Data Sheet

PTC Creo Elements/Direct

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A Comprehensive Environment for your Direct Approach to 3D CAD Product Design

PTC Creo Elements/Direct is for innovative leaders in discrete

manufacturing and other industries who are facing intense
time-to-market pressure. Many of the world’s best-known product
development companies depend on PTC Creo Elements/Direct for
a direct 3D product development process in order to meet shorter
design cycles, create one-off product designs quickly, and respond
to unpredictable design requirement changes.
If you are looking for maximum ease and flexibility Lightweight. Flexible. Fast. Connected
in creating one-off designs or radically repurposing
designs, a “direct modeling” approach to 3D design is PTC Creo Elements/Direct delivers speed, flexibility,
the right choice. Most companies add 3D modeling to and responsiveness- to-change for customers
their product design process to overcome increased pursuing a lightweight design strategy. As the pioneer
pressures in manufacturing, such as shortened and leading provider of direct modeling, PTC Creo
time-to-market, customer demand for new products, Elements/Direct provides you with unique flexibility
and increasingly complex customer requirements. throughout your entire product development process:
PTC Creo Elements/Direct addresses these
challenges with direct 3D CAD, CAE, and product • Lightweight: Intuitively design products using
data management that provide the optimal level of direct, on-thefly interactions with model geometry
design flexibility.
PTC Creo Elements/Direct uniquely captures
less model definition information for a genuinely
lightweight and flexible product design process.
Product designs evolve freely without designers
needing to anticipate downstream design changes or
maintain embedded design logic such as tangency
conditions. As a result, lightweight model geometry
is central to the PTC Creo Elements/Direct 3D CAD
system. Consequently, your direct modeling files are,
on average, one-third the size of parametric modeling
files which makes your models easier to access,
modify, archive, and share.

Flexible: Easily address unexpected and radical

PTC Creo Elements/Direct is a comprehensive design product design changes
environment for engineering teams that require a direct
modeling approach.

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Since you’re creating and modifying model geometry • System design

using direct, on-the-fly interactions, you have ultimate
• Design outsourcing
flexibility throughout your design process. Therefore,
you can easily pick up a design where others left off, • Detailed design
much like the way you can open up and immediately
continue working on an existing Microsoft Word® PTC Creo Elements/Direct Modeling makes creating
document. PTC Creo Elements/Direct Modeling and modifying 3D designs fast, easy, and flexible.
provides flexibility in several other ways, by giving PTC Creo Elements/ Direct Modeling is packed with
you the ability to respond to changes in design team an extensive list of features for innovative customers
composition or work easily with design data from any who demand speed, flexibility, and responsiveness-to-
3D or 2D CAD system as if it were native design data. change.

• Fast: Easy to learn and intuitive to use, PTC Creo

Elements/Direct lets engineers shave weeks – even
months – from project schedules

For engineers and designers who need an easy-to-

learn user experience, PTC Creo Elements/Direct
provides an intuitive, ribbonbased user interface
consistent across all PTC Creo applications. It lowers
the learning curve for new users while enabling expert
designers to be more productive. Additionally, existing
2D designers can transfer their skills and quickly
adopt 3D direct modeling in a matter of weeks. PTC
Creo Elements/Direct offers the simplicity of 2D with
the power of 3D.

• Connected: Realize more value from product A direct approach to 3D CAD design makes creation and
development with PTC’s integral Product modification of 3D designs fast, easy, and flexible. You can
rapidly evolve a product design in unpredictable and new
Development System
directions when modifications cannot be anticipated in advance.
As part of PTC’s integral Product Development
System (PDS), PTC Creo Elements/Direct gives you
Key benefits
a seamless user experience with other PTC product
• Optimize concept development, detailed design,
families, including other PTC Creo applications, PTC
and system design processes
Arbortext® , PTC Mathcad®, and PTC Windchill®.
-- Quickly create and modify 3D parts and
PTC Creo Elements/Direct Modeling–the world’s #1 assemblies
direct 3D CAD system
-- Shave time off design cycles by repurposing – or
PTC Creo Elements/Direct Modeling is the easiest 3D radically transforming – existing designs into
CAD system to learn and use. PTC Creo Elements/ new and completely different products
Direct provides a lightweight 3D design approach -- Accommodate major, unexpected design changes
that can help you advance many of your engineering at any stage of development, while keeping the
processes, including: transition to manufacturing on schedule

• Concept development • Increase engineering productivity by eliminating

resource bottlenecks and project delays via
• Verification and validation flexible design teams and better support for design
outsourcing processes

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• Directly leverage multi-source CAD data from • Automates development processes and is
suppliers and subcontractors in the design process customizable and programmable so it can be
tailored to fit companyspecific needs
• Easily move from 2D to 3D, and switch smoothly
from other 3D CAD systems confidently knowing • Offers an easy migration path to PTC Creo
that all legacy 2D and 3D CAD data carries forward Elements/Direct Modeling, the industry’s #1 direct
in PTC Creo Elements/ Direct Modeling 3D modeling software

