Take a look at other facet export types like WRL, OBJ, and a few others.
I personally like WRL (VRML) because it is open source and the output files are ASCII.
Easy to manipulate for next-level operations as well.
I output .WRL files from Creo analysis (core Creo lite version). Facets maintain their colors and are sorted in groups.
From the .WRL file, I can extract each color if that was desirable. This could also import each color as a new model.
It is a huge amount of work, but facet files can be very powerful for the right purpose.
There is, of course, the reverse engineering extension (REX) if your into spending money now and forever.
There are a lot of facet file manipulation software packages available. Some for free like Autodesk MeshMixer, and some for serious money like Rhyno.
These will help get you back to a surface model.
Just remember that facet models are as dumb as they get. They do not have circles or polylines. They have triangles and the triangles have attributes, and they can even have neighbor-sensitive attributes (softening) that you will never see in core Creo unless you understand what is going on in the background of your graphics display.
My need is to manipulate STL files to include single wall supports for 3D printing. In that sense, I am SOL with PTC unless they put some goodies in Creo 4 I haven't seen yet.
