Is it me or has PTC lost it's way

[Johny]

Have been a user of Pro-E (now CREO, for some unknown reason) since release 2001 and although, initially the program had new developments with subsequent releases, the later versions are a joke!

The sheet metal module has not changed significantly from Wildfire 3, to produce a paper 2d drawing is such a long winded process that it makes you want to give up. With each release they change the position of the menu structure so you have to spend the next couple of months looking for commands. The mapkeys that you spent so long setting up, no longer work. It's a mess!

My discipline is sheet metal and CREO is rubbish at it. It does not even have a library of standard primitives that most CAD programs have been using since the eighties. By that, I mean 'Conical Frustum's, 'Square to Rounds', 'Pipe Branches' etc. These are from known formulas that sheet metal workers have been using for decades. These basic formulas include triangulation and radial and parallel line developments. Why should it be so difficult to develop sheet metal work from within CREO? I believe that Solid Works has this ability but we are stuck with CREO for parity with the companies we deal with.

My other major gripe is the 2D Drawing side. Surely by now, a certain amount of automation should be entering this module. If you get it to auto dimension, it does not do it intelligently but throws every dimension on to the drawing. Does anybody use auto dimensioning in CREO? The alternative is fairly long winded which is why most of our customers just throw a model at us and we are left with dimensioning and producing drawings for manufacture and inspection. The use of BOMS and tables are not very intuitive and this side of CREO has not changed from 2001 days.

All in all, a huge disappointment. After all the hype about CREO it has failed to live up to expectations. We are only a small company and only hold 4 licenses, but we have decided to drop our maintenance cover for the foreseeable future as we find it hard to justify a product that is going nowhere. Perhaps we will pick it up again when PTC finally realise that their customers are not prepared to support their 'bloatware' when they can't even fix the fundamentals.

Does anyone else out there feel as I do? If so hit them where it hurts and drop your maintenance payments until PTC listen to what their customers want.

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[rohit_rajan]

yes the interface is liked by many....the ones who have done some work on solidworks and inventor and solid edge...they like it..b'coz its similar.

Creo 3.0 even if its just a bug fix..would be a big step forward..but from what i have seen...they are some good enhancements.

I am not talking about the unite technology...

but the pure enhancements like highlighting missing reference, notes in WYSIWYG format, flatten quilt enhancement,...improvement in flexible modelling (which neatly helps in handling non-native CAD data.)

the unite technology..would be fully available in M030...

i am still more comfortable with wildfire 4.0....but the new people would surely like Creo 3.0..it is maturing..though very slowly.

now the max. limit for draft angle is +/- 89.9 deg.

chordal round is there.

improved reorder feature.

yes much more remains to be addressed...wish i knew how PTC decides what to bring in a particular release and what in the next release.....

[TomD.inPDX]

...and rendering improvements (they say).

[DavorGranic]

If looks sell products then 3.0 will be sold out. Occlusion,reflections, bump maps...assemblies look awsome without render.The way assembly looks when you activate part is cool looking too. Icing on cake is when you turn on perspective and your model is shown in room. Mmmm...

[StevenSmith]

As a user with experiance of almost all the 3d cad systems, Solidworks, AutoCAD, Inventor , Catia, NX...

Creo is utter crap!

It's about 5 years behind Solidworks in terms of functionality and simplicity.

Everything is long winded.

The only offical benefit ive seen is that it is not as memory intensive as SW or inventor.

My biggest disapointment however is the inability to do a 3d sketch line.

I've heard peole say "it makes you think and capture design intent properly". Absolute rubbish, it just makes you think twice as long to complete something that should be done in seconds not minutes.

[ptc-6815001]

Short answer: YES

Long answer: as a Pro/E user since 1995 (!!), I have seen Pro/E go from THE hottest cad out there to an also-ran. The latest abomination they've foisted on us is embarrassing. Just plain embarrassing. The folks who started Pro/E and built it into a powerhouse, I guarantee they are ashamed to have any connection to this mess.

The functionality has not changed. For that I am grateful: I still contend Pro/E has the best pure modeling abilities in the cad world. The problem is, engineers don't live by modeling alone. We have to make tedious crap like drawings. The drawing portion of Pro/E, never very good, is now practically unusable.

