I have produced some sheet metal enclosures which will have silk screen printing added to identify connectors.
Is there a way I can add text and line art within Creo that will be rendered?
The only way I can think of doing is is having a seperate sketch with the text and line art, and then extrude it by an infinately small amount. Is there a "proper" way of doing it? In fact, scratch that, I just realised you cannot extrude text from a simple flat surface. 
So back to my initial question! 
Also, is there a way of inserting a variable in text that I can then pattern and have the variable increment in the pattern. Like "Input 1", "Input 2", etc, or do I have to manually do each one? <== I think I can forget about something like that for the moment!
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Here's an example of what you could get with Keyshot. I've croped the image for confidentiality reason.
The only constraint to do this is to be able to generate a png of the silkscreening you want. For us it's easy because we also do silkscreening.
Concerning the cost, I think it's less expensive than the creo extension. And, regarding to the quality of the renderings, you can sell those to your customers. This is what we do, and now, some customers even use them on their websites !!
Same as what Matt said
I guess I'm doing something wrong as I cannot extrude my current text in a sketch. Is it a font limitation? Once you've added the SWISS 721 font, can you simply extrude the text geometry with the extrude function? Is it the fact it's a closed loop font that allows you to do it? Do you need to do anything on top to "create" the closed loop aspect? As you can tell, I'm still very new to Creo and often struggle with its crazy logic and user-unfriendliness.
I like the idea about having it as a separate part and then add it on top at the assembly stage. Neat trick!
Yes, it has to be a closed loop font. The 3D_font is the default that works well. If the center of the text highlights as a closed boundary, it can be extruded as a solid.
Some fonts are not very good and will fail to recognize itself as a closed loop. You have to play with it, but it works fine. Remember not to have other geometry curves in the sketch that are not closed. You might be getting unrelated errors.
Creo out of the box doesn't do well with very thin extrusion on large panels (larger extent models) so you have to set the default accuracy and rather than using the default relative accuracy, you may need to use absolute accuracy. I always have allowing absolute accuracy enabled in config.pro. The fact that this requires a specific setting is beyond my comprehension.
Ahh I see why I couldn't extrude before: I was adding text on an existing surface but on its own. If I sketch a rectangle on the surface and then add the text inside, it works, but gives me the opposite of what I want: everything apart from the text is extruded. How do I "inverse" that?
Thanks Raphaël, it does look good. Funnily enough, I'm also working on an audio power amplifier to which I want to add line printing just like you have I can easily add a PNG of the text on top, so that might be an easier option given how much I'm struggling to get what I want directly in Creo. I'll play with the demo version.
When I try to extrude it, I get a warning message: "The selected geometry can not be used by this tool. Please select new references."
Doing a simple rectangle seems to work 
Model attached.
Bill, the only problems I have with surfaces is that they do not do well for hidden line removal. they become obnoxious
