GrabCAD Workbench with Creo?

[ptc-255508]

Anyone using GrabCAD Workbench with multiple people with Creo?

Observations?

Cheers, Sean

[briegel]

Hey Sean,

We have people using Creo with Workbench today. Based on customer requests we’ll soon be implementing special Pro E suffixes for people who want to take advantage of Workbench versioning.

I'll keep you updated when it's available.

Have a great day.

Bobby Riegel | GrabCAD

[briegel]

Sean,

Great news today!

We just delivered support for Pro/E with release 1.5 of the desktop client. Also supported are resumable uploads, where if someone's internet connection dies mid-upload, they don't have to start over once it's back.

You will need to download https://grabcad.com/downloadworkbench to see the changes, which takes about 45 seconds. We will enable auto-updates on Friday.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Bobby Riegel | GrabCAD

[ptc-255508]

Cheers for the info Bobby but it still doesn't help us get your product to our students - your future customers. Look at Autodesks buisness model, they give us free access to their Vault PDM for as many students as we like, to them it's a lost leader, our students are the future decision makers in the design business (put Loughborough University in LinkedIn and see where they're at).

Give high profile universities free access to your tools and you are starting your sales campaign for future clients now.

There is also little advantage to this product to us as long as it has no check in/out functionality - we can't manage a project with multiple editable versions of a file existing,

Cheers, Sean

PS. the link in your message just takes me to a Solidworks client, no mention of 'ProE' - which has been called Creo for a few years now

[briegel]

Hi Sean,

Thanks for the feedback.

We currently offer Workbench for $10 for students, and have several universities as customers, but that price could very well change in the future.

Does Autodesk Vault let you manage non-autodesk files? Workbench can manage all CAD file formats, including the ability to check in and check out files with whatever CAD software you are using, and also allows you to easily share and collaborate externally outside your firewall.

Sorry I should have been more clear here as far as the link. The link is to download the desktop client, which allows you to sync and manage local Creo files directly with your Workbench projects.

Hope this hopes. If you have anymore questions definitely don't hesitiate to ask.

Bobby Riegel | GrabCAD

[ptc-255508]

So as a school that would cost us $5000 dollars for our students - twice what we'd pay for full blown Windchill without the basic check in/out functionality.

Vault is integrated in Creo, Solidworks, MS Office and all the the Autodesk tools.

Sean

[briegel]

Hey Sean,

Glad everything is working out for your students using Vault.

I wasn't trying to get into a debate with you, I just wanted to help answer your original question about using Workbench with Creo.

Best of luck,

Bobby | GrabCAD

[ptc-255508]

That's fine Bobby, it's a pity GrabCAD couldn't do the job for us as I like the product, being cloud based is particularly good for our students,

Cheers, Sean

[briegel · Accepted solution]

Hey Sean,

I know this thread is from April, but I thought I'd just give you an update on where Workbench is with CREO integration.

http://blog.grabcad.com/blog/2014/06/18/workbench-integration-ptc-creo-summer-2014-release/

Have a great weekend!

[ptc-255508]

Still no good to us Bobby until you get a decent pricing structure for education - remember these are your customers of the furture and most students will default to what they were taught at university!

Sean

[briegel]

Hi Sean,

Good news - reach out to me and let's talk.

Bobby @ Grabcad.com

[RaphMORIN]

Good news yesterday, it has become free.

But I tried uploading a Creo 3 file and it's not supported

[briegel]

Hey Sean,

Support for Creo 3 files is coming in the near future.

Glad you and your students can all use Workbench now!

Bobby

[dgschaefer]

Thought I'd chime in here with our experience with GrabCAD and Creo2.

We attempted to use it on a large project with our Creo 2 database and found some corruption issues where Creo 2 several files were rendered unreadable in GrabCAD. It seemed, somehow, to be related to the use of bulk components, but that wasn't clear. We eventually dropped back to using GrabCAD for collaboration, but not uploading native Creo 2 files, only uploading STEP files.

This was back in November or December. GrabCAD support is aware of the issue and was working with their team to resolve it, but I'm not sure what the status of it is at this point.

To be fair, we had uploaded a fairly large database with fairly complex top down design with complex surfacing, multiple skeletons and buklk items. It seemed that this was a pretty obscure error. It did stop us in our tracks as our client and vendors were not able to view the models. It's been working well with STEP files, however.

[dgschaefer]

I've recently come back to review using GrabCAD to possibly help manage some of my Creo projects, so I thought I'd post an update.

Unfortunately, not much seems to have changed since February.  GrabCAD and Creo don't play well together.  Some issues I've found:

1. Drawing files do not show their formats (title block).  The format file (*.frm) is in a common parts library, but no drawings show the format, even the drawings in the common parts library.
2. Assembly drawings do not show at all. (It shows "Failure reason: Unknown)
3. Skeleton models do not show. (Same error as above)
4. Overlay drawings do not show. (Same error as above) An overlay drawing is a drawing that shows snapshots of other drawings.  It's useful for gathering up a complete drawing package and backing it up into another folder.
5. Drawing format files (*.frm) do not have a supported preview.

Items 3-5 I can work around, but 1 & 2 pretty much kill using GrabCAD with Creo.

[arandev]

Hi Doug,

Can you share your experience using workbench with creo? I only want it to use it for version control for part and assembly files. Does it work well for part and assembly files? thanks.

[dgschaefer]

It seems to work OK with most part & assy files.  I've had issues with skeletons and assemblies that contain bulk items, but haven't done any extensive testing yet. I've also had issues with sectioning which seems to be related to the use of transparent parts, but I can't say for sure.

Drawings are problematic. Evidently what their system does in the background is convert the *.drw to a PDF and use that for display purposes.  Unfortunately, it fails to find your drawing formats, even if they are in the same folder, and generates a PDF without your titleblock. Better to make your own PDFs and manage them instead, but that gets a bit problematic if you have to share the Creo drawings.

Keep in mind that version control will not interface with the Creo part / assy parameters.  You manually set versions & revisions in GrabCAD.  A GrabCAD rep also told me that they've backed away from promoting it as a PDM like tool, promoting it more as a collaboration tool.

So, generally there are still a lot of caveats and workarounds with using GrabCAD with Creo.