Creo Parametric Tips

Multibody - Model Tree Auto-locate Capability Update – Creo 7.0 vs Creo 8.0 & Creo 9.0 Hello all, As I got a few comments & questions from time-to-time about the auto-locate functionality and its behavior, I wanted to shed some light on Auto-locate configurations and related changes between Creo 7.0, 8.0 and 9.0. What is auto-locate? Auto-locate is the capability to automatically find, show and highlight selected items in the tree. When you select geometry in the graphics, auto-locate will find the feature that created that geometry, expand nested tree hierarchy levels where required, and scroll the tree so you can see the tree node of that feature. When auto-locate was introduced, features were shown only once (e.g there was single node in the model tree representing the feature) and so there was no ambiguity as to which tree node instance of the feature to actually auto-locate to. #1) Creo 7.0: With the introduction of Multi-body in Creo 7.0, we introduced the Design Items folder that optionally allowed to list the bodies in the model along with their contributing features. This led to additional feature nodes showing up in the tree. ( Note: The display can be configured within the model tree filter settings) For Creo 7.0, the following options were available to control the body and body features display: Note that the option “Auto locate features in body sub-nodes” allowed to control whether a feature node should be located in the feature tree as it worked in the past or whether it should be auto-located underneath the body that it contributes geometry to (e.g. locating the feature node within the contributing features list of/underneath a body) #2) In Creo 8.0 we added more options, added the display of quilts and their contributing features in the Design Items Folder, and moved the auto-location option to a new place. It now resides together with all the other auto-locate and highlighting related tree options. To control the auto-locate behavior, you now need to go to the “Selection Priority” setting under the tree options and set it to “Feature List” or “Design Items”. As you can see in the screen shot, the round surface selection in the graphics triggers an auto-location to the feature node in the regular feature tree list and not within the Design Items as the setting is set to "Feature List". But there is additional flexibility: In a configuration where both trees are shown, you can now actually achieve a simultaneous auto-locate in the feature tree and Design Items tree side-by-side. #3) In Creo 9.0 (Beta) you will find the Selection Priority in that same place underneath the Tree Options within the tree's new toolbar. In addition you will find some additional auto location related enhancements once this version releases to the public. I hope that helps you to customize the tree display and the auto-locate behavior to your personal preferences and needs. Back to Creo 7.0/8.0++ Multibody Home: Start Here!

Mar 28, 2022

Well-known community member, Stephen, tells us he has two interests: Creo - and saltwater fishing with his wife in the bays along the Texas coast for red drum, black drum, flounder, and sea trout. Below, a good day with a 30-pound black drum he released. Stephen is Texas born and raised, spending most childhood summers on his grandfather’s hard-working farm. He’s been involved in Pro/Engineer-Creo community since the mid to late 90’s, well before PTC had an integrated community. He says: “I enjoy helping other users learn how to use Creo but mostly I like learning things about the software I didn’t know. There is likely not a week that goes by that I don’t learn something on the Community that I can put to use. I absolutely know that without the community, I wouldn’t be as good of a Creo user.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! Right now, Stephen makes parts/assemblies and drawings although he said that he used to do a lot with Creo’s routed systems and sheet metal capabilities. He and his team directly support manufacturing and customer integration for everything his employer builds. He kindly shared with us a photo of a project on which he works. Here’s how he describes the photo below: "The yellow part is a Subsea Blowout Preventor that is shipping out from our manufacturing facility here in Houston. This is ½ of the product we manufacture here in Houston. This part is about 750,000 pounds of steel. The other ½ is another 500,000 pounds and is not pictured. It ships separately but are used together for offshore drilling as passive safety devices. It took 3 days for this trailer to get from our manufacturing facility to our port facility near Baytown TX (about 50 miles)." Thanks to Stephen for his contributions to the Community. Better together is what it's about.

Feb 16, 2022

Dec 25, 2021

Nov 3, 2021

Hello all and welcome to another blog post in the multibody series. Today’s topic represents an add-on to the previous post : How to “position” a body. The workflow example in the below video explains in more detail how you can leverage these (previously discussed) positioning operations to create a design like this very easily. he intent here is to drive the cutout of the blue body parametrically based on the defined range of angular movement of the yellow pin. The workflow example makes use of the Flexible Modeling Move feature to create something like a “simplified motion envelope” driving the cutout opening in the blue body. (view in My Videos) Thanks for reading. I hope it was informative. If you liked it, give it a Kudo. Back to Creo 7.0 & 8.0+ Multibody Home: Start Here! Enjoy!....Martin

