What is PTC's solution for the growing composites market?

[dhermosillo]

Since PTC's decision to shelve Pro/Composite, what is PTC's proposed solution for the growing markets of composite integraters such as private aerospace, wind energy, commercial aerospace, water pleasure craft, etc.?

What does PTC say to companies who are considering switching to a modeling package like Catia because of the lack of a composite solution in Creo?

Pro/Composite seemed to be approaching a mature product, but still needed some work to be a serious contender in the composites world. It addressed the complex issues of composites such as sequences, plys, cores, combining disparate solids into one object while still preserving the correct mass properties; something that can't be done with merge in Creo. Please offer us something so we can stick with PTC.

[dhermosillo]

Update! I wasn't getting any response from PTC from this discussion, so I created a support case.

Here's what I got back:

Hi Domingo,

After discussing with Product Director, below is what I would summarize on PTC’s plan for Pro/COMPOSITE:

Pro/Composite was lacking a lot of functionality that is available in a modern composite solution. Rather than PTC enhance Pro/Composite, it was deemed a better solution to partner with a company that has the functional expertise in that area. To that end we are actively searching for a viable partner. Once we find a viable partner we will evaluate and determine how to integrate that capability.

I hope the above information answers the concerns you raised.

Sincerely,

Harry

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Harish Seth Section Manager Technical Support T 800.477.6435 E - PTC.com

[brthompson]

Hi Domingo,

We continue to support an excellent Composites technology integration with the Fibersim product, which is now offered by the Specialized Engineering Software division of Siemens. I met recently with Steve Luby who runs this business for Siemens, and he emphasized that the Fibersim integrations with CAD products like CATIA and PTC Creo Parametric continue to be strategic to the Specialized Engineering Software Division of Siemens. I feel confident recommending them.

Best Regards,

Brian Thompson

VP, PTC Creo Product Management

[dhermosillo]

Brian, FiberSim does not address many of the mass related issues that are encountered with vehicle integration of composites, such as heterogeneous merged material mass properties.

FiberSim is strictly for laying out composites.

We need a bridge between FiberSim and Pro/Engineer that addresses the above issue plus issues such as net vs. trimmed parts, assembly features, potted-in components, etc. FiberSim does not handle these.

[DavidLeighHudso]

Hi Domingo,

My name is Leigh Hudson, I am the Fibersim Product Manager at Specialized Engineering Software. Thank you for positing your comments.

I wanted to start by providing a bit of detail about Fibersim. Fibersim is an embedded Creo application providing a master model approach to composite product development. It captures both the geometric and vast non-geometric information associated with composites to provide intelligence at the feature level within a composite model. Fibersim's open architecture supports the analysis, design and manufacturing process. The open architecture enables:

1. interoperability between CAE and Creo during the iterative preliminary design process

2. the ability to perform detailed design quickly and make design changes quickly

3. the reuse of the engineering definition for the generation of manufacturing outputs

I am wondering if you could help me understand some of the comments posted with a bit more detail.

1. I am unclear about the meaning of heterogeneous merged material mass properties?

- If you are looking to understand the mass and CG of composite components this is something that Fibersim does by rolling up the composite materials and solid inserts into a laminate level mass and CG calculation.

2. I am unclear about the meaning of net vs. trimmed parts? I am wondering if you mean engineering edge of part (EEOP) versus manufacturing edge of part (MEOP) or an after cure cutout process.

- Fibersim automatically allows the design to be created from either the EEOP or MEOP and then either automatically extends from the EEOP to the MEOP or trims from the MEOP to the EEOP.

- Fibersim allows the user to define cutouts that are then taken into account in laminate mass and CG calculations.

3. Can you help me understand what you mean by assembly features? I am wondering if you mean core or something different.

- Fibersim assists with the development of a core solid within Creo. That core solid can be associated as a composite object and its mass and CG taken into account at the laminate level.

Please feel free to contact me to discuss your particular challenges but I will also watch for your responses online.

Kind Regards,

Leigh Hudson

Fibersim Product Manager

P: +1.781.250.6866

E: -

[dhermosillo]

Hi David,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my questions.

To elaborate on my points:

1. What we are lacking is a representation of the finished composite pieces in a Pro/E assembly. The pieces need to have the correct CG based on the materials used in the layup, i.e. core, plys, potting, potted in components, etc.

