We are so excited about being featured in a premier manufacturing publication! This article focuses on the multitude of ways that EAC helps companies take advantage of manufacturing and engineering data and turn it into growth for the company. We cover all things Digital Thread – from data management and Additive Manufacturing to Augmented Reality and AI in manufacturing.

For all Windchill users, maintaining your Windchill system isn’t just about avoiding headaches—it’s about ensuring your workdays flow as smoothly as your designs. Here’s a roadmap to a healthy Windchill environment, based on vital actions you can take today.

1. A Quick Health Check-Up of Your System

Imagine your Windchill system as a hardworking heart in your organization. To keep it beating strong, regularly peek into:

As a site admin, keeping an eye on these metrics is key to preemptive maintenance.

2. Dive into Server Logs

If you’re up for a bit of investigative work, scan through your server logs. This may include:

Understanding these logs is like reading the tea leaves for your system’s health.

3. Disk Space & Back-Up

Aim to keep at least 15% of your server drive-free. Think of it as keeping your workspace tidy for efficiency. And, don’t forget to monitor the storage available for backups – your safety net needs to be ready at all times.

4. Matching Users with Licenses

Are you aware of how many people access Windchill and if you have the licenses to cover them? Regularly review the following to avoid legal trouble with software manufacturers:

Aligning your user count with your license agreement is a fundamental compliance matter.

5. Clean Up Log Files

Low disk space can lead to performance issues. If your log files are growing:

Old log files can often be archived or deleted to free up space.

6. Clean Up Unreferenced Files

Lastly, clean up the unreferenced files in your file vaults. This process removes orphan files that consume valuable space. Refer to Windchill Help for detailed instructions, but remember:

BEWARE! Once these files are deleted, they’re gone forever.

Adopting these six steps in your regular Windchill system check-up can drastically improve your system’s health and performance. Stay proactive to keep the cogs of your Windchill system— and therefore your production—running without a glitch.

If you are looking to check in on your Windchill system, but are unsure where to get started, you can contact one of our experts to learn more.

Just like fine wine, Creo keeps getting better with time! Creo 11 by PTC offers numerous enhancements to improve the productivity, usability, and functionality of frequently used tools. In this blog post, we will explore the key updates in Creo 11 that aim to streamline workflows, enhance user experience, and boost efficiency in product design.

Usability Enhancements

Easily Access Creo Options

One of the standout features in Creo 11 is the ability to search and find settings in the options dialog easily. That being said, this enhancement enables you to locate relevant Creo options more quickly, reducing time spent navigating through menus and improving overall efficiency.

Improved Model Tree

Creo 11 introduces improved collapse/expand behavior and renaming capabilities in the model tree. Specifically, these enhancements enhance the user experience by making navigating and managing complex assemblies and parts within the software easier.

Enhanced Drag Handles

Due to popular demand, the software now offers improved drag handles for feature dimensions, simplifying identification and manipulation controls for complex features. This improvement simplifies the editing process and ensures a smoother user experience.

Selection Enhancements

Flexible Selection Options

Creo 11 introduces box, lasso, and trace selection support, providing you with more flexibility in selecting multiple surfaces and entities. You can now toggle between selecting all surfaces or only visible surfaces, improving the precision and speed of selection workflows.

Multi-Body Design for Sheetmetal

With the introduction of multi-body design capabilities for sheet metal parts, Creo 11 simplifies single-part design workflows and enables you to split single sheet metal parts into multiple parts. As a result, this feature allows for greater control over manufacturing and design costs and facilitates the design of multi-thickness sheet metal parts in context.

Simplification Features

Shrinkwrap and Merge Options

A new shrinkwrap option in Creo 11 allows you to collect bodies from referenced assemblies into a single part, streamlining the creation of simplified models. So, merge options for bodies in assemblies offer flexibility to keep separate objects, merge into single bodies, or merge all bodies for efficient design workflows.

Modeling and Design Enhancements

Enhanced Features

Creo 11 enhances modeling capabilities with features such as enclosure volume and new options for point patterns, for increased flexibility, and faster regeneration. These improvements aid in the creation of bounding boxes for optimization purposes and streamline pattern referencing workflows.

