Pro-E (Creo) Surfacing Resources?

I’ve been working in a combination of pro/e and rhino for about three years now, without any formal pro/e training, though I’ve got some in solidworks (but not higher level surfacing), but I’d like to start moving my workflow towards doing most of my work in pro/e.

I know there are tons of resources out there for solidworks focused at designers, but I haven’t found a whole lot for pro/e. Has anyone out there had much experience in pro/e? are there books, like the solidworks surfacing bible, you would recommend for pro/e? What workflows have you discovered that work best for you in pro/e?

(one last thing to note is that we don’t have a isdx module to play with)

As always, thanks in advance for any advice!

Design engine

Bart B.

in chicago

I’ve looked at design engine, they’re pretty expensive, though you normally get what you pay for. I was hoping for something a little closer to after hours tutorials I could go through or something like that.

Do you have experience with design engine? If so was it worth the week long course?

Design Engine is worth the investment if you’re trying to really learn surfacing. Truthfully Creo is such a awkward and specialized tool that it’s hard to find a lot of really useful tutorials online, especially when surfacing is not it’s strongest skill set. Solidworks has a lot more resources since it’s a much lower cost and easier to grasp program.

I hear you on creo, the best thing I ever did as far as learning it was to take a solidworks class at our local cc. Unfortunately my company is has creo super embedded in our day to day, so it’s either creo or rhino to creo for me…

It’s good to hear a second referral to design engine, sounds like that might be the most straight forward step.

Thirded for Design Engine, but get ISDX first. Both are worth the investment, and I think in the Pro/Creo class for Industrial Designers they use ISDX quite a bit.

I came in to my ProE/Creo job knowing Rhino with limited knowledge of parametric modeling (CATIA, Solidworks) and took a Design Engine class after a few weeks of learning the basics mostly on my own. One of the great things is that Bart or someone there knows the details of other 3D packages so they will be able to answer questions like “If I would sweep two rails in Rhino, how would I do that here?”.

You can find basic tutorials on from website below.

http://learningexchange.ptc.com/tutorial/2531/creating-n-sided-surface-adding-curvature-constraints-and-internal-curves

If you are trying to learn the software and surfacing then i suggest spending the money to learn it at a faster rate. doing it on your own is something that is achievable but having a network of surfacing guru’s will be very helpful. Note that a Alias surfacing guru while not able to tell you what buttons to push in CREO can definitely provide you with a deep understanding of the creation of complex surface and work flows that would translate.

i.e I learned complex surfacing in Euclid (yes im dating myself) that knowledge allowed me to quickly pick up Alias where i learned more about surface development by working with people dragging bondo and sculpting forms, once i understand to the new software “language” this then translated into what i was able to achieve in SolidWorks -

The biggest problem IMO with Creo is the UI sucks. So because it’s so bad, if you don’t have someone to tell you many of the little secrets, (like hotkeys and mouse shortcuts that don’t otherwise exist in any logical format) then you might also develop bad habits.

Unlike Rhino or Alias which are much more free-flowing and “dumb”, working in parametrics even for a surface model still requires a good foundational understanding of the feature tree, references, etc to make your workflow better and reduce the misery downstream. In Alias if I don’t like something in the history tree I can blow it away and start fresh or ignore it. In Pro E that one feature may be critical to 300 other features, meaning model structure and best practices are still important.

[quote= In Pro E that one feature may be critical to 300 other features, meaning model structure and best practices are still important.[/quote]

+10 building a model that doesn’t blow up when you need to make a change is Voodoo and Black magik for some, but an extremely important skill set!

Creo UI is very user friendly and easy to use. If you have experience using it, it works well. The UI wes very complex when it was in the early days. During the old ProE version. People seem to still have the same mindset and not understand that it is changed and improved.

Just look at the pictures of the 2 UI from the picture below and see for yourself.

Creo Parametric -
http://pfiles1.ptc.com/WCMS/images/128470/128470en_image1_1307923080.jpg

SolidWorks -
http://www.caddedge.com/Portals/123005/images/blog_driveworksxpress.jpg

The UI has improved.

It’s still way behind where it should be. The new MS Office style Ribbon knockoff UI is great, except during the times when features you want tend to disappear or move around. Also, the UI as a whole is nowhere near as continuous or well applied as it could be. I applaud them for improving it, but there is still a lot of strange behavior that comes with disjointed packages and UI.

