CoCreate vs. CREO future questions

[mrstero]

A few questions for you:

Are you going to switch to CREO? If yes, which CREO (1.0,2.0,3.0)?

If you will switch to windchill, will you use the upcoming "Windchill Workgroup Manager for CoCreate Modeling", or will you forever keep your legacy CoCreate files in Model Manager and use Windchill strictly for storing CREO files?

Are you considering a switch to a competing CAD / PDM supplier instead of accepting the CREO future?

Do you understand how explicit modeling capability will be rolled out in CREO?

[gmatelich]

My understanding is that we're at v17 now of Modeling/Drafting/ModelManager. The next releases of these products will be the same software with new names and a ribbon UI. So instead of v18 of Modeling/Drafting/ModelManager, we'll have v1.0 of Creo Elements/Direct Modeling, Creo Elements/Direct Drafting, and Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager.

As such, we expect to stay with the coming new releases of what we've got for the foreseeable future (which may not be very far, but at least a couple years), regardless of the name changes and UI changes and regardless of the behind the scenes changes that allow the use of the common data model, etc. One perk I've seen is that the new releases will include direct import of several other native data formats, including SolidWorks. I assume though that if you want to save native formats, it'll still cost you.

Having said that, I've seen statements lately that say that Creo Elements/Direct is not the same as Creo Direct. I'm not sure what that means. I'm guessing at some point a few years out, the technology that was CoCreate will be fully integrated with the technology that was Pro/E, so they'll just have different user interfaces for Pro and Direct and will no longer have different code working in the background.

We are running IFS as our ERP and half of our PDM, ModelManager is our other half. They don't interact at all. If it were up to me, I might consider some kind of Windchill in the future to replace the PDM part of IFS, but I know that will never happen in our corporate structure. I expect to stay with ModelManager (or whatever they call it in the future) until we're forced to migrate to something else, not just because that is the status quo (though that is part of it), but also because it is a good piece of software, that will hopefully see more improvements as we go forward.

[mrstero]

CREO ELEMENTS DIRECT is the continuation of the legacy CoCreate product, so you will see CREO ELEMENTS DIRECT (17.0 now) and then an 18.0, 18.1, 19, so on and so forth...

PTC says that they will continue and enhance this product indefinately. I propose it would be reasonable to think that this product would go away, but not for at least 5 years...

CREO DIRECT 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 is a completely different software product, which is new and written from the ground up to provide explicit modeling. Initially, this product will have less functionality vs. 17, 18, etc. of the legacy product.

once CREO DIRECT has enough explicit functionality, years down the road, I guess that the legacy cocreate product will go away.

[BMaverick]

Originally Posted by mrstero

once CREO DIRECT has enough explicit functionality, years down the road, I guess that the legacy cocreate product will go away.

So in other words, the old legacy CoCreate software code will be dropped while the newer "clean" code with functionality will load the legacy data in and become the new home. Therefore, if the newer "clean" code is written in the same method as Pro/E, the two can merge easily having both softwares in one and the ability to work in either fashion of prarametric or explicit.

That seems in theory to happen, the question is, how is the PLM side going to work? Other than just the CAD side, the PLM's from various other makers are looking at bridges to seemingly work together. Thus, anyone can store data within any PLM and be able to access that data no matter what software is needed to edit, modify or save the data.

In the next 10-15 years, CAD, CAM, FEA and PLM will be totally different than what we understand it today.

[gmatelich]

Who knows until we get there, but I suspect we won't move away from the modeling software formerly known as CoCreate until probably a year after it is no longer being revised (though probably before it is no longer supported). Part of the decision will be driven by whether there are amazing new features we can't live without - giving sufficient incentive to move earlier. A big part of the decision will come from what happens with respect to ModelManager, and its migration path.