Creo Explained – Part 1
PTC finally decided to give me a media license of Creo Parametric and Creo Direct. Being a PTC partner I have had access to the software for quite a while now, but wasn’t allowed to write about it. In this series I will explain Creo as I understand it and offer my two cents as well.
They say never judge a book by its cover. This is very true in the case of Pro/ENGINEER. I have never been a fan of the Pro/ENGINEER user interface. Not just the way it works, but even the way it looks. Being a software developer myself I put a respectable amount of thought into how my software looks – the way controls are placed and grouped in dialog boxes, spaces between controls, aspect ratios of windows, stuff like that. Many of you may not find a problem with this dialog box. But I do.
But I’m pretty sure many of you will find a problem with the way the X, Y and Z letters look in the screenshot below.
Absolutely horrendous. No other words to describe this. What were the folks at PTC thinking? How the hell did this pass through QA? Take a look at this screenshot of the “Render” ribbon tab. Just look at the icons.
Really? What is this crap? Looks like PTC is using the icons created a couple of decades ago. I haven’t seen a worse looking CAD software in my lifetime. And I don’t think I ever will.
I’m not sure I get the point here. Is PTC trying to portray Creo as a tried and tested antiquated piece of software? I thought the point of rebranding Pro/ENGINEER to Creo was to make it look like a next generation thing. The UI of Creo reminds me of the time I listened to disco music on a audio cassette player.
OK, enough of bitching about the user interface of Creo. In the next part I’ll explain Creo Parametric and Creo Direct.
Part 2 >>
Update (19-Oct-2011)
Geoff Hedges of PTC Marketing left a comment referring to the icons as temporary placeholders that were not correctly replaced before shipping Creo. He adds that the problem will be fixed in the next maintenance release of Creo which is due to be out in November.