Welding and Surfacing Improvements

Welding Capabilities

Creo 11 provides a faster and more flexible definition of spot welds through improvements in spot welding functionality, joint members, and XMCF features. These enhancements increase productivity and eliminate additional steps in the welding process.

Surfacing Enhancements

Surfacing with freestyle and style features, including rotational pattern support, new bevel operations, and improved curve editing controls are new enhancements. These updates offer greater control over curves and surfaces, improved usability, and streamlined workflows for working with multi-level subdivisions.

Design for Electrification

Routed Systems

Creo 11 introduces improvements to routed systems, allowing for easier design and creation of electrical systems within the software. These enhancements include cabling, removal locations capability, dynamic previews in the graphics area, expandable filtering, and undo/redo functionality. These enhancements increase productivity and make designing and managing electrical systems easier within Creo.

ECAD

In addition to the improvements in routed systems, Creo 11 also includes enhancements to ECAD (Electronic Computer-Aided Design) functionality. Users of Solidworks and Inventor might know this as electrical-mechanical integration and compatibility enhancements. Enhanced ECAD visibility simplifies control and understanding of ECAD layer presentation through data visibility. These enhancements improve usability and provide more flexibility in the design of electrical systems.

Design for Composites

In addition, Creo 11 introduces expanded functionality for designing composite materials. This includes the ability to modify transitions in graphics, improved usability for laminate sections, and enhanced draping simulation. These enhancements make it easier to manage and visualize composites, improving usability and productivity. Additional improvements include zone-based design, enabling faster creation of large-scale composite products, and a conceptual top-down approach to composite design.

Model-Based Definition

As for Model-Based Definition (MBD), Creo 11 also includes enhancements to make it easier to organize and manipulate data in a tabular form. MBD enhancements in Creo 11 include creating tables, adding semantic references, and supporting parameter callouts. Also, Creo 11 introduces support for STEP AP242, allowing for the export of PMI (Product and Manufacturing Information) information in a machine-readable format.

Simulation Driven Design

In simulation-driven design, Creo 11 introduces enhancements to improve accuracy and productivity in time-based motion analysis. These include updates to solvers, expanded structural and fluid results, and a new conjugate heat transfer capability. These enhancements allow for faster and more accurate predictions of heat transfer and structural optimization based on simulation results.

Design for Manufacturing

Additive Manufacturing

Connection Lattices

In response to the rise in additive manufacturing demands, Creo 11 introduces a new lattice command to connect two or more separate lattices, giving you more flexibility to create complex lattices. This workflow is straightforward and can be performed inside the same familiar Lattice UX. Additional enhancements include beam lattices, stochastic lattices, randomization value, and defining pore size. Moreover, you can also adjust simplified lattices using warp and export in 3MF/STL format. Finally, Creo 11 has added a penetration option for simplified lattices, providing additional flexibility to prepare parts for 3D printing, particularly in medical implants.

Subtractive Manufacturing

High-Speed Machining

Creo 11 introduces new 4-axis rotary roughing and finishing toolpaths, which can pass 360 degrees and be used for crew-type parts. Also, Creo 11 supports end mill, ball mill, and bull nose mill. These enhancements provide automated roughing and finishing sequences, which will be applicable for automotive and oil field crankshafts, camshafts, and drill heads.

Milling

Another enhancement is trajectory milling or CAM Programming, which allows you to define entry and exit movement along the direction of the cut, reducing the possibility of breaking small tools. This method is also more efficient, saving time spent on retracts. Additionally, Creo 11 supports curves not on the surface and trim retract motion to a plane. You can now easily manage the display of manufacturing geometry in the graphics toolbar.

Turning

Creo 11 has modernized 4-axis area-turning user interfaces, providing a streamlined and consistent user interface across all toolpaths. Improved material removal cut functionality for profile turning and additional area turning capabilities have also been added to the 4-axis. Creo 11 now supports user_output_point, CUTCOM support at each slice, clear distance, and turn profile start and end driving the cut direction.

