancement.

[canderson]

I would much rather see a consistant standard across the board with the interface design. If every person could design their own interface you create an environment where a person leaves company X to start wtih company Z and the person has to learn all over again. This is not a value add to the business. There are some that actually want to go back to the fully txt based versions of Pro/E. I just can't understand ...

[BrianMartin]

Hi Carl...

I respectfully disagree. When you can save your customizations and take them with you, it doesn't matter if you leave one company and move to another.

By allowing everyone to create their own custom environment and share it, you essentially open up a marketplace for ideas. The best ideas gain acceptance and the worst ones fall away. This has worked really, really well for major software applications like Maya. When the standard interface was klunky, slow, and hard to use, the users themselves developed their own streamlined versions that became more popular than the out-of-box version.

If you give people the opportunity to develop the tools themselves, they will do it. They'll do it out of a love for the software. They'll do it with a focus on productivity in the real world (which is sorely missing from PTC's various interfaces). And, best of all, they'll do it for free without adding ever more cost to your licensing fees.

The problem I have (and always HAVE had) is that PTC's interface seems like it was developed by someone who does not use the software in a production environment. The interface "feels" like a software guy sat down and tried to figure out what an engineer might need. You can almost hear them thinking "AH... I'm sure the engineer would like one less mouse click!" when that's not really anything we care about.

If the environment were opened up so user's could develop it as they saw fit, PTC would head off much of the criticism it routinely suffers when they decide to "fix" the interface. Personally, I'm sick of the interface changes. If I could customize my environment and know it was going to stay STABLE when we moved to Creo 3, 4, 5, etc... that stability would be worth it's weight in gold.

[canderson]

I see your point, but however in very large companies you gain valuable performance when all engineers are using the same interface... they teach each other... Standards make like easier and better for the greater whole. This is why (most) anywhere you go in the United States traffic lights have the same sequence and colors. If we let every state or city design their own traffic control process... it would trun out very bad. I have seen huge benifits by standardizing .. P.S. Most large companies willl not allow you to change the environment.. they want all engineers using the same interface, minimizing overall confusion, training and support issues....

[James62]

Very large companies are not the only ones using Creo. Imagine yourself in a position where you have to use different sofware packages. Trying to modify, and even overcome Creo's GUI then becomes a huge problem, which matters alot when you are a full time user of Creo.

You have to be able to set your own standarts, or else it gets really disturbing to work with Creo.

PTC is not the one who should even try to set standarts like these. Large companies alone should, and put them out to public, if they care.

I'd like to see a regular command line in Creo.

[BrianMartin]

Hi Carl...

I have worked at a host of very large companies and they all allowed some level of customization. Or maybe to put it a better way, I've never worked for one that didn't. Even large companies realize that workers are different and, therefore, work differently. Companies who treat their employees as if they've been stamped out by a cookie cutter end up with a fairly unhappy, unmotivated workforce. I'm all for standards... but even within an organization that has some fairly strict standards, there's still room for customization.

I've heard stories of companies that don't allow mapkeys, etc. Unless my family was starving, I'd walk out of such a place. The innovation and motivation of good people is often the only difference between a company struggling to get by and one that crushes the competition. For a simple 3-light stop light, I might agree that it's a good thing that all lights are the same. We're talking about something with 4000 little fiddly buttons and icons. It's not the same thing. By allowing employees to tinker and try out different scenarios, they'll naturally begin to optimize their workflows. No meddling middle manager from any company is better equipped to decide what icons should be displayed on a screen than the poor sap who actually uses the software every day.

So I say standardize- yes... but users should have the ability to customize, too. Companies that offer free coffee also offer cream, sugar, splenda, equal, and perhaps tea, too. They don't just give you the coffee and tell you to drink it black or don't drink it at all! Customization... within reasonable limits... is a good and expected thing.

[ptc-4455184]

Now id have to agree.

When i get the chance, i make tools, mapkeys, and im trying to get Jlink going.. Im just the kind of guy thats to laaaazy to change the drawing head, or customer name, on 500 parts or even print drawings, sorted for the right printer.. By hand. One by one.

Once i have a tool, i document, what it does, and more important, what it doesnt, and perhaps even, if it has its small flukes/bugs, that i just didnt need to remove, to get the job done.

Then i share it, at the next cad meeting.

Now In in a previus setting, i did a print manager for inventer. This alone saved 3 work days, per print cycle, made savings in paper use, and made i possible to print a project, over nigth, releasing the printers for the dayly work.

Now Creo doesnt have a decent macro language, and im.. despite my best effort still not able to get jlink working. So for now, i do really creo.. sorry crappy hacks in Autoit.

Back to the point.

Normaly when people see the tools, they have an idea for a tool themselves... They just have no idea how to create them.. So i make their tools as well. Document, and distribute.. How else to get efficient ?

So standard are great.. for the end result, and perhaps even for things like skeltons, coordinate system and so on. But for a user interface ???.

