PTC Creo vs. Tacton Design Automation

PTC Creo is great for assemblies that multiple users are collaborating on. Models can reference other models that someone in another department has released and when those models are changed, the referenced parts and assemblies are changed. These changes are very helpful when working on collaborative machine designs and comparing forging dies with the final parts.

Incentivized

For design automation for SOLIDWORKS, I feel Tacton Design Automation is the best solution out there. It's simple to develop and implement for the design/engineering department. But can be implemented within the sales team as well with Tacton CPQ. When a company has products that are modular and/or have many sizing updates, this is where Tacton excels. If you have products that are completely customized, then Tacton or even design automation isn't the best suited for that.

Incentivized

• PTC Creo contains many advanced tools with better optimization for creating part models and other production related drawings.
• The initial concept designs can be done more adequately.
• The parameters of 2D drawings can be changed easily by editing the 3D model.
• The productivity can be increased by customized tools for modeling.

Incentivized

• Tacton has a non-linear solver, meaning it can solve lots of equations without them being is a particular order. This enables the software to be incredibly flexible.
• Tacton has a great interface to set up configurators for people to use. No knowledge of programming languages is required. The configurator uses equations similar to Excel equations to control what the users options are.
• Tacton has the ability to easily add lists of data like product lists, beam or pipe sizes that because available for user selections or for calculations.
• The Tacton configurator also automatically builds the user interface as you set up user inputs making it much easier to set up then competitor software.

Incentivized

• PTC Creo could grow a help-line staff of highly experienced individuals to aid the existing knowledge base article searchers. It would include experts with deep knowledge of certain Creo modules (SMEs) and provide help staff a go to for deeper levels of help when it is needed.

Incentivized

• Layout mode is probably the most lacking aspect of the software (within Tacon Design Automation Engineer). Something so powerful as having modular parts should be more heavily supported. Although, I've heard Tacton is focusing on updating this with better functionality.
• The constraint editor does not display complex/lengthy constraints very well. I end up using Excel to visually break out in cells the different aspects of the constraint.

Incentivized

I liked the training manuals I used to learn some, as I didn’t have CAD background in college or before this job. My coworkers were able to share with me what they learned in PTC training and I was able to get support online and through reading.

Incentivized

Learning curve of SOLIDWORKS is higher compared to Creo, however, stability and more design control is provided by Creo. Creo also have more robust and stable interfaces. For larger assemblies, Creo works better than SOLIDWORKS. New upgrades of Creo has given liberty to open different file data of different software without any file conversion. Creo costs comparable to SOLIDWORKS cost, with more capabilities.

Incentivized

Drive Works is the main competitor for the TactonWorks module of Tacton. We actually discovered DriveWorks and purchased it before we discovered Tacton and started to use it. Once we discovered Tacton we liked it so much better we dropped using DriveWorks and switched to Tacton. I think you could accomplish what you need to in DriveWorks, but it is easier to setup in Tacton and Tacton has alot of features that really can make your product configurators nice

Incentivized

• Creo is our standard design package and as such we have had a negative impact on time spent designing because it is less user-friendly.
• In difficult design situations, we have had a positive impact because Creo is better suited for complex designs.

Incentivized

• Time to produce submittals went from 1-2 weeks down to a couple of days. Then, once approved, normally to produce the fabrication drawings (70+ unique parts) it would take from 4-6 weeks. We can get it down to as little as a few days.

Incentivized