cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Community Tip - Help us improve the PTC Community by taking this short Community Survey! X

Did You Know? Multi-object Support for Freestyle in Creo 4.0

No ratings

With Creo 4.0, we’ve dramatically improved the usability of Freestyle, making it even easier to create and modify complex geometry all within a single feature. In this post, our product manager tells you how it works.


With Creo parametric 4.0, Freestyle has been enhanced so you can create multiple, disconnected objects in a single Freestyle feature.

Here is an example that showcases this capability:


Select Freestyle from the ribbon and place a primitive on the screen. You'll notice a new Freestyle tree that includes Shape 1. As you add or create new shapes, they will each be represented in the Freestyle tree.

1primitive.png

A new shape is added to the Freestyle tree.

Now selecting the shape from the Freestyle tree or the graphics window, you can easily manipulate the individual objects.

When you select a face you can now use a new shortcut ‘X’ to extrude the face. There are a number of out-of-the-box shortcut introduced in Creo 4.0  for most common capabilities within Freestyle.

2extract.png

Pulling the dragger extrudes the rounded face.

Now let’s add more primitives to the design.

As you add shapes you'll notice that they are added to the Freestyle tree. Right-click on Shape 2 from the Freestyle tree and select Duplicate.  Now using the 3D Dragger for Shape 2, drag it out.

3extract.png

Pulling the Dragger to create a second sphere.

Each shape can be selected and manipulated independently from other shapes.


Several new editing tools are available to help you work with these multiple shapes, specifically around the idea of connecting shapes together or splitting them apart.


Connect allows two faces to be connected together by creating additional face patches in the control mesh, and Join merges those two faces together.

4save2faces.png

Using Connect to change the faces of two shapes.


You can also split shapes into multiple shapes. Select a face or four control mesh edge to define a face and then select Mesh Slice. The shape will be split into two shapes at that location and a new shape will be listed in the Freestyle tree.

If you drag the faces apart, you can work on them independent of one another; however, with the Connect tools you can rejoin them as needed.


Through this simple example, you begin to see how this enhancement can drastically improve the usability of Freestyle.


Carrying this a step forward for power users of Freestyle, you can now create complex geometry in a single Freestyle feature without resorting to multiple Freestyle features as you would have in previous releases.


To see a demo of these features, check out the video: https://youtu.be/2Se3nUQ2Kqw. You can also learn more by reading the PTC Creo Help Center page, Support for Multiple Objects in Freestyle.

If you haven’t already, download the software here and try it yourself. And stay tuned to our “Did You Know” blog series, as we cover more enhancements in PTC Creo 4.0.

Version history
Last update:
‎Feb 13, 2017 02:58 PM
Updated by:
Tags (2)