Creo Parametric Tips

Creo Parametric: Multibody Home -- Start Here! I'm creating this blog to be the central home page for anyone interested in trying out the new capabilities first introduced in Creo 7.0 that support multibody design. Below will be links to other blog posts on specific detailed topics under the general heading of multibody. I'm interested in getting your feedback on all the new stuff, but I also want to try to do this in a somewhat organized fashion. So, you can think of this blog as the top node of a tree that will have a number of branches below it for the various multibody related topics. In parallel to the list of blog posts below, I also plan to maintain a Multibody Infos post that provides you with links to further information, documentation, presentations, and any other information bits and pieces around multibody design in Creo. To get going effectively, I encourage you to first go through the What’s new material and tutorials that you find there, so that you have an overview and high level background on the use cases and capabilities. That will allow me then to go one level deeper and include some tips, tricks etc. in the blog posted here. I hope to be able to post new information regularly and hope you tune in, find it beneficial and give feedback in return. If you want to send me private messages, that’s fine, too. In particular if you have any suggestion on future blog post topics or questions, feel free to contact me at mneumueller@ptc.com . Enjoy…Martin Blog posts: Multibody – Intro, Model tree interaction and What’s that default body doing? Multibody- Seven 90sec-Tipps & Tricks around Booleans & Split Multibody - So many ways to trim a body Multibody - Creo 7.0.1 Enhancements Multibody - Windchill 12 & Creo 7.0.1 Multibody –How to display a body parameter in the model tree Multibody – How to display, use or call-out a body parameter – Part 1 Multibody - How to display, use or call-out a body parameter – Part 2 Multibody - Body selection, Body object vs Surface referencing Multibody - How to get rid of a body? - Show/Hide vs Remove Body vs Delete Body Multibody - How to save out a single body to .stl or step? Multibody - How does this all work with reference parts for MoldDesign and NC? Multibody - What are these Construction bodies? and all the details around them…. How to create a body intersection curve and what might it be good for? Multibody - How do I >position< bodies? Multibody - A simple body-based motion envelope cutout example Multibody - Clearance & Creepage Analysis Multibody - Model Tree Auto-locate capability: Update – Creo 7.0 vs Creo 8.0 & Creo 9.0 Multibody - External Copy Geometry (ECG) and body attribute propagation Multibody – A "Geometry Re-use"- Use Case that became possible with new capabilities in Creo 10.0 ..... And more to come…

May 18, 2020

Dec 15, 2021

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

Hello Multibody community! Welcome to a second post on multibody capabilities added in Creo 7.0.1. What I had not yet been fully covering in the last post was how Creo & Windchill interact as it relates to the multibody concept. So, here a summary of Multibody support for Windchill & Visualization General behavior Multibody parts are managed similarly to single body parts, bodies are not exposed Windchill versions prior to Windchill 12 Body designation information is ignored when connected to a Windchill Server version not supporting body designation yet Publishing of multibody parts to Creo View is supported since Creo View 6.1 (including exposure of bodies to Creo View) Windchill 12 & Creo 7.0.1 Support of Body designation, including Transfer of Body designation information from Creo to Windchill for models containing designated bodies WT part creation for designated bodies if BOM Designation is set (.prt, .asm) IBA mapping & propagation for body materials and mass property parameters Note on Windchill configuration: those attributes have to be added to the Body (under Model Items) type definition. They need to be part of the type definition similar as typically being done for the CAD Document type. Here is a quick demo of the above capabilities (view in My Videos) Back to Creo 7.0 Multibody Home: Start Here! Enjoy!....Martin

Sep 22, 2020

Hello all and welcome to another blog post in this multibody blog series. Todays topic: How to “position” a body. You might wonder why I put the word position into quotes. The reason for this is that when we talk about positioning, many of us start thinking of positioning component-like objects. The fact that components have their system of reference (e.g. coordinate system including the origin) makes it natural to understand that positioning transforms that coordinate system from one location and orientation into another. Geometric bodies do represent a volume of geometry referring to the part’s reference system, therefore the positioning of geometric bodies should probably be better called “Moving” geometry. Anyway, after this introductory thought, I hope you enjoy the video illustrating how this is done in Creo. (and you won’t be surprised: we are going to use the “Move”-Feature for this workflow 😊) (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 Multibody community! As I recently have received some questions and suggestions around how to trim a body, let me spend a few minutes today to tackle that topic. #1) How can I trim a body by a datum, surface, quilt etc? I have heard this question several times, as there is no “Trim Body” tool currently in Creo Parametric 7.0. Still, we do have other tools that you can use to trim body geometry. If you want to trim a body by a datum, surface, quilt, this is the “Solidify-Tool” with the “Remove Geometry” option. Here are two examples how that would look like. Two hints if you want to try it: Set the body that you want to trim as default body. This saves you from needing to access the body options panel in the feature Pick the trimming object first to get access to the solidify feature #2) How can I trim a body by another body? This is often useful to perform Boolean operations with a trimmed “modifying body”. Here is an example of that where you might want to trim a “library-type”/”standard-type” grey tool body to only merge its upper half to the yellow plastic part. The most robust flavor of this might involve body split and body remove, but there are actually several more workflow flavors on how to achieve the above with mostly 3 steps. If you are interested in seeing all of different ways to achieve the result, watch a quick 6mins movie of that here: (view in My Videos) Back to Creo 7.0 Multibody Home: Start Here! Enjoy!....Martin

