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Creo Parametric Tips

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How to access PTC Licensing Tool How to retrieve license file How to generate license file How to use Sales Order Number to retrieve license file
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Covers creation of repeat region relations to control quantity for bulk items in an assembly BOM table.      
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PTC has improved Freestyle to allow users to split quad faces into n-sided faces. Click the command Add Edge to increase the number of edges per face. Each edge breaks the 4–sided face into smaller faces, providing better control to define the form. You can delete selected edges, which results in the automatic collapse of the faces and the deleted edge vertices. This gives you the flexibility to split the control mesh into any defined shape so you can create any type of geometry.
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Attached please find a video on the exposure of Flexible Modeling tools in Sheet Metal. It focuses on selection and geometry modification tools that are available in regular part mode and had been adapted for the Sheet Metal environment to honor guidelines such as constant wall thickness and other specific rules. In particular note how Move and Remove refine the selection automatically and how other tools like substitute, offset, etc are only allowed for side surfaces. Pattern recognition and propagation are supported for operations such as move.   Have fun! Looking forward to your feedback.   Best regards..Martin
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PTC Creo 3.0 introduces a new Align capability within Freestyle which allows PTC Creo Parametric users to create and drive freeform, stylized designs parametrically. Users can now connect their Freestyle geometry to other external geometry with positional, tangent, or normal conditions. Furthermore, any change made to this external geometry will be reflected in the Freestyle geometry during regeneration.   Paul Sagar, Director of Product Management, gives us an introductory overview of the new Align feature:   PTC Creo 3.0 introduces a new “Align” feature within Freestyle. With this capability, you can align the freestyle control mesh to external curves and edges and therefore parametrically control your freestyle geometry.   In this example, we will be working on a bike model and building the surfaces around the pedal. These surfaces are defined parametrically by the neighboring geometry. We will start with a sphere, and build out the geometry to get it close to the neighboring surfaces.   Building out geometry with Freestyle, it will be defined parametrically by the neighboring geometry     In this case, the part is symmetrical, so we are able to mirror it.   Next, you can select the faces you want to delete and leave open. You can then take the edges of the open loops and align them to the edges of the neighboring geometry.     Aligning the edges of the part to the neighboring geometry     After the loops and edges are aligned, you can specify the continuity between the Freestyle geometry and the surrounding geometry. In this example, we will create a normal connection.   While we continue to refine the shape, we need to define the location for the pedals. Again, when the geometry is close, you can align the external edges of the geometry.   Here is a look at the completed geometry:   A look at the final geometry     Finally, you can return to the top level assembly and make changes to the skeleton model that is driving the shape of the frame. When regenerated, the Freestyle geometry is also updated to maintain the connection and tangency to the surrounding geometry.     Changes to the skeleton model will be automatically reflected in the Freestyle model during regeneration     In conclusion, with the new Align capability you will be able to more effectively combine freeform, organic geometry with dimension based design intent.       Check out our video tutorial on the PTC University Learning Exchange (“Aligning Freestyle Geometry”) to learn more.   Stay tuned to our “Did You Know” blog series as we cover all of the exciting, new enhancements in PTC Creo 3.0. For more in-depth product feature explanations, visit our Tech Tips area.   Have some ideas about what PTC Creo product features you’d like to learn more about? Send me a message or leave a comment below and we’ll write up the best ideas from the community. Thanks for reading, looking forward to all of your feedback!