Oct 12, 2021

Hello all and welcome to another blog post in this multibody blog series. Todays topic: Construction bodies! Construction body are a pretty unique, powerful concept in Creo’s multibody implementation. As such it is really important to know about them and to understand how to use them. So, what are construction bodies? Construction bodies are bodies that are used for the design of your model, but do not contribute to the final geometry or mass. That means that similar on how you used quilts in the past to create additional geometry helping with the construction of your design, you can now do the very same with solid geometry. The construction attribute of these bodies will then help you to differentiate that geometry and automatically exclude it. Excluding them from mass properties is just one out of more than a dozen workflows where they are treated special. You will find more details in the video. (view in My Videos) Thanks for reading. I hope it was informative. If you liked it, give it a Kudo. Back to Creo 7.0 & 8.0+ Multibody Home: Start Here! Enjoy!....Martin

Oct 12, 2021

Some Creo modules or applications such as NC or mold design modules do not yet fully support multibody models (as of Creo 7.0/8.0). Watch the below video to understand what you can do in these cases and how you can get to the required reference models for these downstream applications. Thanks for reading and many thanks to my colleague Beat Fretz who provided this example model (view in My Videos) to me. I hope it was informative. If you liked it, give it a Kudo. Back to Creo 7.0 & 8.0+ Multibody Home: Start Here! Enjoy!....Martin

Oct 12, 2021

Hello everyone and welcome to another blog post in this multibody blog series. This is a mini-post based on a question that I received: “If I have a designed a multibody model, how can I save out a single body to STEP , .STL or any other format?” The answer is pretty straightforward and involves either the remove-body feature (see blog post #10) or construction bodies (see blog post #13) or derived models (see blog post #12 and later). Method #1: Remove all other bodies using the remove-body feature Export(“Save A Copy”) the model to your desired format Undo the remove / delete the remove-body feature / suppress the remove-body feature Method #2: Set all other bodies to “Construction body” Invoke Export(“Save A Copy”) the model to your desired format Open the “Options”-menu in the “Save A Copy” dialog and ensure the Construction Body checkbox is unchecked Finishing the operation will then only save the remaining (non-construction) body The problem here might be that you need to remember which bodies to unset as construction afterwards if applicable Method #3: Create a derived model that only contains the body to be saved The easiest way to do this would be to select the body and then invoke “Create part from body” from the right mouse button menu. This creates a new part only containing the selected body allowing you to export it on its own Or Create new part and bring the desired body into the new part manually by using the “External Copy Geometry” feature (view in My Videos) Thanks for reading. I hope it was informative. If you liked it, give it a Kudo. Back to Creo 7.0 & 8.0+ Multibody Home: Start Here! Enjoy!....Martin

Oct 11, 2021

(Remove a body versus hide a body vs delete body vs deleting/suppressing contributing features) Hello everyone and welcome to another blog post in this Creo multibody blog series. Today’s topic: Various way to “get rid of” a body and their differences Let’s have a look at various concepts that you might want to apply depending on what you want to achieve. Creo offers the following: Hide/Show a body As with other objects you can use show/hide commands to control the visibility of bodies. This is just changing the visual appearance toggling the display for a selected body and does neither remove the body object from the model, nor its geometry or mass “Consume a body” in Boolean features Boolean features have a Keep body option, to control whether the tool bodies should be consumed in the operation or whether a copy of their geometry should be used for the Boolean operation. Consumed bodies are shown in the body folder depending on the tree filter settings. “Remove body” feature This allows you to create a feature to consume a body. The body cannot be used further, and its geometry is removed. Note that the features are not removed or deleted but the geometry created by those features will not show anymore. Remove body is a feature so you can suppress or delete it or roll-back the model to before the Remove-Body feature to get the body back. Would suppressing contributing features also work to get rid of a body? This could potentially work in very simple examples for cases where these contributing features have no dependent children features and none of the contributing features contribute to or impact other bodies as well. In contrast to that, the remove-body feature leaves the other design features intact and just removes the body at time of its regeneration. Note that the body is still active and used in regeneration states before the remove-body feature. Good examples that illustrate the benefits and need for a remove body features (where suppressing features wouldn’t help or not be possible are: a situation where you bring several bodies A,B and C into a part via a single import feature or copy-geometry, or merge/inheritance feature and you want to only remove body B. a situation where you mirror a part design having bodies A,B and C to get A’, B’ and C’ and you just want to get rid of B’ Delete a body The delete body command completely deletes the body from the model for situations where you want to entirely get rid of the body object, free up its name in the name space and entirely remove it from the internal model entity data base. This is possible for two workflows: Delete new empty body Delete a body that doesn’t have any contributing features anymore (view in My Videos) Thanks for reading. I hope it was informative. If you liked it, give it a Kudo. Back to Creo 7.0 & 8.0 Multibody Home: Start Here! Enjoy!....Martin