2. We need to have the capability to specify our requirements to the vendor and represent the finished product in a Pro/E mass model. The information submitted for manufacture of a composite piece has a lot of detail that is unwanted in the Pro/E mass model. For instance, the mass model does not need all of the plies represented. Also, the manufactured piece may have details for holding, potted areas that have not been cutout or prepped for installation of embedded components, etc. We need to represent the finished piece in Pro/E, trimmed of all manufacturing features, plus showing all secondary operations. From my earlier evaluation of FiberSim, it seemed like FS helps with the manufacture of the piece, but does not facilitate secondary operations within Pro/E. If this capability has been added, that would be great!

3. Assembly features include holes, cutouts, inserts, etc. that modify the piece after manufacture. Without a model that represents the differing areas of density, core, plies and potting, we have to recreate the construction in Pro/E in order to get the resulting mass properties for accurate CG calculations.

Again, if FiberSim has added the capability to generate accurate composite models to be used in Pro/E assemblies, and represent the heterogeneous materials, and which can be used for secondary operations, then this will fill the gap that we a currently experiencing between composite layup programs and Pro/E's capabilities.

I look forward to hearing your response. I'll copy this message to your email as well.

[dhermosillo]

Below, I've posted the response I got after talking to Leigh Hudson from FiberSim.

Essentially, PTC has yet to develop the interface with FiberSim that facilitates getting a solid mass model from FiberSim into Pro/E; that's the missing finctionality that our company needs.

Response posted with permission:

From: Hudson, Leigh
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 2:55 PM
To: Domingo Hermosillo
Subject: RE: FiberSim Questions

Hi Domingo,

1. 1. What we are lacking is a representation of the finished composite pieces in a Pro/E assembly. The pieces need to have the correct CG based on the materials used in the layup, i.e. core, plys, potting, potted in components, etc.
   • Fibersim allows for the design of composite parts and assemblies. Fibersim allows customers to account for plies, cores and solid inserts – typically solid inserts such as potted-in components are linked to their solid model representation so that Fibersim can include them and their material properties in its automatically calculated weights and CGs.

1. 2. We need to have the capability to specify our requirements to the vendor and represent the finished product in a Pro/E mass model. The information submitted for manufacture of a composite piece has a lot of detail that is unwanted in the Pro/E mass model. For instance, the mass model does not need all of the plies represented. Also, the manufactured piece may have details for holding, potted areas that have not been cutout or prepped for installation of embedded components, etc. We need to represent the finished piece in Pro/E, trimmed of all manufacturing features, plus showing all secondary operations. From my earlier evaluation of FiberSim, it seemed like FS helps with the manufacture of the piece, but does not facilitate secondary operations within Pro/E. If this capability has been added, that would be great!
   • I am not clear here if you are looking to create a final composite solid shape based on the stack-up and inserts, could you clarify? If you are looking for Fibersim to produce the final solid shape, to be trimmed with Pro/ENGINEER or Creo functionality, we cannot currently do this in Pro/ENGINEER or Creo, but with a bit of work this can be achieved manually today. We currently provide the capability to understand the thickness areas through core sampling and those thicknesses can be used to create the final shape. We have had discussions with PTC about this need and this will require some effort from PTC and our company to achieve this capability.

1. 3. Assembly features include holes, cutouts, inserts, etc. that modify the piece after manufacture. Without a model that represents the differing areas of density, core, plies and potting, we have to recreate the construction in Pro/E in order to get the resulting mass properties for accurate CG calculations.
   • Fibersim has and continues to take into account of holes, cutouts and inserts for composites in its weight and CG calculations, as well as its generation of downstream manufacturing data. For holes and cutouts these process features can be added into the part srtictly using Fibersim. For inserts, a ProE solid rep can can be linked to a tracked object in Fibersim which can then accurately report the entire weight and CG

Kind Regards,

Leigh Hudson

Fibersim Product Lead

[dhermosillo]

After struggling with this for a while, and seeing how well FiberSim has been integrated in to Catia, our company has decided move from Creo to Catia for all of our future composite designs.

[fgarciarubio]

Hi Domingo,

Thanks for doing all  that "leg work" you did for us.

Here we are Sept 2017!! our company is clamoring for the same type of response from PTC regarding a composite solution, but... they seem to be AWOL.

NX with Fibersim seem to be a much better solution all around. We are in the midst of determining if we go that route and drop PTC tools.