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Does anyone use Creo for creating tool path? If not, what CAM do you use/prefer?

aerospace_eng

Plastic
Joined
Sep 26, 2017
I have been using Creo 2.0/3.0 for years and either actually really like it, or have just gotten very familiar with it. Either way, when I started seeing the CAM application in Creo, I thought this could be an all in one software for a Engineering/manufacturing company. I created several tool paths and ran them on a small CNC mill at my company.

I'd like some opinions on Creo as a tool path and overall CNC program. I like it for doing engineering design. I've used solidworks, onshape, inventor,NX and would still go with Creo maybe just because of how familiar I am with it. But it is a good modeling software. But what about for CAM and CNC?

Thanks.
 
We use it at work for our 5 axis stuff. It does everything we need without issue. There is a Volumill plug in available from what I understand if you are wanting better tool paths.
 
Is this underground marketing ? How could you use Pro/E for years and not know that it was an integrated cadcam application ? In fact, one of the very first ones, if not the first one ? How could you be in aerospace and not know about Pro/E's cam abilities ? How could you use it as cad without learning the quirks it has in cam ? (Everything has quirks.) If you've used it for years, why would you call it Creo ? That's the piece of shit HP modeller.

Sniff sniff sniffsniff ... is that orange roughy or catfish ?
 
I have been programming CNC machines with Pro/E Creo since 1997 Haven't looked at any other software since I started using it.
 
well, I,m relatively young, have used it purely for modeling and assemblies at engineering firms that do not demand any CAM applications, and it's great for CAD (at least versions I've used) hints, you don't need to know the CAM in order to utilize the CAD. But, I really appreciate your input. Thanks.
 
Pro/E has been called Creo for 7 or 8 years now. It could easily be all a younger user has ever known it as.

Also Pro/E cam is not widely used outside of a small handful of big names. It's a valid enquiry.

it was originally call Pro Manufacturing.

and has anyone seen the commercial over the holidays where the young girl is doing all this neat stuff on her tablet...... she is in her back yard lying in the grass working on it and then the neighbor lady ask what you doing on your computer....the girls says "WHATS A COMPUTER"

hence.....new vs old terminology

in my day swipe meant steal, now it means slide your card at a pay point.
 
You guys really use something for years, without learning anything about it ? You are encouraging those 'get offa my lawn you young whippersnapper !' :codger: speeches. Damn :(


edit: Jeeze. Youse guys just broke my heart. Went to the ptc website - haven't been there much since they quit making the Pro on Unix - what a useless crock of shit. Listen to this crap :

PTC website said:
Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) is the use of computers to perform product design and manufacturing. Manufacturing is done via CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machines.

To understand exactly why this is useful, think of the seemingly easy task of drilling holes in a part. Done manually, speed and accuracy can suffer from operator fatigue, boredom, and errors. It's not hard to see how costs then rise and production declines, providing future business and profits for competitors. Why be that obliging?

They used to be professional. I think I'll go throw up now ...

Sorry, o.p. If PTC is going to be this stupid, I guess it's not your fault. Pro/Mfg has been around for decades, was one of the first integrated graphical cadcam apps, if not THE first, used to have TONS of add-on modules - Pro/Piping, Pro/Engine, Pro/Wiring, hell, probably Pro/Brain Surgery. You can do your own FEA from within the Pro, they bought Rasna decades ago, and had some deal for surfaces with IceM, you can verify with an embedded copy of Vericut, anything you wanted for mechanical engineering was there. Worth the time yes. It's hard for me to understand why they turned over their web presence to Miss Beeler's School for Retarded Children. Did quite a few wheels from idea thru finished product ...

anal-2.jpg

anal-1.jpg

(The program for making the molds is not as exciting to look at)

I can recommend Wildfire 3. It's the cadcam system for grownups. I'm no ace at this but the program is very capable. Better than the popular cheap stuff, as you would expect.

Creo. What a bunch of shitheads. Looked around their new website a little, I'm going to cry.
 
I have been using Creo 2.0/3.0 for years and either actually really like it, or have just gotten very familiar with it. Either way, when I started seeing the CAM application in Creo, I thought this could be an all in one software for a Engineering/manufacturing company. I created several tool paths and ran them on a small CNC mill at my company.

I'd like some opinions on Creo as a tool path and overall CNC program. I like it for doing engineering design. I've used solidworks, onshape, inventor,NX and would still go with Creo maybe just because of how familiar I am with it. But it is a good modeling software. But what about for CAM and CNC?

