Not the most user-friendly, but highly capable
January 21, 2019
Not the most user-friendly, but highly capable
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with PTC Creo
Our mechanical engineering department uses PTC Creo to design mechanical components of electronic products. For us, a lot of the time this means an enclosure, but we also design mechanisms as well. The bulk of our designs will be molded plastic parts and we occasionally will design with sheet metal or other cast metal materials as well.
- Extrudes are easy in Creo, you can start with the tool or with a sketch and either way it doesn't get confused.
- Sweeps with Creo are better than in some of the other software packages. While sometimes other CAD packages will let you do the impossible, Creo simply gives you an error, which is how it should be.
- Assembly is very intuitive with Creo.
- Providing guidance through using tools is lacking in Creo. There is a small area where the text is displayed at the bottom that is supposed to help guide you, but many times the guidance doesn't make sense.
- Layers are a hassle in Creo. Unless you know how to set up your config file to do it automatically, you have to add each item to the appropriate layer.
- There is a lack of automation in Creo. In some other CAD packages, you can add holes or the like on a pattern of features. Not so in Creo.
- 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.
In my career, I’ve used a few different CAD packages. I started using Pro Engineer Wildfire 4, a predecessor to Creo which had all of the same problems as Creo, plus more. Creo has changed some things since then, but it seems to be built on the same base, so some things that seem like they should have changed and improved have not. After using Pro E for several years, I moved to a company that used a little-known software called Alibre. Although it was not a well-known package, it was fairly simple to use. There were some quirks. I think the biggest downfall of that software was that it didn’t handle imports of neutral formats well. Next, I used SOLIDWORKS for several years and it was the most user-friendly package I’ve used to date. Everything is well explained when you are using tools. I’ve also used Catia V5. Catia seemed more geared towards surfacing well rather than making 3D volumes well. Overall, I’d say for price and usability, I would recommend SOLIDWORKS over any other CAD software I’ve used, but since my company defaults to Creo, I have to use it if our client hasn’t requested that we use SOLIDWORKS.