Continue to Site

Welcome to MCAD Central

Join our MCAD Central community forums, the largest resource for MCAD (Mechanical Computer-Aided Design) professionals, including files, forums, jobs, articles, calendar, and more.

Hating Creo 2

michael3130

New member
I've switched over to Creo 2 a week ago and so far I hate it . It feels like everything I do is now more complicated and takes extra clicks to do. A few times I've taken that long trying to find an icon I've forgotten what I was actually going to do. The most annoying thing has to be the assembly placement pop out lands directly in front of the top of the feature window blocking the planes...how did they ever let that through or think it was a good idea!!?? Maybe I'll get used to it after a while but right now I'm finding it very frustrating and it has definitely affected my productivity. Another issue I have is I can't find the options window to change 2D drawing items such as dimension height, arrow length, etc. In WF4 you would left click on the main window and go to properites then drawing options. Anyone know where I find this in Creo 2??

On the flip side I've been doing a lot of contract work over the past couple of months so in a normal week I'm using Solidworks as much as I'm using Creo 2. Solidworks is so much better from so many angles. I really dont want to raise the Solidworks v Creo debate yet again but if I had the choice now I would ditch Creo and use SW all the time.
 
Michael, I am in complete agreement about Creo 2. Just because it is different doesn't make it better. I have found a few things in Creo 2 that were nice, but I still struggle to find commands and I have been on it 5 months. To find the drawing options, open a drawing and go File, Prepare, Drawing Properties, Detail options. This will take you to the .dtl file.
 
Thanks Volunteer. That's what I'm worried about, 5 months down the line and still hunting for basic commands. I've never moved to a newer version of a software ppackage and felt so uncomfortable with it.
 
I should have indicated that we didn't get any training on Creo 2, just learn it on the fly. Up until this release of Pro/E (I have been on it since Version 17) I always thought when I looked at a new release........well they finally fixed that problem....or that is a better way of doing something......on Creo 2 it is just different not better.
 
to help find the commands, click on the magnifying glass at the top and type the command you want. It will not only launch the command but it also highlights in the ribbon where it is located. I agree that this version has been less than desirable. I have only been on it for a couple months. I hate that you have to pay attention to what ribbon you are in. For example, in drawing to change the text on our title block you have to be in "annotation" tab or you have to hold the alt key before it allows you to pick it. Little quirks like that make our job harder. But, this is just like it was when it switched to Wildfire. It took a while to get used to but after you found everything there were some added features that made things easier.
 
personally, I didn't find the switch that cumbersome. yeah, some stuff is moved and takes a moment to find the first time or two and yeah, some stuff I still struggle with but I struggled doing things in WF too so I don't really think Creo 2 is any different in that aspect. behind the fancy new UI, it's still the same code that they've been using since the '90s and it's still just a band aid on top of a band aid.
 
I don't have that much trouble with modeling or assemblies, but the drawing package flat out sucks. I would give anything to go back to WF4. Creo 2 has crashed 5 times more than WF4 (build 050). If something is better, I am all for it, but making changes so it looks different so you can sell more software seems to be the PTC way.
 
Thanks for that Krow, I'll try it. I am finding my way now and becoming slicker at finding my way through. It just feels like they have taken the ribbon route to be like everyone else and Solidworks and not done a very good job of it. When I started working here the company had only just moved to Wildfire so I didn't see the leap, I was jumping from Solidworks to Wildfire instead but I got on ok with that at the time. One thing I have found is it can be incredibly slow at doing some things. My machine was upgraded and specced for Creo 2, a Dell Precision T3600 with 16GB or RAM and fancy graphics card, etc and with Wildfire 4 it was so quick but with Creo it's slow. I know there are some things not set up correctly but surely it shouldn't take 10 seconds to measure between 2 points on a simple sheet metal part!!?? The company was debating whether to make the move to Solidworks and will decide some time after September of this year. If they were to ask me now I would say a definite yes to changing despite all the legacy data issues and so on.
 
ribbon interface

from a workflow approach the ribbon is not the best thing Microsoft came up with. Plus I think PTC organized their iconography with respect to locating functions were off some. I am on the other-hand excited with Creo 2.0 and remain positive as we see new releases.

When Microsoft Word went to the ribbon interface.... that us about the time we switched to Google documents for interoffice and out of office communications.
 