Thanks.

A friend of mine works for a company doing aerospace work and they use Creo cam. The main reason is because they do some design in Creo and most of the time take in a lot of customers' Creo parts. He mentioned if they didn't need to work in Creo that they would not be using Creo cam; his opinion is it isn't best in class.

That being said I encourage all companies to keep an eye on software and not keep using what they have simply because they have used it for a while.
 
He mentioned if they didn't need to work in Creo that they would not be using Creo cam; his opinion is it isn't best in class.
When I hear stuff like this, I have to wonder why so many people like talking out their ass. All I ever heard (before I had it) was "Pro/E is so hard to use. Pro/E is so antiquated. Pro/E this, Pro/E that ..."

But when you go to use it, it's fine. In fact, it's a hundred times finer than all those twits claim. All those guys who can't even use Bobcad ...

"Best in class" - just what is that supposed to mean ? Comparing to what, Mastercam ? Smurfcam ? Gibbs ? I-DEAS ? Unigraphics ? This guy is an ace with every software package out there ? Give me a break. Every one of those has its pluses and minuses, there is no "best in class", that's all magazine gobbledygook marketing crap. Different people like different things, fine. But in real life for real people, any one of those programs will do fine. And Pro/E certainly does more than fine for everything I've ever had to do. The limit here is me, not the software.

P1000474.jpg
 
I use Creo on the job every day, started with Pro-E 2000i in 2000 when it was still drop down menus and liked it. After using several other CAD programs I have a "end user" opinion. The program doesn't seem to have progressed as much as I had hoped it would but that's just my limited opinion. Every program does have plus/minus as has been stated, it doesn't do what the new release brochures claim it will but what product ever lives up to the sales brochures? I have no experience with the CAM capabilities but I do think the surfacing tools (molds) are better than SW has. The advancements made by PTC seem to be with PLM and the interface with the business end of things, that's why we use it. I really don't notice much difference in modeling capabilities from earlier versions (besides the icon over menu) but that's just a modeling perspective and that's not the whole story of the software capability. I really think the choice in software is about what you need it to do just like any other tool. I chose SW for home use but it suited my needs. If considering Creo I would ask for a demo on Feature Recognition on a non-native file. We don't have it on Creo 3 but v.4 is supposed to have it. Pulling a large assembly in SW and attempting to open/use it in Creo is sketchy at best and "dumb geometry" is almost useless at times. IIRC, pulling a non-native file with surfaces (injection mold) in Wildfire 4 resembled modern art and was equally useless most of the time. Technical assistance from PTC beyond the sale isn't very good either. I don't have a qualified opinion on CAM so I can't offer one, I use CAD for modeling/design. Good luck.
 
I used to use Pro/Manufacturing (later called Pro/NC) as "recently" as Wildfire 4. I don't know how different it is in Creo, but I'd suggest you find out one thing, for sure. The "old" Pro/NC did not deal with "dumb solids" very well. It associated machining features with the feature ID of the Pro/E part, which works fine if it's a native Pro/E file. When importing a dumb solid, there's only one feature. Sure, you can make tool paths, but if the model changes and you have to import a new one, all your machining features would fail, since they have no Pro/E feature IDs to associate with. Now, they may have fixed this over the years, but I'd definitely find out if this is still the case if you plan to use it for other than native parts.

We use Camworks here now, which many folks on PM seem to have a love/hate relationship with. It is different, and quirky in it's own way, but deals with dumb solids very well, and now that I know how it thinks, I get good results.
 
Perhaps the comment above will depend upon the "Feature Recognition" that's supposed to be in Creo v.4 that I don't have access to. That would affect my software evaluation.
 
The "old" Pro/NC did not deal with "dumb solids" very well. It associated machining features with the feature ID of the Pro/E part, which works fine if it's a native Pro/E file. When importing a dumb solid, there's only one feature.
Agree with that but it's not really a thing to "fix" or not fix, that's a product of the way parametric design programs work. Every different program has its own way of doing the math to create features, and companies don't share algorithms, so taking an object from Pro/E and putting it into I-DEAS or vice-versa, neither one is going to understand the other. So you can move your object as a single unit, described by dxf or iges or whatever, but you will lose all the info about how each component was generated. Hence, "dumb" objects.

