Design boost for engineers

PTC has launched the ninth version of its Creo computer-aided design (CAD) software with the promise of helping engineers deliver their best produce designs in less time.

Creo 9 include core enhancements and advanced features that encourage innovation with emerging features, such as generative design, real-time simulation and additive manufacturing. Brian Thompson at PTC said: “Creo 9 is an important release, and our customers’ feedback played a big part in making that happen. We made core improvements like the divide surface capability and stronger design intent management to benefit our users, whilst also focusing on advanced technologies that transform product design – including simulation, generative design, and additive manufacturing. Finally, to better support our users, we’ve strengthened Creo’s ergonomics capabilities. All these enhancements are about helping engineers get their best designs to market more quickly.”

The new version brings engineers updates to usability and productivity. Investments across the core modeling environment focus on usability and productivity, including updates to the model tree to make it faster to structure, document, and understand design intent, and a new function for dividing surfaces to improve analysis and product definition.

More powerful simulation and generative design capabilities have been added. Advanced multi-physics from Ansys have been integrated into the Creo simulation portfolio. PTC’s generative design technology also adds important new capabilities empowering engineers to define optimisation studies with designed-in safety factors and natural frequency limits.

Model-based definition (MBD) and detailing improvements have been made. Continued investment in model-based product design, especially in surface finishing and welds, means that users can include specialised downstream manufacturing information right on the model, for better efficiency and communication.

Ergonomic design and vision updates have also been added. Expanded ergonomic tools help designers recognise the uniqueness of users while helping ensure products comply with health safety, and workplace standards. Using the new Vision Field Analysis capability, engineers can analyse users’ line of sight and field of view when driving or using equipment.

Finally, advances in additive and subtractive manufacturing are enabled. Creo 9 delivers improved control over stochastic and formula-based lattices and user-defined support structures for advanced additive manufacturing use cases. Continued improvements to subtractive manufacturing focus on five-axis finishing toolpaths, turning, mould design, and adaptive feed rates for milling.