• Broaden your design possibilities by using PTC Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager and PTC
downstream PTC Creo applications such as PTC Creo Elements/Direct Drawing Manager – integrated
Creo Parametric™, PTC Creo Simulate™ , and PTC 3D and 2D product data management
Creo View MCAD™
Integrating your 3D and 2D Product Data Management
PTC Creo Elements/Direct Drafting – for professional (PDM) is simple with PTC Creo Elements/Direct Model
2D CAD design and drafting Manager and PTC Creo Elements/ Direct Drawing
Manager. You can effectively orchestrate team design
Companies that use a 2D CAD system for conceptual,
processes and manage associated product design
visual, and detailed design processes can leverage
data within a central database. Plus, with a fast,
PTC Creo Elements/ Direct Drafting. Exclusively
intuitive installation, you can immediately benefit from
developed for mechanical engineers and designers,
a preconfigured, best-practice data management
PTC Creo Elements/Direct Drafting helps you achieve
solution.
new levels of productivity with innovative part and
assembly capabilities and powerful 2D commands.
Key benefits

• Speed development and cut costs – Cut engineering

time and drive down manufacturing costs by
managing multiple product configurations with high
cross-leverage, and by reusing shared parts and
assemblies across product platforms

• Allows engineers to use PTC Creo Elements/Direct

Model Manager as the centralized workgroup
database and share released design data with other
enterprise systems (such as ERP) for the flexibility
to support a broad range of enterprise data
management strategies and systems

• Scales from the global enterprise down to the

single-person shop
PTC Creo Elements/Direct Drafting is a complete 2D CAD -- Any size company can easily move into an
system tuned to the specialized needs of mechanical engineers
orchestrated 3D product development and
and designers.
lifecycle management process.
Key benefits -- With support for Web Services and a web-based
client access, extended teams and users can take
• Satisfies the 2D needs of designers and mechanical advantage of the product content as the system of
engineers in product development record assemblies
• Applies an innovative part and assembly
structure that matches how engineers design
and manufacture products, making 2D product
development fast and easy

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 Data Sheet

• Cable and harness design: Create cables,

harnesses, and bill-of-materials documentation
with PTC Creo Elements/ Direct Cabling, including
drawings for electrical cables, harness routes, and
nail boards

• Mold base design: PTC Creo Elements/Direct

Mold Base reduces the effort of designing plastic
injection molds through its highly interactive and
intelligent tooling.

• Sheet metal design: With PTC Creo Elements/

Direct Sheet Metal, build design and manufacturing
advice into sheet metal parts and simulate design
and manufacturing behaviors

• Industrial design: Designed for companies and

industrial designers who want to create appealing
Stay up-to-date with integrated PTC Creo Elements/Direct
and ergonomic products, PTC Creo Elements/
Model Manager status and revision notifications from inside the
PTC Creo Elements/Direct Modeling structure browser. Direct Surfacing provides the perfect combination
of freeform surfacing and solid modeling in one
environment
• Streamlines processes and eliminates the time and
expense of manual data management processes.

-- Ensure design integrity and work with up-to-date

revisions of design data across the development
team, with safeguards against accidental data
loss.

-- Connect to PTC Windchill, PTC’s leading

PLM solution, for deep support of product
development processes across the enterprise

Extended capabilities for 3D CAD productivity

The PTC Creo Elements/Direct design solution

provides key 3D productivity-enhancing capabilities
for users in specific lines of business and industries. The PTC Creo Elements/ Direct Sheet Metal knowledge database,
Easily extend the use of 3D throughout your design with its manufacturing tools, ensures the manufacturability of
projects and organization with these fully integrated the design.

capabilities as you quickly develop products from

concept to manufacturing:
• Plastic design: Speed up the design of plastic parts
by using streamlined, parameter-driven features
and core and cavity commands. Automatically
create mold cavities and cores, and use digital
prototyping to detect undercuts and constant
wall thickness

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 Data Sheet

• Structural and thermal analysis: With the For more information, visit:
simulation and digital prototyping capabilities of http://www.ptc.com/product/creo/creo-cocreate-
PTC Creo Elements/Direct Finite Element Analysis, customer.htm
you can validate your product designs to meet your
customers’ physical demands and streamline your © 2014, PTC Inc. All rights reserved. Information described herein is furnished

verification and validation processes. for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not
be taken as a guarantee, commitment, condition or offer by PTC. PTC, the PTC
logo, Product & Service Advantage, Creo, Elements/Direct, Windchill, Mathcad,
• Advanced analysis: Fully evaluate and optimize Arbortext, PTC Integrity, Servigistics, ThingWorx, ProductCloud and all other
your design, improving product quality while PTC product names and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of PTC
and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other product
reducing physical prototyping expense, with PTC or company names are property of their respective owners.
Creo Simulate Advanced Extension.
J3288–Elements/Direct –DS–EN–0114

Platform support and system requirements

Visit the PTC support page for platform support and

system requirements.

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