Design. The way it should be.

It’s one of the pleasures of my job to announce our product releases. It’s Creo 5.0, the latest release of our 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) software. 

For over thirty years PTC has been providing innovative technology to the manufacturing industry. Our deep expertise, combined with an annual release cycle, means we can offer the latest product design technologies to you: our customers, partners, and CAD enthusiasts.

To begin, I think I can say we all want our jobs to be easier. I know I do. We want every interaction you have with Creo to be delightful, so we’ve made key enhancements in Creo to increase productivity. These include an interface that’s easier to use, enhancements to the popular mini-toolbar that sits at your fingertips, and other efficiency improvements. We’ve stepped up our game to help you do great work with less hassle.

And now the big question. What does Creo 5.0 have for new capabilities? I can’t wait to share them with you.

Creo 5.0 introduces Creo Topology Optimization extension, affectionately known as ‘top-op’ – as fun to say as it is effective to use. From a technical perspective, Top Op enables the automated creation of optimized designs based on constraints you impose. The best part? No more recreating your designs. Since it is all done in Creo, your output is parametric geometry. 

I’m pleased to tell you that Computational Fluid Dynamics, or CFD, just got a whole lot easier in Creo 5.0 with the new Creo Flow Analysis extension. Built for engineers, but scalable for Analysts, these tools enable you to analyze products early and often, so you can find problems when they cost less to resolve.  

I’m especially proud of what Creo helps you do with additive manufacturing. Since Creo 4.0, designers have been able to go from concept to pressing ‘print’ all in the Creo design environment. No more hassles or switching between software packages. With Creo 5.0, you can design for additive manufacturing in polymers and in metal. Our metal printing capabilities cover 70% of the metal printers currently on the market. 

We’ve also expanded Creo’s CAM capabilities with the Creo Mold Machining extension. This focuses on one-off and low volume production machining. Fully integrated into Creo, this extension introduces a dedicated set of high-speed machining capabilities focused on faster toolpath generation, faster machining and high-quality surfaces. 

Finally, we’ve enhanced our multi-CAD abilities. In Creo, our customers could import Autodesk Inventor files, but the process took time and resulted in copies of the original Autodesk Inventor files in Creo. With the new extension, our customers can open Autodesk Inventor files directly without making a copy and keep those files up-to-date dynamically. It’s fitting I wrap up my discussion of capabilities with the single longest extension name: Creo Collaboration Extension for Autodesk Inventor.

From where I sit, it’s a pretty energizing time to be a technology provider. Challenging at times to keep up with the latest advances, but never boring!  

For example, we’ve already shown our customers how they can integrate technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) into their products – we’ve put AR capabilities into every seat of Creo. CAD creates the ‘things’ in the IoT and AR enables us to experience that IoT data in ways that make sense. For up-to-the-second information, you can’t do better than our HBR Facebook Live webinar, delivered by Professor Michael Porter of The Harvard Business School and PTC’s CEO, Jim Heppelmann.

On a personal note, it’s no secret that I’ve committed my career to product development: bringing new products to market that help customers solve problems and build their businesses. I believe in this work. Tell me what you want to see in Creo 6. I want to know. And try Creo 5.0 today.