With Creo 2.0 released just over five months ago, now’s a great time to get a sanity check from those that have taken the time to download, test it, and have Creo 2.0 in production. Back in July 2011, we interviewed Damián Castillo, CAD & Administration Manager at Hensley Industries, as he was one of the first to try Creo 1.0, including Creo Parametric and Creo Simulate, after attending Planet PTC Live event in Las Vegas.
Hensley Industries is based in the US and manufactures ground engaging tools, buckets, and specialized attachments for excavation, reclamation, mining, trenching, or any other earth-moving industrial equipment.
Now over a year later, Damián has not only tried Creo 1.0, but the whole design team has been using Creo Parametric and Creo Simulate for over 6 months. Recently the whole team moved to Creo 2.0.
GH: Damián, could you tell us a little bit about your background?
Castillo: I’m responsible for making sure the engineering team is as productive as possible with respect to their design tools. This involves using the right tools, management, and services such as training, customization, etc. I’ve been using Pro/ENGINEER since version 12, and now have over16 years experience with the software. Before adopting Creo 1.0 (and now Creo 2.0), the team was using Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0.
GH: How long after evaluating Creo Parametric 1.0 did you decide to roll it out to the team?
Castillo: : I downloaded Creo Parametric a few days after it was released, and tested and worked with it for about 8 weeks. After that, I used it and created some parts with Creo Parametric and my impression was very positive, after sharing my findings with the team, the team decided to put Creo Parametric and Creo Simulate into production.
GH: How easy was it to get all the users working with Creo Parametric?
Castillo: It was a lot easier than I thought, for the most part, users really appreciate the improved user experience, streamlined workflows, and modern ribbon user interface. Our users already have experience of the Microsoft Ribbon user experience, so the Creo user experience is very familiar to them. In the few cases were they can’t find a command because of the new user interface, they’re using the new Command Finder tool to quickly find a command, and once the command presented to them, they simply continue working. There’s been a lot of praise on how easy Creo Parametric and Creo Simulate were to learn, and how the software that flows perfectly together.
GH: And what’s your users’ overall impression?
Castillo: The users find Creo Parametric easier to use than Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 by a long shot, and especially the reworked workflows in common areas like sketching, part modeling, assembly modeling, sheet metal, and drawing – it’s really increased their design productivity. Creo Parametric eliminates several steps that users had to take when creating features with Pro/ENGINEER, the result is that the designers are much faster and more fluid. For example, Creo Parametric is using intelligent defaults for many 3D features, take Extrude, you are put right into sketcher once you select the surface or datum you wish to sketch on. This is much faster and easier to use than before, especially for a new user.
GH: Any measurable improvements in productivity?
Castillo: We’ve not really measured how productive each team member is, but their general feedback is that they are more productive and it was definitely worth upgrading. One area where we have seen a noticeable improvement is when users are working with large assemblies. They’re reporting that they’re about 50% more productive, as the new lightweight graphics representation makes loading, navigating, and exploring assembles super fast.
GH: Did you have to spend anytime training your users on Creo Parametric?
Castillo: No, whileCreo Parametric is new design software, users familiar with Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire will find it very easy to get up to speed, so easy, we didn’t plan or run any special training. I recorded a five minute video introduction to Creo Parametric, and that was the main way of ramping up our users. Once the users are familiar with the new user experience and workflows, we do plan to spend time on the new capabilities, like Freestyle design.
GH: How was the update to Creo?
Castillo: Extremely easy, all our Pro/ENGINEER data loads into Creo Parametric directly, smoothly, tailored setting and environment variables are directly re-used, so it was a really straightforward update.
GH: What did the upgrade to Creo Parametric cost?
Castillo: We’re on maintenance, so Creo Parametric doesn’t cost us anything extra; the same is true for all the extensions we currently own.
GH: How was the update to Creo 2.0?
Castillo: Extremely easy, it’s added new major capabilities like the dynamic 3D cross-sections, which is really appreciated by our users. We basically moved our team to Creo 2.0 with no additional training.
Bottom Line: Moving to Creo Parametric and Creo Simulate was definitely worth our time, we’re seeing much higher levels of design productivity, and users were able to easily adopt it with no training. The longer we use it, the more things we will find that we like. I like the direction PTC is taking.