It gets better

When I first started using CREO (or Pro/E as it was back then), I had all the same type of frustrations that you are going through now. Once you get your head around it, it get s a lot better. Right now, I would use anything else. Right now I work in an office that uses Inventor, and if you want to use a program that really sucks, Inventor is the king of awful CAD software.
Anyway, my biggest piece of advice to you with regards to CREO is to create mapkeys. This is an extremely powerful tool within the software and it will save you enormous amounts of time and unnecessary mouse clicks. The feature takes to shortcut keys feature found in a lot of software to a new level, where you can program quite long and repetitive tasks or functions and condense them down to a few key stroke that make sense to you. It is fully customisable and extremely flexible and very easy to set up. Best feature I have ever come across! No more hunting for icons on different ribbons, everything can be automated You can program entire sequences of steps and in theory you could create a mapkey that will build an entire model from scratch. Its very handy during the drafting stage as you can program mapkeys that will cleanup all you dimensions and add specific notes etc.
Never used Solidworks, so I don’t know if it has the same feature, but I have read a review that tested Solidworks vs CREO (CADStig | Putting CAD/CAM through it's paces) , and CREO was a surprisingly 1.5 times faster to complete the same tasks.
 
I don't like the new ribbon interface. I thought it would get better with time, but I still don't like it. I am now constantly having to go to the top of the screen, change tab, open a flyout and select the command. I use a ton of mapkeys and any onscreen menus that are available, but the icons directly on menus were much faster. PTC used to be very concerned about how many clicks it took to complete a command (long ago in the menu driven days) but it seems now they are more worried about looking like Solidworks. Solidworks is a great program but if I wanted it I would buy it.

How hard would it be to add the old icon bars back and have a config option to use the old or new interface? The ribbon bar was created to help computer illiterates learn a program with pictures etc. How many designers using CAD software need that much direction?
 
hate is a powerful word. I really like Creo 2.0 but like anything new like the ribbon etc it's going to take some time to get used to it. I will go out on a limb and say that I am 10 percent faster with Creo 2.0 over wildfire 5.0

I tried not to bitch when I learned Solidworks ;) I did tho. 2013 is pretty good. Im still 25 percent faster or more in creo 2.0 over SW 2013 Attitude. It's all attitude and mine has gotten better with age.
 
Last edited:
Maybe hate is a strong word but the change over to Creo 2 has caused problems and reduced my productivity so that's the way I felt at the time. I have always loved using solid modelling packages since I began using them in 1998 and there will always be times when the software will bug me but changing to Creo was an annoyance. As I said, I'm not trying to start up a SW vs Creo 2 debate as those go on and on, I was more interested in people's views on Creo 2 and if they had the same issues as me. The reason SW was mentioned was that I am using it on a consultancy basis so on a typical day over the past few months I am using the 2 packages the same number of hours so I suppose I would always make some sort of a comparison. I'm getting more comfortable with Creo but a lot of it still sucks!! There are some improvements, I wont deny that but I would have been happy if they had just made those improvements and forgotten the ribbon interface as it's not an improvement at all.
 
I agree that all ribbon interfaces suck. I have not used one that doesn't require far more mouse clicks. MS's reasoning supposedly is that many users were never finding most of the new BS that they build into their newer software versions so they created the ribbon to expose us to all their goodness. Well guess what, I don't need or want most of the so called enhancements. I'm never going to do a "Mail Merge" or use the stupid excel "Styles". So don't put them in my face and make me do extra clicks just to get to the stuff I actually use. And who the he11 thought header and footer should be on the insert tab instead of the page format tab? Give me an clean interface that I can customize and doesn't use up half the screen, thank you.

Rant off.
 
Even if you customize them, you still have to be on the correct tab to use the command...grrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Yeah, customizing sucks. I have done it and it is still cumbersome. The ribbon take a lot more screen space than the icons that I would rather use as drawing space.

That's not all. I do a lot of sheet metal. You now have to group the bends into selection sets if you want to use anything other than bend thickness on a particular bend. I fail to see how it is faster than just selecting a bend and changing the diameter. If they wanted they could have made you hold down the control key if you needed to change multiple bends but the command just does not respond if there is no selections sets defined. The prompts are wrong as well. You have to select <thickness> instead of Thickness or Thickness *2 where the prompt used to be Enter Number.

Just a lot of command that are less intuitive and longer, not just the ribbon interface. It makes a lot of items feel like a workaround. There are a lot of functionality enhancements that are good like the flat preview and conversion previews. I wonder if PTC uses poles to see what their users want. Maybe the majority likes the Solidworks interface better and I am the minority.
 
Even if you customize them, you still have to be on the correct tab to use the command...grrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!

I customized mine so that almost all of the commands I use regularly are on the model tab. I very rarely have to switch tabs. I still do, but not very often. I also set up the main tab of my part, assembly, and drawing windows to look similiar so that no matter which one I'm in, I can switch to another window or close a window from the same place on the toolbar.
 
Most of you are talking about going from WF to Creo 2, is Creo 2 that much different from Creo 1? I am considering this and don't want major hassels in the middle of work in process? thanks.
 
We had a measurement delay issue when we went to Creo Parametric 2.
We discovered that changing the config setting “auto_regen_views” from “yes” to “no” fixed the issue.
 

Sponsor

Articles From 3DCAD World

Back
Top