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Our weekly Did You Know series focuses on providing users with informative, “how-to” tips to help them get the most out of PTC Creo. This week’s short post shows users how to create a square to round blend in PTC Creo Parametric, the source of inspiration for this tutorial originally came from a member of our PTC Creo Community. Users will learn how to create the blend in 3 steps.   Step 1: Sketch a Square Section You have two options when creating a blend; you can either sketch the sections ahead of time and select them in the blend tool, or you can sketch the sections within the tool as you create the blend. In this example, you will create external sections and select them in the Blend tool.   Begin by creating a square section on your first sketch plane with the Center Rectangle tool in Sketcher. Sketch a Square Section     Step 2: Sketch a Circular Section and Divide it Create a second sketch plane offset from the one on which you sketched your square section. Sketch a circle on this sketch plane using the same center that you used for your center rectangle.   Each section of the blend must have the same number of entities. You will tell PTC Creo how to blend the two sections together by splitting the circle into four segments to match the four segments of the square section.   First, orient the sketching plane parallel to the screen with the Sketch View button. You will see the square section and the circular section together. Next, select the References command and select the corners of the square section as references for the sketch. Then create two centerlines diagonally across the square through the corner references, and use the Divide tool to split the circle where it is intersected by the centerlines. Divide the square and circle into an equal number of segments. This allows you to create the blend.     Step 3: Create the blend. Create a blend with the Blend tool. Select “Selected Sections” under the Sections panel. Select the rectangular section as Section 1, then Insert, then the circular section as Section 2. If the blend is twisted, you can adjust the start point of either section by selecting the section in the collector and then dragging the vertex around the section. Here is an example of what the blend looks like:   The final product: A square to round blend   In conclusion, creating a square to round blend in PTC Creo Parametric can be accomplished in a few easy steps. Check out our video tutorial on the PTC University Learning Exchange (“Creating a Square to Round Blend in PTC Creo Parametric 2.0”) to see this advice in action. We’d also love to hear your suggestions for working with blends in PTC Creo Parametric.   For more in-depth product feature explanations, visit our Tech Tips area. Have some ideas about what PTC Creo product features you’d like to learn more about? Send me a message or leave a comment below and we’ll write up the best ideas from the community. Thanks for reading, looking forward to all of your feedback! In case you missed it, here are our recent Did You Know posts: 1) How to Create a Family Table   2) Tips and Tricks for Cable Design in PTC Creo Parametric Piping and Cabling Extension 3) Creating Helical Sweeps for Springs
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This week’s Did You Know, provided by our Director of Product Management Paul Sagar, teaches users how to create helical sweeps for springs using the sweep tool in PTC Creo Parametric. With this tool and its dashboard interface, creating springs is quick and easy. Paul shows us how to do so in three easy steps:   Step 1: Start Sketching the Spring’s Profile The helical sweep tool is located in the Shapes group of the modeling tab, under the Sweep Type drop down.   The sweep type drop down menu     After the helical sweep dashboard opens, go into the References tab and click Define to begin sketching the profile of the spring.   In this example, we’re going to sketch the spring’s profile on the FRONT datum plane in a 2D orientation.   Step 2: Define Spring Properties First, define the spring center line. This will be the center axis of the spring (the axis of revolution).     Defining the axis of revolution on the center line   Next, add a vertical line to the left of the center line to represent the profile of the spring. This will be the diameter of the spring defined through the center of the spring’s wire. Complete the profile sketch.   Now define the Helix section by choosing Create or Edit Sweep Section in the dashboard.   The diameter of the wire will be sketched at the start point of the profile, using a circle. But you can use any shape you need.   Step 3: Add Relations   The helical sweep dashboard makes it easy to edit the pitch value of the spring, or toggle the spring from a right hand to left hand turn. The finished helical sweep will be seen dynamically on the screen. Complete the feature.   To finish the spring however, we want to make sure the spring maintains six coils no matter how much it’s expanded or compressed. To do this, we’ll need to add a relation to the part.     Adding relations to ensure this spring has six coils     This relation will be used to control the spring’s pitch as it expands and contracts. Go to the Tools tab and open the Relations Dialog box. We can see that the height of the spring is D1, the pitch is D2, and the diameter is D0. We need to write a relation that says the pitch equals the height of the profile divided by 6. This will ensure that the spring always has 6 coils. Now we can test it by editing the height dimension to compress and expand the spring. The final product: We can continue to compress and expand the spring without changing the number of coils     Check out our video tutorial on the PTC University Learning Exchange (“Creating Helical Sweeps for Springs”) to see this advice in action. We’d also love to hear your suggestions for working with helical sweeps below.   For more in-depth product feature explanations, visit our Tech Tips area.   Have some ideas about what PTC Creo product features you’d like to learn more about? Send me a message or leave a comment below and we’ll write up the best ideas from the community. Thanks for reading, looking forward to all of your feedback!   In case you missed it, here are our recent Did You Know posts: 1) How to Use Motion Skeletons to Quickly Design Mechanisms 2) Tips for Fewer Model Failures with Intent References 3) Tips for Creating Advanced Round Geometry in PTC Creo Parametric
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"The way to add new materials to your library" Material used in the tutorial here.   Some more.     (view in My Videos)
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Created and Rendered in Creo Elements/Pro 5.0   Music by: iodic   (view in My Videos)
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Applicable Release: Creo Parametric 1.0 to 8.0   Description: In this video, we will be configuring Creo Parametric ModelCHECK to remove unwanted relations from Parts & Assemblies. Configuration works for both Parts and Assemblies.
