Creo Customer: Injecting Collaboration

Creo Customer: Injecting Collaboration into Mold Making with Creo

When manufactures want precise high-quality plastic components, they turn to a handful of professionals in the injection molding industry. For Germany, one of these is Stettler Kunststofftechnik. This medium sized business specializes in the manufacturing of complex high-tolerance, high-quality polymer components. Stettler designs and develops high-quality injection molding machines capable of handling 50 plastic components per mold, up to 3Kn of pressure.

Since its founding 30 years ago, Stettler has expanded its range of services continuously in order to deliver high-quality and reliable components to its clients. Today, Stettler has 90 employees and has world-class clients including Bosch, Delphi, ZF, and Cherry.

Their work can be found in automotive (the Audi Q7), high tech electronics (Cherry computer equipment), and specialized industries like optics.

When selecting their CAD tool, the company’s objectives were two-fold:  improve collaboration with customers during product development, and establish a consistent CAD and data management tool solution. The team’s choice, Creo from PTC.

Karsten Dempert, responsible for product development at Stettler says:

`A major advantage of Creo is the handling of imported data. At Stettler, we work with lot of external CAD formats, including CATIA and Unigraphics models. Creo Parametric and the Flexible Modeling Extension offer many possibilities to modify the imported models. In addition, Creo won our selection because of the single user experience and  interface across the different apps, resulting in a very short training time for staff, helping us standardize on one CAD suite,  and delivering huge time savings for the company.‘

In this German language video, Karsten further explains the benefits he‘s seeing in Creo in conjunction with the INNEO Startup Tools – for those of you that don’t speak German, I’ve summarized the key points below the video:

Karsten explains in the video:

“We’re using Creo Parametric and the Creo Flexible Modeling Extension in conjunction with the INNEO Startup Tools.

We receive a lot of external data, i.e. our customers send us CATIA or Unigraphics CAD models. With the flexible modeling capabilities, we can modify those models for our needs when creating the molds. There’s lot of changes we make to the models we receive, to make sure we can injection mold high-quality components. Creo is very good in working on models from other CAD tools and formats.

The common user interface and experience across Creo, including Creo Parametric and Creo View, as well as the ease of choosing between direct modeling and parametric modeling have meant a very short training period and every employee has become very familiar with the new apps and extensions very quickly.

The new user experience, the ribbon design, helped us get up to speed quickly because all employees work with the same user interface and find their way very quickly. Creo is a great time saver for us. “

Design Issues in Modern Warfare

Counter insurgency warfare demands split-second decision making and real time information. In this episode, Vince and Allison review the design of a throwable reconnaissance robot.

Demos & Tech Tips: Live Webcast Schedule-August 2012

August 2012 (Asia/Calcutta)

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
		1	2 12:00 AM - 2:00 AM Top-Down Design	3 10:30 PM - 12:00 AM Managing Creo Elements/Pro (formerly Pro/ENGINEER) & Creo Parametric Data with Windchill
6	7 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM Introduction to Creo Parametric 10:30 PM - 11:30 PM Effective Collaboration from Products to Projects	8	9 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM Basic Sheetmetal Tips  9:30 PM - 10:30 PM PLM Overview Demo for SMB 9:30 PM - 10:30 PM PTC University eLearning Libraries Demonstration 11:30 PM - 12:30 AM ECAD-MCAD Co-Design Best Practices	10 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM Data Repair  8:30 PM - 9:30 PM Manufacturing in Creo Parametric 9:00 PM - 10:00 PM Large Assembly Management
13	14 9:00 PM - 10:00 PM Introduction to Behavioral Modeling  11:30 PM - 12:30 AM CAD Optimization through Learning and Adoption	15 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM Creating CMM Inspection Programs  9:30 PM - 10:30 PM CAD Data Management Solutions 9:30 PM - 10:30 PM Introduction to Windchill Compliance	16 12:00 AM - 12:30 AM There Can Only Be One--Merging Multiple Designs and Iterations  11:30 PM - 12:30 AM Productivity Gains in Creo Parametric	17 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM Introduction to Creo Simulate 11:30 PM - 12:30 AM Creo Schematics
20	21 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM Introduction to Creo Parametric 11:30 PM - 12:30 AM IsoDraw	22 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM Analyzing Models Using Creo Simulate	23 9:30 PM - 10:30 PM PLM Overview Demo for SMB 11:30 PM - 12:30 AM Introduction to Flexible Modeling in Creo Parametric 11:30 PM - 12:30 AM Digital Mockups with Creo View	24 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM Surface Design in Creo Parametric
27	28 9:00 PM - 10:00 PM What's New in Creo Manufacturing  10:30 PM - 11:30 PM Medical Device Best Practices for FDA and ISO Compliance	29	30	31

Creo Schematics: Powering the Olympics

The unsung hero of the 2012 London Olympic Gamesmay very well be Aggreko, powering all the light, action, and broadcasting with temporary power generators.

But this is not Aggreko’s first time around the track – it’s their 11^th Olympic games.

When Aggreko was awarded the contract for powering London 2012, it turned to Virtual Interconnect and Creo Schematics to create the blueprint. The plan involves mobile generators, 600 miles of cable, and 3500 distribution panels that will provide power across 39 venues in seven different locations – London, Cardiff, Coventry, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle and Weymouth.

The beauty of all of this is that engineers at Aggreko and Virtual Interconnect designed the electrical layout, tested it, and modified it simply and efficiently, without laying a single electrical cord until they were sure it would work. Using Creo Schematics, Virtual Interconnect documented both electrical and fluid systems and then simulated, tested, and modified these virtual prototypes with their in-house product, eSimulate.