These enhancements in Creo 11 provide you with greater flexibility, productivity, and efficiency in all areas of your product design. By incorporating these new features, Creo 11 continues to lead the industry in product design and manufacturing. You can watch the Creo 11 Webinar to learn more at your convenience or reach out to one of our experts to see which enhancements would benefit you the most!

Developing complex products in CAD (computer-aided design) with a distributed team can be a challenging task. However, with Creo Parametric’s Advanced Assembly Extension [AAX], managing distributed development becomes a seamless process even on a global scale.

This powerful extension facilitates and automates the exploration of product assembly variations and adds intelligence to your CAD design assembly so it reacts correctly in any situation.

Clearly Defining and Communicating Complex Design Intent

To kickstart any complex design project within CAD, it is vital to have a clearly defined source of design intent. This serves as the backbone of the development process and enables smooth collaboration among team members.

Furthermore, Creo Parametric AAX has tools for creating and managing space claims, assembly interfaces, and location points. These features help define design intent and make sharing information easy. With a clear and structured design intent, it becomes much easier for team members to understand their tasks and contribute effectively.

Distribution and Communication of Design Intent

Once the design intent is defined, the next crucial step is to distribute and communicate this intent to team members efficiently. Creo Parametric AAX allows team members to focus on their relevant tasks by providing options to copy relevant geometry or use published geometry in their subsystem. This ensures that each team member can work on what’s relevant to their task without any confusion or delays.

Controlling Inter-Dependencies

Intelligent inter-dependency management within a complex product design is essential to ensure flexibility and adaptability. Advanced Assembly offers powerful tools to create and track desired interdependencies, preventing the creation of unwanted relationships that can hinder design flexibility.

By allowing users to control inter-dependencies effectively, teams can confidently make changes and reuse design components while maintaining the integrity of the complex product.

Leave No Rock Unturned with Complex Designs

The path to innovation often involves exploring multiple iterations and variations of a design. This Creo extension empowers designers to leave no stone unturned by offering efficient tools to create and manage assembly variations.

Families of Assembly Designs

Creating new assemblies for minor variations or component substitutions can be time-consuming and unnecessary. Creo Parametric AAX simplifies this process by allowing designers to define variations in assembly dimensions or switch out components without the need for separate assemblies.

By identifying what differs from the original design, designers can switch family instances of component family tables or subassembly family tables effortlessly, with automation taking care of the rest.

Interchange Parts and Assemblies

The ability to interchange functionally equivalent components is a valuable feature when exploring design variations. This CAD extension enables designers to relate independent components, making it easy to switch them within an assembly. Additionally, simplified exchange members can be substituted into a design to streamline the display while retaining accurate mass property information.

Raising the IQ of your Complex Design

Dealing with constant change is a fundamental aspect of design. Creo Parametric AAX allows designers to enhance their complex models with intelligent logic, automating component sizing based on calculations or user input.

This intelligence extends to switching out components or subassemblies automatically for Family Table or Interchange instances when specific conditions are met. By raising the IQ of your design, you can navigate design changes faster and more efficiently.

How to Put it Together or Take it Apart

Ensuring smooth communication of assembly procedures is crucial for efficient manufacturing and engineering processes. This extension for complex designs offers intuitive process planning functionality to disseminate process information effectively throughout the organization.

Easily Create Assembly Process Sequences

With user-friendly tools, users can define assembly processes step by step. With intuitive drag-and-drop techniques, exploded views, and jogged explode offset lines, AAX provides a clear and accurate representation of each process step, making it easy for all stakeholders to understand the assembly process.

Create Alternate Bills of Materials (BOMs)

Creo Parametric AAX empowers users to create alternative BOMs that reflect specific assembly stages or grouping of design components based on the assembly process. These alternative BOMs, such as manufactured BOMs or fabrication BOMs, enable clear communication of the assembly process and facilitate efficient manufacturing operations.

Creo Parametric Advanced Assembly Extension [AAX] offers a comprehensive suite of tools and functionalities to manage the distributed development of complex designs.

From clearly defining and communicating design intent to exploring design variations and enhancing design intelligence, AAX ensures that no aspect of the design process goes untouched. By leveraging this extension, design teams can collaborate effectively, respond to changes efficiently, and create flexible and reusable complex products