None of our old mapkeys, some going back over a decade, don't work anymore. I'm not talking about the exotic mapkeys, just our simple ones. 'VR' for 'view right', how hard would it have been to leave that alone?

On another job, I had to learn a little of Autodesk Inventor. The basic modeling functionality shows heavy influence from Pro/E. But the similarities end there. The drawing portion is EASY to use, with lots of built-in time savers. Going back to Pro/E was like stepping into the Dark Ages of drawings.

Creo is a sick joke played on Pro/E users who don't have any choice. It requires more clicks to do the same things. I'm not a click-counter, I go by how fast I can actually work. And Pro/E today slows me down, period. Not just because I can't find anything anymore, but because the basic ideas about where to put things are screwed up.

If we could change cad packages, I would. Inventor, Solidworks, anything else but Pro/E. I am sick of PTC screwing around with a good product. They are rearranging the deck chairs while the ship is sinking.

[Patriot_1776]

"They are rearranging the deck chairs while the ship is sinking."

Most. Awesome. Quote. EVER!

I agree. I LOVE the power of Pro/E....but the interface now s#cks. Ad that to the fac that SW is eating PTC's lunch when it comes to having Engineers fresh out of school trained in SW instead of Pro/E, well, it's a recipe for disaster.

I met a guy at a vendor who was good at SW. Nice guy, but I sent him STEP files of some of the stuff I've done in Pro/E.....and he said he'd struggle to reproduce them, some he didn't even think he could do. They can't do graph functions, to, say, drive a VSS. So, that right there tells me Pro/E is ultimately more capable, but they need to fix the interface. And by "fix", I don't mean copying Micros#cks ribbon or other interfaces for idiots.

[ptc-6815001]

Thank you Frank, but I borrowed it from somebody else. I think the quote is actually 'Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic' or something like that.

Pro/E has some pretty impressive modeling abilities, but very few people ever really need them. Like using a graph to drive a sweep, that rarely comes up. Nice to know it's there, but still.

A buddy of mine has his own product design firm, we both used Pro/E for years. He said his clients are now 90% SW, where it used to be 90% Pro/E. PTC is getting clobbered, for good reason.

[Patriot_1776]

True, but I'd rather HAVE the capabilities and not need them, than need them and not have them. I mean, would you rather drive a CORvette or a CHEvette?

There isn't as much of a price difference now (except for the absurd "maintenance", so it's not as big a deal for companies now, but PTC REALLY neads a low-cost vaulting system (certainly NOT Windburn) for smaller companies (there is a thread dedicated to that here), and it REALLY needs to get it's product in line with their CUSTOMERS expectations and needs. Also, and equally important, they need to be the dominant software in as many universities as possible. I for one am tired of hearing all the talk from Engineers fresh out of school, who I have to train, who, generally, aren't even very adept at SW. I mean, they can get around in it, and make maybe a little more than basic models, but they criticise Pro/E and are completely unaware of it's true power. And, sadly, many times they learn to be (barely) passable in Pro/E, and never make the effort to master it. Sad, because there's so much they could learn. when I was first on Pro/E, for years, I would spend hours of my free time learning to master it. Maybe it's a generational/lack of work ethics thing too? They're spoiled with instant gratification with things like smartphones?

[rohit_rajan]

have you tried the symbol creation in creo parametric 3.0 detailing.....just try to control your emotions when you trying to create a symbol..with creo parametric 3.0.

[James62]

That's it. One doesn't have to know all the details.

Actually, any details. Just press one of the two buttons and there you have it. Instant gratification!

[StevenSmith]

Can you give an example of ProE/Creo's true power that cannot be replicated on other platforms?
I seem to hear this alot when people defend ProE/Creo but never see any evidence being presented.

[ptc-6815001]

One thing Pro/E still does better than others is sharing geometry from a layout 'Skeleton' part. It's just about the ONLY feature I still really like. My buddy who's a SW expert says there is a way to do it in SW but it's klunky and contorted. Having the luxury of creating 'Publish Geometry' and putting in the appropriate parts is a huge timesaver and error eliminator. It's easy to teach people the basics of it, and it's a great tool for splitting out portions of a complex assembly. You can even nest skeleton assemblies inside higher-level skeleton assemblies.

Regarding actual modeling, I can't say what other packages can do. I expect most modeling features can be done, eventually, in other packages too. Maybe not quite as 'built-in' as, say, driving a variable section using a graph, but I can't say it's not possible.

