The dynamic duo, Bonnie and Clyde, the perfect pair: Formlabs 3D printers and PTC Creo. Combining these two technology leaders advance businesses to their full potential. When you combine Formlabs 3D printers with PTC Creo, you get an unbeatable combination for creating designs, prototypes and final products.

What is PTC Creo?

PTC Creo is a cutting-edge CAD software with an intuitive user interface that makes it easy to design and optimize your 3D models.

With PTC Creo, you can create high-quality 3D models with powerful features for analysis, visualization, and manufacturing. You can also import existing data from other applications or use the built-in tools to convert 2D drawings into 3D models.

This 3D CAD software solution also has options for live simulation tests to minimize prototyping. You can make sure the parts you are printing have been tested for durability before they even reach the physical world.

What are Formlabs 3D Printers?

Outside of the outcome being a cool physical representation of your design, 3D printing is a fast and cost-effective way to prototype your product.

Formlabs printers use stereolithography technology (SLA) to produce high-quality parts with smooth surfaces, sharp details and no visible layers or seams – all while being fast enough for production-level throughputs. And because they’re so precise, they’re ideal for creating prototypes that look just like what customers expect from final products!

By using 3D printing, you can create prototypes that look like the final product and test them before mass production. This allows you to make changes based on user feedback before investing in tooling for manufacturing. This hardware can save you time and money on low-waste prototypes and production and improve product quality.

Combining Formlabs 3D Printing with PTC Creo

Using Formlabs 3D Printers with PTC Creo

Using Formlabs 3D printers have many benefits. It’s an inexpensive and quick way to produce prototypes, which can be used to test or validate your design before investing in expensive tooling.

Some benefits that you will see form Formlabs printers:

You can also use 3D printed parts as production-quality end products to save time and money on manufacturing while maintaining quality control throughout the process.

If you’re already using PTC Creo for your CAD/CAM needs, then combining it with Formlabs 3D printers is a smart move because they both offer powerful toolsets that have easy collaboration.

EAC has partnered with Formlabs since 2016 and we now have almost 50 customers using both Creo software and Formlabs printers.

So if you use either of those products today (or plan on doing so soon), this article will show how easy it is for them to work together!

All-in-one in house design and printing creates a smooth-running production process that will save your business money.

Here are some of the benefits of using Formlabs 3D printers with PTC Creo:

1. Faster Prototyping

When combined with PTC Creo, 3D printing with Formlabs printers is fast and efficient – you can quickly iterate on designs and convert your files to create high-quality prototypes. This means you can get your product to market faster and stay ahead of the competition.

Formlabs printers are faster print times with no visible layering and fewer supports needed to clean off.

Also, Converting PTC Creo files to files that are readable on Formlabs printers takes a few minutes on a free Formlabs converter called Freeform. It’s easy to upload a Creo design file into Freeform to convert it to an STL file and then send it directly to your Formlabs printer. Your prints will be ready to go in no time.

2. Improved Design Accuracy and Customization

Formlabs 3D printers offer high resolution and accurate prints, which means you can create prototypes that look and feel like the final product. This allows you to test your designs more accurately and make changes before committing to manufacturing.

Customization and small-scale production runs, which are great for creating unique products or limited edition runs, are made possible with Formlabs 3D Printers. PTC Creo can help you design and optimize these products to meet your exact specifications with the versatility of tools that it provides.

3. Cost Savings

By using Formlabs 3D printing for prototyping, you can save money on tooling and manufacturing costs. This is especially true with Formlabs printers, which offer high-quality prints at a lower cost than traditional manufacturing methods.

While there are some printers that have direct integrations from PTC Creo, you could be spending $50k-$80k more on printers. Converting PTC Creo files to files that are readable on Formlabs printers takes a few minutes and costs you nothing.

4. Increased Productivity

By combining PTC Creo and Formlabs 3D printers, you can work more efficiently and get more done in less time. PTC Creo’s powerful design tools and Formlabs’ fast printing speeds allow you to create high-quality prototypes and final products quickly and easily.

Conclusion

Taking advantage of the power of PTC Creo 3D CAD software for product design and creation and advanced Formlabs 3D printers for physical production, you get an unbeatable combination for creating prototypes and final products.

In conclusion, combining Formlabs 3D printers with PTC Creo offers numerous benefits that can help you create high-quality prototypes and final products faster, more accurately, and at a lower cost. So, if you’re looking to innovate your product design process, consider using Formlabs printers with PTC Creo.

Reach out to one of our experts to find out which solution would benefit your production process.

Remember in 1977 when Ken Olson, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation said, “there is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home”? Boy was he wrong. Not even a leader in the technology industry could predict how quickly our usage of technology would change.

If you don’t make an effort to keep up with the fast pace of technology; you will fall behind. It’s critical that you proactively embrace and move towards digital processes to ensure that future products better meet the needs of customers.  

What better way to keep up with the future than making highly accurate product performance and behavior predictions with the right design tools? 

PTC developed a Creo extension called Creo Product Insight. It lets designers and engineers incorporate the latest sensor technology into their designs.

What is Creo Product Insight?

Creo Product Insight captures and analyzes product data from live sensors on prototypes and products directly within your CAD model. This tool produces a digital twin, an exact replica of a physical prototype in a virtual CAD model, to mirror the performance of a product under real-world conditions.  

How does it work? You add digital sensors from a library directly into your CAD models in Creo. Then you connect them to the data streams from physical products. Whether you’re looking to get more value out of your prototypes, design smart connected products, or use data to improve the quality of existing products, the Creo Product Insight Extension allows you to design smarter. 

So how are organizations keeping up with the digital transformation with the Creo Product Insight Extension?

Improving New Product Design

When you’re improving new product design you’re most likely basing your design decision on assumptions and historical data. This puts you in a difficult spot because you may not have up-to-date-information which may cause inaccurate solutions and error-prone results. 

Creo Product Insight allows you to validate design assumptions using real-world data from the field directly in Creo’s simulation and analysis tools. Using this extension also decreases your reliance on building prototypes because it gives you live product performance and behavior. 

Improving Existing and Next-Generation Product Designs 

The absence of real-world product data stunts the optimization of current and future products. If you had access to real-world data, you would be able to validate design criteria against customer usage data and mitigate risk of product failure, warranty, repair, and liability. 

With Creo Product Insight and ThingWorx you can analyze field data and provide meaningful information back to engineering. Using real-world data allows you to identify opportunities for new products in the market and understand over and under engineered designs to reduce product life cycle costs. 

Improving Smart Connected Product Design 

The lack of specialized tools that support smart connected products puts you at risk of falling behind the digital transformation process. When sensors and a strategy to capture real-live data are disconnected from your design process there is no way to deliver the value that your customers deserve out of their products.  

Creo Product Insight gives you the ability to optimize sensor replacements, choose a sensor type, and validate data capture requirement during the design process. The extension creates an integrated design process that delivers optimal value from smart connected products.  

Creo Product Insight Capabilities and Benefits

Capabilities:

Benefits

Creo Product Insight Licensing and Creo Version Capabilities

The Creo Product Insight is an add-on extension that is available for subscription licensing only. You do not need ThingWorx to use this extension – although using ThingWorx with it will fully optimize your results.

“Physical” Sensors – Creo 4 (M020):

UX Sensors – Creo 4 (M030 & M040):

“Virtual” Sensors – Creo 4 (M050):

Get live data from CAD models

Download the Creo Product Insight datasheet or watch this webinar replay to learn more and see if your organization could benefit from collecting live data directly within your CAD models. I’m willing to bet it can.