Industry Summary Articles

PTC today announced the release of the latest version of its Creo® 4.0 3D CAD software. Creo 4.0 introduces new capabilities for Internet of Things (IoT), additive manufacturing, augmented reality, and model based definition (MBD). Creo 4.0 enables smarter design and greater productivity with a vast array of core modeling enhancements and new functionality that allow designers to create the products of the future.

In the era of IoT and smart, connected products, product development is changing and Creo 4.0 represents the future of product design. With this latest release of Creo, product designers can design smart, connected products and capitalize on new technologies, such as additive manufacturing and augmented reality.

"I'm really excited for the Creo 4.0 launch. With PTC's commitment to enabling model-based design, my customers can focus on the 3D model without having to generate any 2D drawings,” said Scott Carmichael, CEO of NxRev, a PTC partner serving customers in Silicon Valley. “PTC's vision and leadership around augmented reality and ‘Design for IoT’ has a powerful impact on my customers. These customers are developing the next generation of smart, connected products and want to take advantage of these emerging technologies throughout all phases of design."

Key enhancements in Creo 4.0 include:

Smart Connected Product Design
With Creo 4.0, product developers can take advantage of the IoT to better understand how products are used and behave to improve design decisions. The solution provides the ability to pull real-world information back into the design process. It also enables a design for connectivity strategy where developers proactively design products with custom data streams by integrating sensors into the design process.

"PTC is pushing the boundaries with 3D CAD applications again, this time with capabilities that are innovative in the Internet of Things era," said Chad Jackson, Lifecycle Insights. "Connecting Creo's 3D model with ThingWorx's sensor model is key, as it allows organizations to virtually prototype sensor placement and emulate data streams without having to build anything physical. PTC is pioneering functionality that is new to the world."

Additive Manufacturing
Creo 4.0 removes barriers to efficient design of production parts built with additive manufacturing techniques. It delivers "design for additive manufacturing," enabling designers to design, optimize, validate, and run a print-check in a single environment, Creo. With the ability to create parametrically controlled lattice structures, it enables designers to optimize models to meet multiple design objectives or constraints.

Augmented Reality
Creo 4.0 allows for more engaging and informative visual experiences of designs by bringing the digital product into the physical world. With Creo 4.0, designers can seamlessly reuse CAD data to easily create engaging and informative visual augmented reality experiences of a design with a realistic sense of size, scale, and context.

Model Based Definition
Creo 4.0 enables designers to successfully implement MBD and increase efficiency in product development by reducing dependency on 2D drawings. Creo 4.0 enables designers to reduce the errors that result from incorrect, incomplete, or misinterpreted information by guiding and educating designers in the proper application of Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerance (GD&T) information. Creo 4.0 also validates that the GD&T is captured in the 3D CAD model in a fully semantic way, that the model is compliant with ASME and ISO standards, and that it constrains model geometry to enable efficient and error-free downstream use in manufacturing and inspection.

“Realizing the potential of the IoT is not just about getting more product usage data, it means you can use, refine, and analyze that data to design better and smarter,” said Brian Thompson, senior vice president, CAD segment, PTC. “Creo 4.0 enables designers to replace assumptions in the design process with real-world data to make better product design decisions and along with model-based definition helps give designers a more complete digital definition of a product. The enhancements in Creo 4.0 not only enable designers to increase productivity, but also help designers leverage the IoT to support their digital engineering journey.”

To view the original press release, please click here.

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