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Hi folks - in this short tutorial you can learn: How to prepare data in Creo Parametric and how to modify it with Creo Illustrate. All these simple steps will help you to prepare a great model for Augment reality and use it in Vuforia View:
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Design engineers use computational fluid dynamics to create viable designs that hold up under real-world conditions. With CFD they can optimize products, reduce expensive physical testing, and troubleshoot systems digitally. Read more from our CFD expert, Kamran Fouladi >> https://www.ptc.com/en/cad-software-blog/three-reasons-your-team-needs-computational-fluid-dynamics   (view in My Videos)
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Years ago, finite element analysis (FEA) was prohibitively expensive, required expert training, and delivered dangerously flawed results. Is simulation more accessible now? In this guest post, Tony Abbey, FRAeS, an engineer and consultant who’s devoted his long career to FEA, answers “Yes,” but with one rather large, important caveat.   The bad old days I started my finite element analysis (FEA) career in the mid-1970s, in the UK aircraft industry. We ran simulations on an IBM mainframe computer, which cost around $30 million in today’s money. It only had 1Mb of memory and pitiful processing speed compared to even the most basic of today’s laptops.   The FEA program annual license cost over $100 thousand dollars a seat. Very few companies could afford that kind of investment, so the use of FEA remained very limited.   To create an FEA mesh, the component drawing was traced at the drawing board. Nodal positions were worked out by hand, and element connectivity drawn in 2D models were relatively straightforward; however, trying to create anything sophisticated in 3D could be a nightmare.   [Image courtesy Tony Abbey]   The mesh data, together with the material and physical properties, boundary conditions etc. were tabulated on data entry sheets. The computing department turned these into punch cards. A deck of cards represented an FEA input file and was fed into the mighty IBM.   The FEA jobs would queue up and run sometime over the next few days, depending on project priority. The output was on miles of fanfold computer printout. Post processing consisted of sketching deflections onto the tracing paper and coloring in high regions of stress. In fact, most of the post processing calculations were done by hand using internal element forces generated by the FEA. This was the starting point for hand stress analysis.   [Image courtesy Tony Abbey]   The point of this reminisce, is that FEA was very expensive and time-consuming, and needed a detailed understanding of the syntax of the FEA input data.   Within the stress office, FEA specialists were sometimes viewed with suspicion. It was all too easy to get bogged down with the intricacies of the FEA input format, the idiosyncrasies of the program, and the challenge of debugging what went wrong. We had to constantly remind ourselves that we were engineers first and foremost! Cheaper – easier – democratized Over the subsequent 40 years we have seen incredible improvements in computing power and software efficiency. The entry cost for FEA has also dropped remarkably.   However, the biggest influence behind the spread of FEA into a wider community has been the improvement of the user interface. This is most dramatic in the FEA products which are embedded in CAD programs. Instead of fighting with arcane syntax and data structures, the workflow is laid out in a very familiar CAD like environment.   2017: Simulation now available on desktops as part of Creo 3D CAD package.   The widespread availability of FEA has been labeled as democratization, and there is great debate about whether this is a good or bad thing. Many FEA experts have voiced the opinion that FEA in the wrong hands, is a cause for concern.   In fact, there is a historical precedent for this nervousness. The traditional FEA community went through a difficult period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when several major structural failures occurred as a result of poor FEA modeling assumptions and techniques. Computer-aided catastrophe: Bad FEA calculations have crumbled billion dollar structures, such as oil platforms, in a matter of minutes.   The software was also producing inconsistent and incorrect results. The result of all this was a big shakeup and improvement in standards across the industry. Modern FEA software is verified against a whole range of benchmarks. First rule of analysis: Guilty until proven innocent However, things can still go badly wrong with a modern FEA simulation. The scope for user error has not gone away. That’s why you should always approach every analysis from the viewpoint that the model is bound to have errors, until you eliminate them. It is a question of guilty until proven innocent!   