[Patriot_1776]

Easy: Top-down design as mentioned above. Or use a graph to drive a VSS. I sent some of my models to a guy (the one I mentioned above), and here was his response:

"Any ways I finally got a chance to look through those models. The one that

stands out to me is that y-surface. That kind of thing is a pain in the ass in

solidworks and would take me a bit to get done especially to that level. As for

those helixes around a circle, that’s something that I don’t know a good way to

do in SolidWorks, other than to go into a symbolic math package and build an

equation to drive the sweep curve and basically make a macro. While that’s

definitely doable, I bet I wouldn’t get a result without a day of hacking at it.

On that frame connector, how bad was getting all of those wires to move that

smoothly? Were you playing with 3d curves and manually getting them that way or

was it more automatically generated?"

Here's your challenge Steve, duplicate the models I've got in my photo album. I'll pick maybe 4 of the models. Interested?

[Patriot_1776]

Crickets....... Must be a SW user!

[StevenSmith]

Very interested, but i don't have SolidWorks anymore.

I'm a Creo guy now, but I'll have a look at what you've done.

[Patriot_1776]

....welcome to the Dark Side.....

[dgschaefer]

Steven Smith wrote:

Can you give an example of ProE/Creo's true power that cannot be replicated on other platforms?
I seem to hear this alot when people defend ProE/Creo but never see any evidence being presented.

I can't compare to anything but Solidworks, but as others have said, Top Down Design is huge. it exists in SW, but it's cumbersome at best. In fact, Creo is so superior, on a recent project we recommended against SW in favor of Creo because of the TDD capabilities. The client already owned SW and typically we use what the client has, but in this case, their deadline was so short we knew the only way to get it done was to use Creo. They weren't heavily invested in SW yet, which made the argument easier. had we been forced to sue SW, I'm not sure we could have gotten done. With Creo, we finished on time.

I'd add to this list of the ways Creo is superior, reference management and installation management.

Creo gives the user lots and lots of feedback on what references you are using when building features so you can manage design intent and parent child relationships. SW gives almost none. Entities are listed as "edge1" or "plane1". If you are diligent with Creo, you can make extraordinarily flexible and robust, yet very complex, models. It's hard to be diligent with references in SW.

Creo also has a robust, if slightly arcane, system of config files that can be used customize and control Creo installations across the enterprise. SW, to the best of my research, has no means for managing installations company wide.

[Patriot_1776]

Excellent points Doug! I think it's also much easier to make bad parent-child relationships in SW because they don't have the ability to "query/select" like we do....unless they added that.

[eriskedahl]

I'd add to this list of the ways Creo is superior, reference management and installation management.

Creo gives the user lots and lots of feedback on what references you are using when building features so you can manage design intent and parent child relationships. SW gives almost none. Entities are listed as "edge1" or "plane1". If you are diligent with Creo, you can make extraordinarily flexible and robust, yet very complex, models. It's hard to be diligent with references in SW.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, SW has always showed me the proper references. All the models I saw in Creo no one has been diligent with their models.

Creo also has a robust, if slightly arcane, system of config files that can be used customize and control Creo installations across the enterprise. SW, to the best of my research, has no means for managing installations company wide.

Untrue, SW has an installer for corporate use and for which job function. The admins can create a build that has all the tools you need. I never used it personally but my friends in IT say it's not bad to use.

One thing I know is that Creo is also superior at consuming system resources. The whole "In Session" thing is very silly to me. When I close a part I want to close a part.

[Patriot_1776]

You're not making sense in your defense of Solidquirks.

Are you able to query thru a list of references to make sure you're getting, say, a particular surface (in case 2 different ones are co-planar) instead of an edge? Can you select an "intent" reference that automatically updates?

You misunderstand, your "installer" is for simply installing the software. With a networked "config.pro" file you can make sure ALL your users have the same settings, and revise them remotely at any time, changing all users settings. THAT is what Doug means. To my knowledge, regardless of "installer", that's a one-time deal, and you'd have to RE-install Solidquirks every time you wanted to change a setting - not true with Pro/E. In Pro/E, an admin simply changes a file, and the settings propagates to all users.

"In session" is mean to vastly increase retrieval times, which it does. If you're truly done with a model/dwg, do an "erase not displayed. This "in session" gives you options S/Q doesn't.

