Creo Parametric for 3D printing in schools
Really not certain what the proper name is for this program... "Creo", "Creo 1", "Creo Parametric", "Creo Parametric 1" or ?? I've seen it referred to as all of these (even by PTC themselves)
Anyway whatever it's called I found out yesterday that DATA the organisation that has been administering this software for schools in the UK are handing back the responsibility to PTC in a couple of months time. I also found out that with PTC's education program I can upgrade my school install from creo elements pro (wf5) to Creo Parametric. So I sent off my emails, registered, and downloaded the software. I must admit it was a bit of a fuss getting all the licence files, Host ID and other details up together but after that the install went really smoothly. I had a bit of a tussle getting the program to display things properly but that's down to my ancient laptop not dealing with opengl graphics very well, so had to change it to win32_gdi and now it works fine.... Probably not as pretty on screen but hey ho....
So, I'll give it a go for a few weeks on my machine before risking a full network install in school, it will give me a chance to get to grips with all the new fancy stuff and also let me find where they have hidden everything on the lovely new ribbon toolbars.... A good idea perhaps to do this before I try teaching it!
Good news is that it opens files fine from previous (education) versions of creo elements, pro engineer or whatever it was called.... And the stl files export ok for 3D printing... So let's see how it goes. I'm sure I'll be blogging about all this again soon.