Even if it is improved, it’s not a tool I would ever say to someone “yeah just dive in, you could easily pick it up in a few days with some web tutorials”. It’d be like asking someone who had built a paper airplane once to fly a 747 “because they knew about planes”.

It seems like the ui has a sort of layered effect, almost like going through the layers of a mountain or glacier, if you want to go through all of pro/e’s history it’s still there in entirety (and if you want to use some random tool from a few versions ago you have to hunt through years of layered menu’s to find it, or search for it in the searchbar).

Though we’ve had some success in the office with being able to edit our config.pro file to have our interface a little more streamlined for the specific tasks that each of us use pro/e for.

I talked to my departments windchill/pro-e manager and he said that we’ve used someone through our distributor as a trainer, but based on the feedback here and what I’ve seen on their site, it makes sense for me to push to go through design engine.

Thanks again for all your help and feedback!

some tuts can be found in my web page ->>http://proe-warsztat.pl/en/tuts/tuts.php

I understand “surfacing” on two parts:

  • approaches/ ways to follow

  • software

to me software is second thing after the the “approaches”, because most of CAD apps like Pro/E, SW, SE share common or similar tools

you should first know how to solve the problem, thus tricks to solve 3 or 5 sided boundaries, complicated rounds and so forth

If you have used Creo for some time. It will be plain and simple to do many of the things need. It is really not that hard to create a sketch, a form, building an assembly and create drawings.

People who complain about the UI because they are new and do not have the experience with using the software. It is like learning another software for the first time. Learning Photoshop or Illustrator. Once you understand how to do it. It is straight forward.

Making vague assumptions without a good understanding of what you are saying is just poor practice. I remember some time ago someone said there is a lot of miss-information on the Internet.

I’ve used Pro E as my primary solid tool for 7 years since Wildfire 2 and witnessed all of the UI changes that have come along with it, and that includes spending time in Chicago @ Design Engine for a Pro E course. I am complaining about the UI because it has gone from suck to less suck - and that’s with a laundry list of CAD, 2D and 3D tools under my belt. There are simply logical inconsistencies, mental models and flows which will apply to one tool but not another, and other behaviors that are simply far smoother in other tools. Regardless of what I think of it, it is not nearly as easy to pick up as other tools for surfacing and is worth the investment for professional training. If it were that easy, Design Engine would be out of business and the people in this thread would be referring him to Lynda.com or some other Youtube video.

You are still talking about Pro E. That is more than 5 years ago. Creo Parametric is a full parametric software. It is a sophisticated technology in this aspect that is very useful for developing products beyond basic parts, allowing companies to produce complex machine and large assembly products. Pretty much all CAD software can do the basic stuff. The parametric software may need you to specific more requirements for using each of the tools but this ensures reliability and better performance.

The software can be easily used once you understand how to use it. If you pay for support and done the training. You can get going. The support by the resellers are very good. All you need to do is contact them and they will show you exactly what you need. There is a certain way to do technical things, but this is important for technical sophisticated jobs.

+1 to that. I now lose a less time each week explaining to coworkers how to do something and most of the time they still ask “why wasn’t that easier?”

I am talking about “PTC Creo Parametric Version Two Point Oh”. I call it Pro E because randomly changing the name halfway through doesn’t change the fact that it’s the same tool with an updated GUI.

But I digress because this is starting to sound like reseller trolling and not answering the OP’s question which I think has been covered.

/dead horse beaten

I catch myself calling it Pro/E still. We found many designers think they know Solidworks and we quicly understand what they know in the Full week of our Solidworks Surfacing class. From a technical perspective, any of our surfacing week long classes offer unique insight into technical surfacing discussing G2 G3 continuity defining A-Class surfacing in ways that set you apart from others in your organization.

Consider calling us about training. we have a special 7 day intensive for those ID’ers that already know Alias Studio or Rhino 3d and there is one coming up. Im sure the account managers whom answer the phone can work you a deal. It’s worth a chat. We have three training classes going on this week in Austin TX all to ID teams.

http://proetools.com/category/courses/creo-surfacing/ < all creo surfacing classes

Special Creo 7 day intensive for Industrial designers http://proetools.com/proengineer-training-industrial-design/ < this class is usually 6 days a week 10+ hrs per day. Im doing this next week and it’s basics thru surfacing all in the week. Id’ers need Rhino or Alias experience as a pre req.

Solidworks to Creo http://proetools.com/proengineer-to-solidworks-class/ one week Creo class