[StevenSmith]

Hi Frank,

• Are you able to query thru a list of references to make sure you're getting, say, a particular surface (in case 2 different ones are co-planar) instead of an edge? Can you select an "intent" reference that automatically updates?

Yes. Solidworks has the option to view references, and also allow you to link references and break references within assemblies so that if the overall length of the model is changed then we can interrogate what reference links we have to remove in order for the model not to collapse.

• You misunderstand, your "installer" is for simply installing the software. With a networked "config.pro" file you can make sure ALL your users have the same settings, and revise them remotely at any time, changing all users settings. THAT is what Doug means. To my knowledge, regardless of "installer", that's a one-time deal, and you'd have to RE-install Solidquirks every time you wanted to change a setting - not true with Pro/E. In Pro/E, an admin simply changes a file, and the settings propagates to all users.

Rather than using a "config-pro" file solidworks allows you to set a "sw-copy-wizard", that allows for new users to be set up instantly after installation of the software. Deployment is dependent on the company set up but we used to do this with little hastle.

Administrators could configure this file at a later date and delopy it to users pc's.

• "In session" is mean to vastly increase retrieval times, which it does. If you're truly done with a model/dwg, do an "erase not displayed. This "in session" gives you options S/Q doesn't.

Personally, i think this has its upside and downsides.

The bonus being large assemblies load quicker, bad side, again more clicks and the big sign of forgetting to do it.

I supposed with prolonged use you would eventually get used to ir.

[dgschaefer]

Evan Riskedahl wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean by this, SW has always showed me the proper references. All the models I saw in Creo no one has been diligent with their models.

In SW, can you go into a feature an find out what feature the references that were used to build it belong to? I can't it simply says "edge1" or "plane1".

Can you replace one reference with another without deleting and reelecting and then causing downstream features to fail?

When a reference is missing, can you determine what type it was and what feature it belonged to to aid in fixing it?

When a reference is missing, can you replace it so that all features that used it are fixed?

When a reference fails in sketcher, can you replace it so that all constraints & dims do not need to be redefined?

When you select an edge or surface as a reference, does SW tell you what feature it belongs to so you can create proper parent-child relationships?

I can do none of this in SW (perhaps I simply don't know how) but all and more are available in Creo.

The lack of diligence in modeling isn't Creo's fault, that goes on the operator. However, if you take advantage of these tools and choose your refs well, you'll be amazed what you can do in Creo. I've made top level skeleton changes that effect several parts in an assy with 4,000+ total features and regenerated it with no failures. I have no confidence that I could do the same in SW.

Evan Riskedahl wrote:

Untrue, SW has an installer for corporate use and for which job function. The admins can create a build that has all the tools you need. I never used it personally but my friends in IT say it's not bad to use.

Yes, that is true, but if I need to make a change, I need to create a new installer and push that out to my users. Also, if they don't like a certain setting that I want all users to have set the same, they can simply change it. Creo gives me tools to change configurations on the fly (user's get the new setting the nest time they launch Creo) and the ability to "lock" options that are important.

it's possible that I don't fully understand how to configure a group of users in SW. Last time I dug into it, I did inquire on their forums and no one could tell me how to do anything but the up front installation package. After that, I was told, I had to go and touch every PC to make changes.

[LawrenceS]

Chris,

With the BIGGEST exception being the HORRIBLE 'feature' that you have to be on a specific tab to select something, I am one of the people who don't mind the new interface and see that it is easy to pick up how to learn for beginners, and most particularly the command search.

That being said, I would rather have had the glaring problem fixed that you mentioned of "Going back to Pro/E was like stepping into the Dark Ages of drawings". People have been complaining about this for years, and very little (if any) functionality seems to be added to help with creating and manipulating dwgs. List (and discussion) of features removed when going from ProE (WF1-WF4) to Creo(2) (lets see their new and improved website allows pasted links!)

In fact some useful functionality has actually been removed! By spending tons of money on Interface, and some cool modeling capabilities, and not on DRAWING functionality it really gives the appearance that PTC is purposefully not fixing it.

[kevinb60041]

Lawrence Scheeler,

Do you think that this lack of enhancements to the drawings module is to help push companies to paperless? Everything is dimensioned on the models and no need for cumbersome drawings anymore?

