There are two approaches today in 3D product development: a Dynamic or Direct Modeling approach, and the traditional history based or parametric approach. The approach you should use depends on your company, your products and their product development lifecycle. Freely creating and modifying the geometry directly is at the heart of a direct modeling approach. Designers interact directly with the model geometry and don’t have to create or maintain a complex recipe of parametric design features to produce model geometry. Creo Elements/Direct (formerly CoCreate), the market leader in Direct Modelling provides speed, flexibility and responsiveness to change for customers facing short design cycles, one-off product designs or companies demanding a lightweight design process, allowing development times to be cut by up to 50%.
From the world’s tallest crane to the smallest electromechanical linear drive, Creo Elements/Direct Modeling has helped design teams around the world master complex design changes and deliver award winning and record breaking products.
Who is it for? Creo Elements/Direct Modeling is ideal for any product designer or design team. It’s especially helpful to those who work in a fast-paced environment with frequent and unexpected design changes, as well as those who expect to modify or reuse existing designs frequently.
Key features include:-
- Direct modeling.
- Large assembly handling.
- Machining features.
- Surfacing.
- Rendering.
- Associative drawing creation.
- Manufacturing information including standard PMI (Product Manufacturing Information) terms and clash analysis.
- Extensive data exchange options.
Extend the capability with:-
- Advanced Design module: Control and animate assemblies with this new enhanced module, offering new relation types such as Cam, Rack and Gear for realistic motion analysis as well as an improved relation type creation using Dynamic Positioning. Advanced Design is ideal for project teams that want to extend the use of 3D beyond product design. External team members can also benefit from the enriched models produced by the design team.
- Advanced Sheet Metal. This extends the Sheet Metal capability already in Creo Elements/Direct Modeling and provides engineers with the ability to design precision sheet metal parts. Designers can streamline the design for manufacturing process, gain productivity, shorten lead times and reduce scrap and material costs with this versatile add-on module. The module is developed for engineers who work with sheet metal parts and provides a range of dedicated commands and tools to help avoid common manufacturing errors.
Advanced Surfacing. Surfacing for Creo Elements/Direct Modeling provides industry standard surfacing techniques to create the most complex ergonomic shapes faster. It is ideal for product designers who want to quickly and easily create curvature continuous surfaces. They can also use surface analysis to visually inspect the quality of these surfaces with this add-on module.- BOM Editor: Generate, manage, and edit a bill of materials for any 3D data in seconds. This module which works with both Drawing Manager and Model Manager allows both CAD and non-CAD engineers manage, modify and export Bill of Materials (BOM) quickly and easily. The BOM module integrates both 3D and 2D data and allows engineers to also include supplier items and non-manufactured items. This module forms part of CoCreate’s 3G PLM vision for manufacturing process and data control. Resilient BOM can be integrated into Modeling or Drafting.
- Cabling. Cabling for Creo Elements/Direct Modeling ensures effective manufacturing by creating and validating 3D cable harnesses in your mechanical design. Bring together electrical and mechanical designs, cut errors, and speed up the design of complex wire harness assemblies with this versatile add-on module. Extensive import capabilities allow close integration to the leading ECAD systems. Resultant cable date can then be uploaded back to the ECAD system for the complete solution.
- FE Analysis. FE Analysis for Creo Elements/Direct Modeling provides embedded finite element analysis to any designer so they can quickly optimize their product designs. Using the most common types of analysis, including stress levels, thermal behaviour, displacements, and resonant frequencies, designers can analyze any design with this add-on module to Creo Elements/Direct Modeling. The module is designed to allow non-specialists to quickly and easily make informed judgements about the design as it evolves.
- MoldBase. Mold Base for Creo Elements/Direct Modeling provides intuitive and intelligent design tools for injection moulding departments. With over 15 commercial component libraries (DME, National, Progressive, Futuba, etc.), designers can save time by not having to redesign or create injecting moulding components.