The design took about a week. That has to be some kind of an Olympic record.

Rupert Soames, Chief Executive of Aggreko, welcomes the opportunity saying: “[It is] enormously exciting to have the opportunity to perform in front of our home crowd.  We look forward to supporting the Organising Committee in their task of providing faultless execution of the London Olympic Games and Paralympic games, and uninterrupted broadcasting to hundreds of millions of viewers world-wide.”

So when you tune into Bob Costas and crew, watch the stellar Opening and Closing ceremonies, or just chill and watch track, gymnastics, swimming, and a whole slew of other sports, remember Aggreko is in the background.

Windchill FMEA

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis that identifies potential failures

FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) software helps organizations improve product quality by identifying the sources and effects of risks and introducing control measures to mitigate or eliminate them. By implementing an FMEA tool early in the product development process, organizations can systematically identify risks at the functional, design, component, or process level and implement risk controls to effectively address them.

Windchill FMEA (formerly Relex FMEA) is a failure mode and effects analysis tool that gives you the power to systematically identify the potential failure modes of a system, and control or prevent their occurrence or effects. Supporting a wide range of industry standards used in FMEA and FMECA (Failure Mode. Effects, and Criticality Analysis) risk management techniques, Windchill FMEA enables you to identify and categorize failures, and to develop, organize and implement a plan to address them. Download a free, 30-day product trial to experience FMEA software that offers complete integration with several other quality, reliability and risk analysis tools available in the Windchill Quality Solutions suite.

Features & Benefits

• Track the compliance of parts and products against a wide range of commonly-used industry standards, including MIL-STD-1629A, IEC 61508, SAE ARP5580, AIAG, and more
• Support multiple users by leveraging an enterprise-wide Web interface built on Microsoft Silverlight with the ease-of-use of Windows
• Leverage DVP&R (Design Verification Plan and Report) and Control Plans to support the cross-functional communication and collaboration integral to successful risk management
• Extend your analysis to include FMECA, which considers criticality, and FMES (Failure Mode and Effects Summary)
• Manage the business processes essential to risk analysis and risk mitigation through workflow notifications and email alerts

Cool Tools for Design Collaboration

Allison and Vince show a range of collaboration tools that help designers collaborate with suppliers on product concepts without sharing the full intellectual property of their designs.

Microsoft Surface: Innovation in Design, Engineering, and Manufacture

By GEOFF HEDGES 

With the unveiling on Monday of Microsoft’s new Surface tablet computer, the company is challenging Apple’s iPad – and its own PC hardware partners.

The 10.6-inch Surface tablet, boasts covers that double as keyboards and trackpads, taking it beyond today’s tablets. Including the soon-to-launched Windows 8 operating systemthere’s some remarkable design and engineering evident in the device, best marrying software and hardware.

The Microsoft Surface even uses a new manufacturing process—VaporMg—that reduces weight while keeping strength. That process results in a built-in kickstand, invisible when using the product in tablet mode. It may seem obvious, but it’s innovative and easy. The same happen for the cover, it becomes a keyboard—with its own design breakthroughs. And again with the combination of multi-touch and pressure sensitive pen technology – there are dozens of breakthroughs not found in any tablet or computer today.

Go to timestamp 28:40 to hear Panos Panay, leader of the team that created the Microsoft Surface, talk about the design, engineering, and manufacturing of this new innovation.

Microsoft is no stranger to the hardware market. Its Xbox and Kinect devices (both designed in Creo) have become hugely popular living-room devices for gaming and much more.

And as you appreciate the styling and design of this tablet, one final point- Creo was used for the mechanical design aspects of this new generation of tablet.

Smackdown: Creo Parametric head-to-head with Pro/ENGINEER

Smackdown: Creo Parametric head-to-head with Pro/ENGINEER – Match 2

By GEOFF HEDGES | Published: JUL 3, 2012

As promised, we’ve got more Creo Parametric versus Pro/ENGINEER head-to-head action.

You may recall that when we tried to compare performance working with large assemblies, sketching, and freestyle, Creo Parametric dominated. This new generation of design software required less time and fewer actions to do exactly the same work. At least 30% less time and action, in fact.

But maybe we were handicapping the results, huh? Would Creo Parametric post the same results if we threw a different set of challenges at our independent testers?

Round 1: Sheet metal

In this round testers use flat pattern preview in Creo Parametric as they detect and modify overlapping geometry.

They also create bend features and use sketch forms to update the model. Watch the video to see the results. Notice how much time the Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 tester spends plowing through menus? In fact, the Creo Parametric user spends nearly 60% less time looking at menus. But that’s just the start:

Round 2: Measure

In the second round, we ask, “Can Creo Parametric 2.0 improve on measuring geometry?” Let’s see it try.

In this video you’ll see testers try out Creo Parametric’s unified measuring tool. The measuring dialog stays on screen as they inspect distances, volumes, areas, etc. It even populates all the measurement information for any reference they select. Watch as testers minimize and move all this data right on the geometry.

With 65% fewer menus to open to finish the same work, Creo Parametric testers simply do better when it comes to measure compared to Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire users too.

Round 3: 3D Cross section

We saved some of the most complex (and perhaps most impressive) tasks for last.  Creo Parametric 2.0 introduces cross-sectioning features and here the testers use it  to find interference, view 2D cross sections, change fill colors, and more.

They create and fine tune offset sections, preview just the features they want to see, and then view sections right in the model tree.

Pro/ENGINEER can perform some of these tasks, but it takes testers longer to get the same results. Much longer. See the video for details:

So, it wasn’t a fluke. Creo 2.0 can improve design performance and results no matter which areas of the software you lean on most heavily.