That transition from outright suspicion of the results, through to building a warm and fuzzy feeling about the analysis, is based largely on engineering judgment. Do the maximum displacements and maximum stresses in the model make sense? A wingtip deflection could be of the order of many inches, a precision tool may have maximum deflection measured in microns. Maximum working stresses should never exceed yield, but on the other hand a well-designed structure should not see maximum stresses of only 5% yield.   This robust viewpoint really helps avoid a lot of mistakes. The most difficult area in FEA is setting up the boundary conditions.  These should simulate the way the component is being supported in real life. A close second is understanding how the loads pass into the component. In summary; how does load get into the structure, how does it get out and what path does it follow. Are the peak stresses where we anticipate they should be? (More on this in future articles. But for now, be aware that many opportunities for error still exist.) Simulate, with caution Modern FEA is slick and quick, I don’t want to go back to the dark ages! It now gives us all an amazing opportunity to investigate structural components. I like to encourage its use as a virtual testing laboratory. With FEA, we can now push, pull, and poke to explore any structural response we like. We can ring the changes on loading and boundary conditions, mesh quality and so on. Gaining experience in these practical areas, and relating results to real life operating conditions and test evidence, is invaluable. Add to this a basic FEA checklist – and don’t forget that mantra of guilty until proved innocent! About the author Tony Abbey, FRAeS, has been working with FEA for more than 40 years. He started his career in the UK aerospace and defense industry. His project work spanned dynamics, fatigue and fracture, nonlinear and many other areas of FEA.   Today, he runs his own consultancy, FETraining, which provides FEA consultancy, training and mentoring. He developed and taught the NAFEMS online e-learning class program and publishes many articles covering all aspects of FEA. Contact Tony at tony@fetraining.com Empower your team!  Want to learn more about how to make simulation work for you and your team? Download the infographic to learn the Top 5 Best Practices for empowering design engineers. And get started realizing the potential of simulation: fantastic products.    
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Covers point patterns of standard holes and the use of Alternate Origin as a best practice to correctly generate the pattern.  
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You can now make it easier to page through various combination states by creating hyperlinks on notes. In other words, you can create a note annotation for your model that contains a hyperlink to a combination state. Clicking the hyperlink sets the drawing view to the certain state.In
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I'm creating this blog to be the central home page for anyone interested in trying out the new functionality in Creo 4.0 Sneak Peek relating to Flexible Modeling in Sheet Metal and regular part mode. Below will be links to my other blog posts on specific detailed topics under the mentioned theme. I will update the links as I post more information. Ideally you might want to reply to this post so that we can keep the threads linked.   Thanks and best regards…Martin     FMX: Video - Exposure of Flexible Modeling tools in Sheet Metal FMX: Video - New Sheet Metal specific Flexible Modeling tools to modify Sheet Metal Design Objects
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The first edition of our new “Did You Know” series featured advice for creating advanced round geometry in PTC Creo Parametric. This week Don Breda, Product Manager at PTC, shows us how to use intent references in PTC Creo Parametric to avoid model failures.   Here is the situation we are trying to avoid: let’s say you are trying to change a square interface into a hexagonal interface. You redefine the extrusion and delete the square. Now, the system says you are deleting entities that are referenced by other features. Hence, we’re left with feature failures. In this particular instance both a draft and round have failed when we changed the section that is used to define the extrusion.   What causes this failure? Both the draft and round were referenced to the individual surfaces and edges of the extrusion.   How do I avoid this problem? Change the way these features are created by using intent references.   Edit the Definition of the Draft feature, and remove the individual surface references. Next, “query select” by clicking the right mouse button until all the sides of the extrusion are pre-selected - the tooltip will say IntentSrf. Click the left mouse button to select the intent reference. Instead of picking geometry explicitly to reference, you are telling the system to reference the surfaces of the sides created by the extrusion. This is the intent reference.   After editing the definition of the draft feature so that it uses intent references to always reference the side surfaces of the extrusion, we can make changes to the extrusion’s section without problems.   