Kevin

[LawrenceS]

Kevin, Good question. I have thought of that and think that it is a nice thought, but perhaps not realistic for the following reasons:

1. The problem is it has not been a reality for the last 20+ years, yet they have refused to give any decent 2D tools built in to ProE/Creo drawing mode (though their sketcher is superior in many ways, and they created a separate module to draft in 2D). There has been almost no chance of this happening during those years and only recently has it become possible. Even though it is possible to do a drawingless environment, nor is it easy to change...nor is it always the best option.
2. What realistic alternative do we currently have? I have not yet seen a good alternative to detailing on 2D dwgs so that it is a structured way to go through the dwg to verify that all the dimensions are there, they are all correct and all features, big and large are good. Have you? If so I would be interested in seeing it and investigating it.
3. Paperless is very different than drawingless. By in large, we still use either PDFs or Creo View during the approval process, so this part is, by definition, paperless even though we are still use drawings to display the model features and dimensions. Even when the model is fed directly into the CNC programming, a dwg/pdf is still useful to verify the features and dimensions, giving a good overview/summary. There may be a better way to do it, but I have not yet seen it.
4. There is an assumption that Models are the only thing put on dwgs, which I think most companies would strongly disagree with. What about text, symbols, performance graphs, tables (not only BOM, but specification tables too), and any other kind of spec. Does PTC want me to create a circuit symbol in Creo modeling? A graph too?

If there are good alternatives and solutions to these problems, I sincerely and very much look forward to hearing about them, to see if perhaps we could integrate their use. If there isn't, I think PTC needs to re-access providing these basic and simple solutions for dwgs.

[dgschaefer]

PTC has been pushing a drawing-less, model centric environment for years. They've invested heavily in it, resulting in having to put the same effort into essentially creating the drawing inside the part where it's only readable if you've got PTC software to read it.

I think there's some promise in a drawing-less environment in a vertically integrated enterprise, but for the rest of us who have to deal with many clients & vendors who have various capabilities to read 3D data, drawings which can be turned into paper & PDFs are very universal and well understood.

I've long felt that if PTC had put half the resources they've put into model based definitions into making actual drawing creation simpler, we'd be much better off.

[ptc-6851832]

I've been a user of PTC products since v. 2000i in college. I thought it to be a great program despite the steep learning curve, which I had grown comfortable with. I used it up until WF3 to design part of the 2009 Whirlpool appliance line up. As a contractor I went on to other companies that used Inventor, Catia, NX, and SolidWorks. I griped about SW when it came to surfacing, didn't like the relative lightweight ability of Inventor. Catia and NX were easily the equal of Pro in thier respective strengths. It was with great anticipation that I accepted a permanent position with a company that used Creo, I would return to the fold. I've been using Creo for 4 months now and I have to say that while the surfacing is likely still much better than SW that's where it stops for me. I find Creo to be lacking in improvements, tedious in feature creation, and clumsy in overall use. Configuration is still a PITA as it was 15 years ago, sketches cannot be derived, drawings views are limited, patterns are not as flexible, and the scrambled shuffling of names every year or two doesn't lend to stability. As a long time fan of PTC products it's my opinion that PTC has NOT made improvement a priority, if it has it certainly hasn't been geared to the designer's experience. Disappointing really, enough to make me purchase a seat of SW last year.

[ptc-6851832]

We've had "issues" the last 4 weeks with OneSpace 2D drafting (now CoCreate?). Yes I know it's not Creo but it is a PTC product and this is somewhat on topic. We've decided to give the latest version of CoCreate a test run (long story) and I was just sent access to the e-learning library at PTC. For the moment we will ignore the logic behind using any version of ME-10. I want to acknowledge what was nice, a chance to get up to speed on the software you just paid a lot of money for. I'm familiar with 2D drafting software but I can always use a refresher so I checked in to see what's available. There are indeed several, maybe 30 courses in total for versions 16,17,18, and 19. Oh there's one small catch, all but 2 courses (updates, parts library) are NOT available in English. If I spoke Chinese, German, or Japanese (I do but not nearly enough) I'd be just fine. I find it almost laughable that the help/training is so very much a reflection of what Creo is, namely a lot of effort went into creating things that an average designer in the USA will not find useful at all. Congratulations PTC on living down to expectations, I want to recognize the efforts you've made in your fight to the bottom. Go PTC!