An IT manager once asked me.. What then when youre gone, and the tools dont work in the next version ??

My answer.. You will be back to where we are now, exept you wont have the productivity gains in the mean time. Now i did a macro, saved in a part, designed to "spread the virus... ehh tools". And it worked. All a user / IT manger had to do, was run the part, accept that it would point to the macros. and presto. Working system. Now i have done something similar in Creo, because this i one really cranky program. Some config.pro settings have to be set one way to create some objects, and another for others..

The ONLY cad program, i know of, where the default settings are unusable.

[BrianMartin]

Hi Bjarke...

I, too, am very lazy in the same way as you. I'm so lazy, I'll stay up nights and weekends working on macros and time-saving tools so I don't have to do the same work over and over. I'll put in 20 hours to save 3 minutes per drawing. To me, that seems like a fair exchange. I don't always know if my efforts are going to 'break even' but when they save me work, I feel like they're worth it. Every once in awhile I create something that saves hours or even days. Once you've done that, you sort of get addicted to trying to find more clever ways to save time and effort. Not every effort pans out but the ones that do are such a boost to productivity, they're well worth the time spent.

Just FYI, I do have a couple of tricks I can share that allow you to automate or skip filling in a title block (or "drawing head" as you called it). I also can help you automate the same repetitive task over hundreds of models without using AutoIt.

I've been dying to share the title block thing for quite awhile but I've never had the time to properly document it. The technique involves a combination of drawing parameters and a drawing program executed by a mapkey. At my job, we have about 30 text fields on our title blocks. We're not at a point where we can use Windchill to handle the data. For now, it's all on the field of the drawing in the title block. With one mapkey, I can fill in 95% or more of all the title block information. I can also update a drawing with new information with just a single button.

On the model side, there are other threads where I've demonstrated how to use a trail file to process an unlimited number of files automatically. By "process", I mean starting with a list of Creo models, opening a model from the list, performing a series of steps, saving the model, and then repeating the process on the next model in the list. I just shared this trick with someone at my job who used it to process over a thousand models in about an hour.

If any of these tricks seem interesting to you, let me know. I am a bit under water at the moment trying to prepare for the PTC Live Event in Anaheim but I'd be happy to share as time allows.

Thanks!

-Brian

[ptc-4455184]

hi Brian.

Gimme gimme 🙂

Ever since i found out, that a for loop, isnt used to pause a C64 program, i was hooked.

Then a robot programmer quit, and i had to program the robots, so i got into Rapid (ABB) programming.

Then Inventor had a plain stupid way of handeling prints, and that ment i had to go into Vba programming

Then we had a fanuc, a KUKA, a MOTOMAN.

And then i started for my self, programming Melfa robots ( well anything anyone wanted to pay me for)

Then i got kids, and now im working Creo, Learning to combine mapkeys, autoit, vbscript and finally vba in some of our excel sheets.

And id looove to learn more.

both mapkeys and trail files, have the problem, og only working, if everything is just right.

So i have a mapkey, that calls an autoit script, to start a mapkey. That starts a new drawing, with the model name, and if i comes with an error. Autoit captures it, an runs another mapkey, that opens the open file dialog, where autoit, enters the filename... UGLY, but it gets the job done.

I always have a problem quantifying for my boss, that working 1½ day on saving 3 min, is a good deal.. .But once it works. he normaly comes around..

Do you have any xp with using Jlink ?

[BrianMartin]

Hi Bjarke...

You had me at "C64". That's where I learned to love programming. First I had a Vic-20 (4K ram) and I was shocked when I wrote a program so large I ran out of memory. I moved to the C64 because, I reasoned, I'd NEVER run out of memory with 64K! Oh, how things change!

I'll be happy to share what I know. Unfortunately, I do not have any experience with JLink but I went back to college just to get a Computer Science degree so I could work with JLink, weblink, Toolkit, and other customization tools for Creo. By this time next year, I'm sure I'll be enough of a Java master to handle J-Link. I'm lucky that I have some acquaintences at work who are experts. Eventually I'm sure I'll be writing JLink and Toolkit apps but for now... it's all mapkeys, trailfiles, and drawing programs.

You're right... mapkeys and trailfiles are finicky. They can fail easily. Before Wildfire came along, I used to make heavy use of PERL scripts that pulled data from the active session of Pro/E (by reading the trail file as it was being written). Ever since Wildfire came along though, the trailfiles have gotten so convoluted, even a strong processing language like PERL has trouble making sense of it.

Because I'm overloaded but I also want to help... maybe you should tell me what you'd like to do with drawings or models and I can help you with some specific problems. Trying to teach the entire theory behind the different techniques is a much longer process than solving individual issues.