This has been a problem since Day One, if you use several different programs :(

We use Camworks here now, which many folks on PM seem to have a love/hate relationship with. It is different, and quirky in it's own way, but deals with dumb solids very well, and now that I know how it thinks, I get good results.
Ja, if you need to deal with other people's stuff, something like that is probably better. Camworks tries to figure out what something is, where Pro/E will just say "you shoulda made this in my sister program in the first place !"

On the other hand, a part created properly in a parametric program can be changed very easily, and everything associated with that part will update as well. So if you're doing families, change the model and you don't even have to touch the part programming and the drawings and the bill of materials and all the other features, it all happens by itself.

We did that with wheels, and you could take a single design and pop out different diameters, bolt hole patterns, rim widths and everything very easily. In the "direct-modelling" world that would mean making a new model for every part. On the other hand, for a job shop, that whole tree thing and trying to program parts from different modellers can be a total pain in the ass.

Different programs do things different ways, for different purposes. It's just annoying hearing some twit say "ooooh, this isn't world-class" because he can't figure out the purpose of the application.
 
On the other hand, a part created properly in a parametric program can be changed very easily, and everything associated with that part will update as well. So if you're doing families, change the model and you don't even have to touch the part programming and the drawings and the bill of materials and all the other features, it all happens by itself.

True. However, Camworks does indeed update machining features and tool paths even if it's a dumb solid and not a native Solidworks part. Of course, if the changes are so drastic that the former machining strategy for a feature cannot be computed, then that feature will fail. Things like hole count changes, location changes, pocket depth/shape changes, etc. rebuild very well, even when the model is a dumb solid. I've not used it, but I would imagine packages like FeatureCam would do this too. The problem with Pro/NC was (and still may be), if the model was a dumb solid and you imported a new (updated) model, everything would explode. In Camworks (and probably FeatureCam, and others) some repair work may be needed, but it basically updates itself. I hope for Creo users that they've fixed this. Comments from Creo Cam users?
 
A friend of mine works for a company doing aerospace work and they use Creo cam. The main reason is because they do some design in Creo and most of the time take in a lot of customers' Creo parts. He mentioned if they didn't need to work in Creo that they would not be using Creo cam; his opinion is it isn't best in class.

That being said I encourage all companies to keep an eye on software and not keep using what they have simply because they have used it for a while.

By the way we use NX for design, NX for electrode design/programming and a mix of NX and Mastercam for steel (soft and hard cutting).

NX 11
NX 12
 
Here's another way to look at the choice. Users invest their time to become proficient. Companies invest their money - often substantial sums when both initial and recurring maintenance costs are figured in. For very large companies, once they're locked in the employees do OK learning what they have and the company usually has enough bargaining power to get the features they need. Companies like Unigraphics made most of their living serving a handful of large companies. That changed a bit with the Siemens acquisition.

As a user you want to be skilled in whatever package offers the best employment opportunity, especially if you're not seeing a career right where you are. In 2D days that was AutoCAD. After the pioneers in 3D (Euclid, etc. etc.) it was ProE. During its heydey, maybe SolidWorks.

To me, the character and business ethic of a company matters over time. Many of them start with a gee whiz tech attitude. Some disappear -- you have to be business-savvy enough to stick around. A few go on to actually care about their customers. Still others live to satisfy quarterly revenue promises made to Wall St.

As examples, Pro E had terrific developers, but a business side more interested in their own sales goals than their customers. Users loved the software, hated the company. SolidWorks was very customer oriented while the original founders were running it; not so much after the Dassault acquisition. Autodesk, especially with the departure of Carl Bass, seems determined to flip all its customers to an annual revenue scheme. Fine for predictable profits. Not so fine for small business owners who have good years, then lean years.

It's small companies (with no bargaining power) with owner-users that tend to get screwed in this process. They end up either paying top dollar or chasing a succession of lower cost alternatives that cost as much in lost productivity.

I've been out of the loop long enough to not know what company is tech savvy enough to provide a full featured system and customer-oriented enough not to want to screw them once they're somewhat locked in. It wouldn't be the old PTC, but maybe the somewhat chastened one that's around now?

I'd be curious to know if Jon Hirschtick's latest company, OnShape, had added decent CAM capabilities or partners?
 
it was originally call Pro Manufacturing.

in my day swipe meant steal, now it means slide your card at a pay point.

10 years ago maybe (applepay etc :)

Today swipe means getting a date with your phone.
 








 
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