Oct 11, 2021

Oct 8, 2021

The best advice for anyone that has trouble in Sketcher is to keep the sketch simple. Do not try and make a single sketch that encompasses the entire model shape with all cuts and rounded or chamfered edges. Rather, create multiple sketches that are simple, with fewer entities. Fewer entities are easier to control when you start making design changes. Take this muffler model, for example: The first solid geometry for this model started as this: Followed by this: Then this: Simple sketches of few entities were created, and the solid geometry started to take shape. The sketches should consist of small bites of geometry, not the whole shape at once. For more on Sketching and other topics, check out PTC University's Creo: Fundamentals and Productivity Tools!

Nov 19, 2020

Hello everyone and welcome to blog post #7 in this multibody blog series. This post also attempts to answer another body parameter related question: How can I display, use or call-out a body parameter? If you want to call out a body parameter then you have to use the syntax as explained in the Creo help here. &<param_name>:BID_<body_feature_ID> Or &<param_name>:BID_<body_userdefined_name> Note: For bodies that have the default name (body 1, body 2, etc) you cannot use the system-defined default body name but you have to use the body’s Feature ID. (The reason is that the system-defined names such as body 1, body 2, etc are localized and translated into other languages and therefore not representing stable references across languages.) Example: Let’s assume we have 2 bodies. Here their names and parameters list. To call out the parameter “MY_BODY_INFO” for both bodies, we can now use the following for body 1 &MY_BODY_INFO:BID_-5778 And one of the following options for the WHEEL body (which has id 6105) &MY_BODY_INFO:BID_6105 &MY_BODY_INFO:BID_WHEEL So if you create a note and enter: You will see the resulting note text being: I think we have a preference of using body names. Therefore the system automatically tries to convert the body IDs to body names where possible. So when you go back to the call-out symbol definition, you will see it being changed to Thanks for reading. I hope it was informative. Back to Creo 7.0 Multibody Home: Start Here! Enjoy!....Martin

Oct 14, 2020

May 29, 2020

Blog Post 01 - I wrote a blog post about the topic of Multibody – Intro, Model tree interaction and What’s that default body doing? I figured it made sense to provide a more thorough explanation that would attempt to answer all the questions likely to come up. Check it out and if you have any additional questions/comments, add them under the blog post itself. Thanks! Martin (view in My Videos) Back to Creo 7.0 Multibody Home: Start Here!

May 18, 2020

Multibody Info – Collection Creo 7.0 - What’s new: Multibody Design Creo 7.0 – Multibody Tutorials (7 tutorials around multibody use cases including demo models, step by step instructions, videos and more etc) Creo Multi-Body @ Creo 7.0 PTC Virtual Conference – Includes a Multibody Use Cases & Benefits overview presentation Liveworx 2020 presentation Creo 7.0 Product Update Multibody Design - recording Liveworx 2020 presentation Creo 7.0 Product Update Multibody Design - slides Liveworx 2020 presentation Creo 7.0 Multibody Design - youtube CAD Conference October 2021 - Multibody Tipps & Tricks / Adoption / What to watch out for (replay) More to come Back to the main blog Creo 7.0/8.0+ Multibody Home: Start Here!

May 18, 2020

We're offering a series of quick Creo tutorials presented by our expert product managers. Each of these tutorials are just a few minutes long. These bite-sized tips are a perfect opportunity to learn a new skill or ensure you're following best practices. Below you’ll find about 15 minutes of video how-tos to help you boost your CAD know-how. Let's get started. Shrinkwrap All Quilts When you create a Shrinkwrap feature, by default, Creo automatically analyzes all components in the assembly and determines which ones will be included in the shrinkwrap. This could result in subassembly quilts being excluded. However, you can use the Search Tool to help find and select all quilts in the assembly. In this tutorial, Arnaud van de Veerdonk, Creo Product Manager, shows you how to use shrinkwrap to copy all quilts from all models in an assembly. Watch the tutorial now: Work with Custom Manikin Postures You can test designs for ergonomic compatibility and other human-centric requirements using a Creo Manikin. If you can't find a manikin that fits your design scenario, you can create a custom posture for your manikin. Then, you can save the posture, use it for an analysis or apply it to any other manikin later. In this tutorial, Arnaud van de Veerdonk explains how to create, store, and apply custom manikin postures. Here's how to do it: CNC Drilling on Imported Geometry Simplify your work creating hole-making sequences over imported geometry with tips from Creo Product Manager, Jose Coronado. In this tutorial you'll see how to easily create CNC drilling sequences by: Creating drill holes on imported geometry (no axes needed). Using the Auto Depth option so you don't need to manually select the end of each set of holes. Watch the tutorial: For more tips from our experts, watch the Tips from the Creo Masters main page.