Jun 22, 2020

Hello Multibody community! Welcome to this new post on the multibody capabilities that we introduced with Creo 7.0. Meanwhile, the first maintenance release Creo 7.0.1 had been released and it does contain several refinements/enhancements to the initial set of capabilities. Here a list of those enhancements: Boolean Operations In Creo 7.0, the “Keep bodies” option in Boolean Merge, Subtract and Intersect features was only available during feature creation. Now it is also enabled during feature Edit-Definition workflows Curve feature You can now select a body (in addition to the previously available object types Quilt and Surface) when checking the “Place curve on surface” option. Data Exchange The “Import multiple bodies into one part” option is now available in File/Open (Unite) and ATB-enabled Import workflows Improved Body Handling Improved body handling when a feature-owned body (e.g. a body created by split-body, import or data sharing features) gets deleted from the model Data Sharing and Reference Pattern robustness enhancements for specific multibody situations Aligned Material reporting The mass properties report uses the parameter PTC_REPORTED_MATERIAL in all places where material is reported. New configuration option for multi-material parts: ptc_reported_material_mp_report Windchill support for designated bodies If you are interested in seeing demos of the above capabilities 1)-6), take 15mins to watch me walking through them. Beyond the new capabilities you might also find some of the multibody concept related background information useful. (view in My Videos) Note that I plan a dedicated video showing the Multibody related Windchill interaction for my next post. Back to Creo 7.0 Multibody Home: Start Here! Enjoy!....Martin

Sep 7, 2020

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

Welcome to another multibody blog video in which I want to shed some light on body selection and when to reference body surfaces versus bodies as objects. The video covers: Body Selection Model tree Selection filter Query-Select & Pick from list Select quilt or body Select from parents Autolocate & Selection Priority in Creo 7.0 & Creo 8.0 Design Items tree Surface Selections RMB: surfaces of all bodies RMB: body surfaces Surface collection – Details dialog Geometry Search Differences Copy-Geom Pattern FMX Move (view in My Videos) Thanks for reading. I hope it was informative. Back to Creo 7.0 & 8.0 Multibody Home: Start Here! Enjoy!....Martin

Jul 26, 2021

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

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

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

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

Multibody – Clearance & Creepage Analysis, Hello all and welcome to another blog post in the multibody series. In today’s topic I would like to make you aware of the multibody setup possibilities for clearance and creepage analysis. With the introduction of bodies in Creo Parametric 7.0, we also introduced support of the COMPARATIVE_TRACKING_INDEX parameter for bodies. If you add it to individual bodies of a part, you can define and control the conductivity definition separately for different bodies within a part. The attached video shows an example on a fuse part by defining conductive ends as body with a different CTI value. Once the body level parameter values are defined, you can see the conductive highlighting including the metallic ends of the fuse and excluding the red inner body. (view in My Videos) Thanks for reading & watching. 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

Jan 19, 2022

Dec 25, 2021

Dec 7, 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

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

(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

Welcome to Creo Coffee with a CAD Expert Series Registration link : https://www.ptc.com/en/technologies/cad/coffee-with-an-expert Main Presenters: Nicole Casalini (Application Expert) ,Gabriel Valls (Application Expert) and Guille Pezet(Application Expert) when : EVERY THURSDAY 11am CET / 10am BST Below you will find all the topicd and date for the webcast Date Topic Aug 19th Basics of Creo Modelling Aug 26th Manufacturing with Creo Sept 2nd Introduction to PLM Sept 9th Mathcad Sept 16th CAD for AR Sept 23rd What’s New in Creo 8 Sept 30th Ansys Partnership (Simulation)

Sep 17, 2021

Creo Parametric Tips

Creo Parametric: Multibody Home -- Start Here!

How to change the default template for parts, assemblies and drawings in Creo Parametric

PTC Creo Community Spotlight: Stephen Williams

05 - Multibody - Windchill 12 & Creo 7.0.1

Multibody – How do I >position< bodies?

03 - Multibody – Many ways to trim a body

04 - Multibody – Creo 7.0.1 enhancements

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

09 Multibody – Body selection, Body object vs Surface referencing

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

13. Multibody – What are these Construction bodies?

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

Did You Know? A Quicker Way to Work with Features

Multibody – Clearance & Creepage Analysis

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 get overall size X, Y, and Z coordinates of the model using ModelCHECK in Creo Parametric

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

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

Multibody - How to get rid of a body

Coffee with a CAD Expert Series

Creo Tips and Techniques Webcast Series (West)

Creo Tips & Techniques Webcast Series (East)