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I was wondering whether the Creo Advanced Frameworks extension was available to FRC teams. I was recently discussing CAD software with some people who mentioned that, for something like FRC, the Frameworks extension was probably the way to go and one of the major advantages they saw to using Creo as opposed to another program. I haven't seen anything on that before (having really only limeted my use of Creo to the Parametric app and a little bit of simulation), and to be honest I had no idea that there were extensions for stuff like that for Creo. It makes me wonder a bit whether there's been anything else I'm missing that would speed up our process!
Anyways, just looking for whether anyone knows if the Frameworks extension is available to FRC teams, and if so, how to access it.
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Adv. Framework Ext is not part of the student offering at this time. This is a tool the University students are using in the SAE program to generate custom race car frames, but I don’t see much applicability at the FRC level.
Adv. Framework Ext is not part of the student offering at this time. This is a tool the University students are using in the SAE program to generate custom race car frames, but I don’t see much applicability at the FRC level.
Okay. The guys I was talking to were saying it could be used to sketch and generate frames using a predetermined library of parts, which sounded to me like it could reduce the amount of time it takes to CAD a full frame significantly. If you guys don't think it would be useful to us, I'll defer to your judgement; I haven't even seen what it actually offers other than that it has a "10:1 productivity gain over standard CAD techniques for frame design," which sounded very useful to me. Thank you for answering!
Nicholas,
My main concern with providing EFX to FIRST teams would be their ability to learn how to use it and make it an effective part of their design process. We have customers creating steel strucutres in CAD and these are the primary use cases for EFX. Yes, there is some c-channel design in FIRST, but it's just not extensive enough to warrant the use of EFX. EFX is a highly specialized CAD solution and I don't think its the right fit for FIRST.
If you'd like to learn more about it, search for EFX on YouTube and you'll find a number of good videos showing how EFX automates the end connections, corner connections, plate attachments, hardware, etc. Again, its really a great product, but not the right fit for FIRST.
I think you could create a much more effective design by applying some top down design strategies and parametric relationships between your frame components.
-Scott
Scott,
Thank you for responding! Having looked up a few tutorials, I can see where your concerns about teams being able to use EFX effectively come from! Just from watching a couple of tutorials, I could see the complexity and power of the extension. That being said, I also saw that it looked like you could make structures using rectangular/square tube stock, which is in my experience a much more common and effective material in FRC. I'm still not entirely sure I agree with your assessment, but then again, I've never used it or even seen it live, and in any case, I'm not really in much of a position to argue! So I'll again defer to your judgement. It really does look like a great product and I hope I get a chance to use it someday!