Apr 30, 2020

A not-quite-right user interface can be a real nuisance day after day. But, an interface that’s just right for Sally might be all wrong for Tomas. Achieving true “one-size-fits-all” status is probably impossible. That’s why the Creo Parametric model tree is customizable. After all, your software is kind of like that Journey song … you know … “Any way you want it, that’s the way you need it. Any way you want it.” Here are some tips for getting the model tree just how you want it. Pick Your Columns and Column Widths. Do you need to see more parameters in the model tree? Or, do you need to minimize columns and expand the graphics area, so you have more room to work? No problem. Here’s how to do it. At the top of the model tree, click Settings and select Tree Columns. Add/remove displayed columns. Customize the width of the model tree, as well as the width of the other columns, using the dialog window (shown below) or by dragging the column separators in the model tree after you click Apply to add any new columns. You’ll notice the model tree itself is defined as a column that can’t be removed from the list of displayed columns (see below). And you can set its width in the same way you set the width of individual columns. Additionally, you can quickly switch between showing and hiding the additional columns. Hiding columns can be useful when you want to shrink the size of left pane and maximize the graphics area. Set Display Filters Of course, some standard features, suppressed objects, and annotations appear in the model tree by default. However, did you know you can customize these model tree display filters for part and assembly modes? Here’s how: At the top of the model tree, click Settings and select Tree Filters. Use the dialog window to select features to display in the model tree. Saving Your Model Tree Customizations Model tree column settings, including column width, and model tree display filters are automatically stored, by mode, in the creo_parametric_customization.ui file. These settings load automatically when you open a new Creo Parametric session. Model tree settings can be imported and exported in user customization file types (*.ui). Want to see more? Watch the video below You don’t need to worry about messing up your current settings when you make changes to the model tree. You’ll notice several places where you can reset default settings when needed. You can even apply the reset to the current mode or all modes.

Jan 27, 2020

Do you create or modify features in Creo? Now you can speed up your work by taking advantage of feature mini toolbars and dimension toolbars, available in Creo 6.0 and later. You'll find these toolbars for features frequently used with part and sheet metal design. Here's everything you need to know to use them. To Open Feature Mini Toolbar in Creo To reach a feature mini toolbar, simply click in the graphics area of your Creo screen. A mini toolbar appears providing you with quick access to relevant options for your feature. Right-click in the graphics area to open the mini toolbar AND a shortcut menu. Image: Feature mini toolbar and shortcut menu Note that in addition to the feature mini toolbar, there are also dimension toolbars that allow you to access some commands/options that were previously available only via the shortcut menu for the dimension. Bonus: Tabs That Reveal More If you’re in a newer version of Creo, you’ll see that tabs have a new look. In Creo 6 and later, when you open a tab, a short description (plus a link to a Help page) appears directly in the UI. Image: When the Hole tab is active, a short description appears in ribbon area. Watch the Demo You can see these tips and more demonstrated in the video below. Why Wait to Upgrade? Each release of Creo includes dozens of convenient features like these that make your work faster and more intuitive than ever. Learn more about what's in the latest versions of Creo today!

Jan 8, 2020

Creo Parametric Tips

Multibody - Model Tree Auto-locate Capability Update – Creo 7.0 vs Creo 8.0, Creo 9.0

PTC Creo Community Spotlight: Stephen Williams

How to control dimension decimal places through configuration options in Creo Parametric ?

How to set decimal precision for all the existing dimensions in the model using the Find Tool

How to set number of decimal places for one or more dimension of a solid model in Creo Parametric ?

Trajpar - for beginners and advanced users

Multibody – FMX-Move: A simple body-based motion envelope cutout example

13. Multibody – What are these Construction bodies?

Multibody -12 How does this all work with reference parts for MoldDesign and NC?

Multibody - How to save out a single body to .stp, .stl?

Multibody - How to get rid of a body

How to define custom CSYS for the imported model

Tip for Sketching

07 - Multibody – How to display, use or call-out a body parameter – Part 1

02 - Multibody – 7x 90seconds Tipps & Tricks around Booleans & Split

01- Multibody – Intro, Model tree interaction and What’s that default body doing?

Multibody Info – Collection

Shrinkwrap All Quilts, Custom Manikin Postures, CNC Drilling: Tips from the Masters

Did You Know? Customize the Model Tree for Maximum Usability

Did You Know? A Quicker Way to Work with Features

Creo Tips and Techniques Webcast Series (West)

Creo Tips & Techniques Webcast Series (East)