We can also use intent references to redefine the rounds, removing references to explicit geometry, and substituting intent edges at the end of the extrude feature.   The draft and round features no longer reference the individual surfaces and edges of the extrude feature. Instead, the draft uses an intent reference that consists of all side surfaces of the extrude, while the round feature uses an intent reference that consists of all edges at the end of the extrude. Now we can go ahead and delete the square interface and replace it with the hexagonal interface.   With Intent References, we’re able to delete the square interface and replace it with a hexagonal interface without failures occurring.   This time everything has updated properly. The draft is applied to the side surfaces of the extrude, while the rounds are applied to the end profile of the extrude.   The bottom line is whatever we change the profile to, we’ve ensured the draft and rounds will be created properly.   Check out our video tutorial on the PTC University Learning Exchange (“Intent References”) to see this advice in action. We’d also love to hear your suggestions for working with intent references below.   For more in-depth product feature explanations, visit our Tech Tips area.   Have some ideas about what PTC Creo product features you’d like to learn more about? Send me a message or leave a comment below and we’ll write up the best ideas from the community. Thanks for reading, looking forward to all of your feedback!
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We’re happy to announce the first edition of our “Did You Know?” series here on the PTC Creo Community, providing you with informative, “how-to” tips to help our members get the most out of PTC Creo Parametric.   Today we’re sharing three expert tips, provided by our Director of Product Management  Paul Sagar, on creating advanced round geometry inside PTC Creo Parametric:   Putting a Round on 3 Edges – You can control the specific geometry at the transition of 3 edges.  Go to the main dashboard and click on the “Pieces” menu. From here you can hover over each individual piece and the software will highlight the geometry created. You can “include” or “exclude” specific pieces to control the overall geometry. See Image 1 below: Image 1: Rounds on 3 edges   Creating a Blended Transition Between two different rounds – By default, when you select an edge it automatically rounds the tangent chain. By holding shift, you can create a round on just one specific edge. The transition between each edge is automatically blended. See Image 2 below:   Image 2: Blended transition   How to Make a Round Disappear - You can make rounds disappear into a single vertex. Go back to the “Pieces” menu and click on the single piece. This will create a drag handle. By selecting the drag handle and moving it down, you will cause it to automatically snap into the next transition. This allows you the ability to create surface-to-surface rounds, edge-to-surface rounds, or edge-to-edge rounds. See Image 3 below:             Image 3: Rounds disappear   Check out our video tutorial on the PTC University Learning Exchange ("Round Tips") to see these tips in action. We'd also love to hear your tips for creating rounds in PTC Creo Parametric in the comments below.   Have some ideas about what PTC Creo product features you’d like to learn more about? Send me a message or leave a comment and we’ll write up the best ones from the community. Thanks for reading and I look forward to all of your feedback!
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Having issues with family table instances becoming standalone parts.   Unable to play video. Please try again later. (view in My Videos)
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This is my rendering in Pro/ENGINEER   Music by: Iodic - brushes http://www.mp3mania.sk/Iodic--brushes-81696/   (view in My Videos)
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With Creo+, you can get all the benefits of Creo delivered via SaaS and gain access to cloud-based tools to enhance collaboration, improve accessibility, and simplify license management.   The February 2025 Creo+ release includes more than 50 enhancements to improve everyday design productivity. Creo+ is now easier to use, with improvements to area selection, design items and quilt/body trees, spotweld enhancements, and curve-through points. Composites now includes reference laminates for easier manufacturing, and solidification performance is faster and more robust. Model Based Definition (MBD) has been improved to comply with the latest ISO standards, and simulation tools have been updated with the latest Ansys solvers. Finally, start-up performance and license management have been improved. Now more than ever, Creo+ helps you deliver your best designs in less time.    Check out the release notes to learn more about all of the enhancements available in this update.   As always, Creo+ users get early access to features and functionality before they’re available in Creo.   Learn more about Creo+
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