[rohit_rajan]

Hi Brian,

How r u? on the enhancement request page i have added a proe assembly..with a wrapped sketched.

when ever you have time please go through that assembly.

i want you to fill that wrapped sketched. either in part mode or in drawing mode.at present this process is taking a lot of time here..bieleve me...we are spending more that two hours to fill those sketched and sometimes even more..b'coz customer wants those wrapped sketches to be filled.

and the only way at present is to use the fill option drawing mode....

[BrianMartin]

Hi Rohit...

I'll take a look. I owe so many people responses and emails. I apologize for being so hard to catch up with. Once Anaheim is over, I'll be able to breathe again.

Thanks!

-Brian

[rohit_rajan]

well i guess that's the problem on being the best so many look upto you ! keep it up....

[canderson]

Never said anything about mapkeys... I think you are talking about an extreme. I am talking about things like Drawing configurations, Config options set up to improve network speed.. Things that without a doubt improve performance. You started off stating we should have an open source system so users could develop their own interface??? That is a bad idea. For the most part the interface is one of the key factors that differentiate one CAD system from the other. I have lived this environment... everyone has their own opinion of where the icons should be. So in the end I think we agree for the most part...

[BrianMartin]

I don't know... I think having the possibility of designing your own custom interface is a good thing.

I worked on CV Medusa for years and years. I developed a custom interface that was an order of magnitude faster and more efficient than the out-of-the-box interface. I took that custom interface to Amp Incorporated which, at the time, was a massive CV Medusa customer and also the largest installation of Pro/E at over 900 seats. This was before companies like Caterpillar and John Deere had jumped in. This customization was not small... it was a complete reinvention of the entire interface. There were custom applications, screens, toolbars, colors... the works. This saved hundreds and hundreds of hours across the entire organization. And these were just the ideas and contributions of one person... little ol' me. Imagine if we could do something like that and leverage the entire community of PTC users.

I understand your concern that it seems like it could be a huge disaster. Not everyone will want to change the out of the box configuration. But every time this has been tried, it's worked out for the best... it hasn't been a disaster. Apple and Google don't develop every tool and app for their gadgets... other creative, talented people do. Many people write their own apps (some good, some bad) in the hopes that their little app will become the next "Angry Birds" thus making them rich. Why not provide that kind of open environment for the Creo interface so creative, talented, artistic people can take a crack at coming up with something better?

I mean, let's think out of the box here. Why are we stuck with the interface PTC gives us? Why can't the interface be something more? We're talking about a few hundred icons that "do some function". You press the icon and it does something. Big tickle. What's the big deal. Why can't we change the icons PTC gives us? Would that be so hard?

You can do this kind of thing in other applications. Hell, you can do this in other PTC applications. Creo Schematics is based upon Medusa... which, as I said, could be customized like crazy. At one point there were "trays" in Medusa where you could build your own interface. Does that functionality still exist buried somewhere in Creo Schematics? Maybe. Creo View has tools that can be accessed from within Microsoft Office. You can make your own little interface to operate Creo View from within Office. Is that so different than what I'm suggesting?

This is nothing that hasn't been done before... it just takes a bit of imagination and foresight. If PTC were to develop an open and customizable interface, the user community would embrace it. I'm sure of it.

[canderson]

I love your enthusiasm... and your passion... but if everyone has a different interface how do you train users?

[BrianMartin]

You'd still have the standard interface and nothing stops people from using it. The option to use a custom interface would be made by the individual users and companies who took the time to create something new.

If you're John Deere and you've created an interface to save time, you train your people on that interface. I mean, when you step out of the box, you're assuming responsibility for problems, errors that arise from your customizations, additional training that must be provided, etc.

Windchill is a product that can be heavily, heavily customized. Some companies go this route because it provides value. However, these companies also have to develop their own training materials and maintain a team of people to support their customized environments. Other companies specifically do not customize because they don't want to manage all the overhead necessary for customizations. It's an individual choice.

Myonly point is that an open environment provides opportunities for innovation, experimentation, and optimization that is not possible with our current interface. It's not going to happen but I always dream that PTC takes that kind of bold, brave, and ultimately revolutionary step.

They said Creo was going to be transformative... they said it was going to reinvent the way CAE/CAD work is done. So far... they haven't lived up to the hype. I don't think anyone ever expected they would. But that's truly sad because they're showing flashes of brilliance. Yet you can see how it's tempered and watered down with this corporate, slicky-boy sales-driven ethos that stiffles the exact same transformative thinking they're claiming to embrace.

I know PTC has some extremely talented, passionate, and creative people... but I fear the corporate culture of the company is not conducive to unleashing their full potential. Ah well... a longer topic for another day.

[canderson]

So wwe are on the same page... I was under the impression you were recommending evey user in the same company create his own environment. So in the end the Company has a standard interface that may be different from the out of the box Creo interface?

[BrianMartin]

Yes, Carl... exactly. I am not saying everyone should have their own interface just that right now we have very little control over the interface. You're essentially locked in to what PTC has given you. And what they've given us is, in my opinion, not very good.

I know I can do better if I given the chance.