Behind the Scenes: Creo, NC, and Manufacturing

One of the hottest topics related to the Creo vision and strategy has been the availability of Creo NC apps for manufacturing. We’ve already previewed one of the early prototype apps for manufacturing engineers, in which Mike Campbell showed how to create, optimize, and validate machining tool paths within a Creo environment.

But even after that demo, we received a flood of questions via Twitter and comments on this blog.

So I recently asked Jose Coronado, Product Manager for Creo’s NC apps, to tell us more. Coronado has worked 20 years in the manufacturing industry and has a reputation for ensuring his customers get the best from the most recent technological advances, especially those in CAM.

GH: What’s PTC’s strategy regarding NC?

Coronado: PTC continues to develop and deliver NC solutions that span a broad set of needs and are integrated with our design solutions.

The Creo NC strategy is mainly focused on improving the usability of our products, developing functionality to serve the production machining market, and expanding the user base mid-market, by serving the mold & die segments.

We also offer our PTC partner program, which provides access to a range of third party applications in the manufacturing domain. Lastly, but by no means least, we have a new exciting strategy in regards for NC apps for Creo.

GH: What’s that—your strategy regarding NC apps?

Coronado: It has three parts:

First, develop today’s NC solutions to better align with the Creo apps strategy. That means better tailoring them for the needs of our users. To do that, we’re working with lots of people to get feedback about our products and define the next generation of Creo NC apps.

Second, continue to make them simpler to use.

Third, leverage the technology under development for Creo to improve the NC apps even more.

GH: How can today’s NC solutions better align with the Creo apps strategy?

Coronado: By breaking up big solutions into smaller apps – to better meet the needs of today’s users of NC software. For example, we can break up today’s NC products into smaller NC apps focused on a particular manufacturing job; e.g., serial production machining, core & cavity machining, mill/turn. That results in easier to use apps, because a user isn’t overloaded with capabilities they’ll never or rarely use.

Second, we can get the NC apps to work together with the direct or parametric apps. Often the parametric mode offers power, but it also introduces some complexity. It can be the ideal solution for an NC expert who’s also a 3D CAD expert. But you can also imagine that some users of NC software could be better served by having a simple direct modeler to make any direct changes to the workpiece, tools, jigs and fixtures.

By enabling users to select the right modeling mode to use with their NC app, we believe we can deliver much more relevant NC apps to those that need it.

GH: How do you plan on making the NC apps easier to use?

Coronado: A key improvement will be a new streamlined UI for all the Creo apps, including the NC apps. For example, including a ribbon UI, quick access toolbar, in-graphics toolbars, and other new UI elements dramatically improves the usability of all the apps, including the NC apps.

And the ribbon UI is becoming a consistent UI approach for many Windows apps, so that new users to our software will find the experience consistent.

Otherwise, as we mentioned before, the direct modeling app will reduce considerably the effort needed in the manufacturing environment.

Q.What about adding the key capabilities and enhancements that customers request?

Coronado: We’re constantly reviewing and assessing customer inputs. With the last release of our NC solutions, released in conjunction with Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 (now Creo Elements/Pro 5.0), we added a number of key enhancements. We included the conversion of the menu manager to top-level entry points, a simplified workflow to define a facing toolpath, toolpath duplication based on patterns, support of advanced turning tools for multi-tasking machines, support of turning sequences in the Process Manager, extended support of family tables, support of CMM steps within an NC session, support for vision (camera or fiber optic) in CMM … among many other enhancements.

In addition to the UI improvements, we also intend to remain responsive to our customers’ environments. For example, many of our customers are using our NC solutions in high-volume manufacturing operations, they profit from the high level of customization possible in Creo NC, and they want even higher levels of control over the tool paths, cutting speeds, etc to ensure high levels of precision are maintained.

Q. How can people learn more about today’s NC solutions?

Coronado: We’ve recorded detailed demonstrations, tutorials, and introductions to many of the key features of today’s NC solutions – they give an excellent introduction to the features and capabilities. But keep in mind that the NC software will change according to the strategies I described earlier, so the user interface and way to work with the applications will become simpler.

Visit our page on ptc.com for introductions to our capabilities for milling, turning, 3 axis, 5 axis, sheet metal and more CAM areas.

Q. What if I’m using these solutions today and I move to Creo?

Coronado: We’ll protect your investment. The packaging of your products may be slightly different, but you won’t lose any capabilities. In fact, you can look forward to more capabilities as we realize our NC strategy.

Q. How will the Creo NC strategy roll out in the releases?

Coronado: With Creo 1.0 and 2.0, users can look forward to a new UI across the NC apps. We’re also planning to leverage some technology from Pro/TOOLMAKER into the apps. For Creo 3.0, we plan to add mill/turn-related enhancements, like synchronization of toolpaths, better ways to define and control axis for advanced 5 axis milling sequences, integration of more Pro/TOOLMAKER toolpaths, and others.

Q. Finally, what about recruiting third parties to round out PTC’s manufacturing solutions?

Coronado: PTC’s Partner Advantage Program enables a wide range of independent software companies to provide complementary solutions to our product development system. Our software partners have access to product APIs, development support and a partner program structure that allows them to build powerful and fully interoperable integrations. You can get the most up-to-date list of software partners on ptc.com.

Image  by ttstam