IGES (Initial Graphics Exchange Specification) was among first vendor-neutral CAD formats designed to enable interoperability between different CAD systems. The latest versions of IGES have been approved by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) and published by US PRO (U.S. Product Data Association). The latest officially approved version of the IGES standard is version 5.3 which was published in 1996. Nonetheless, IGES remains a broadly used format (along with STEP) supported by all major CAD/CAM/CAE systems such as CATIA, Autodesk Inventor, Solidworks, Solid Edge, NX, Pro/Engineer, Creo and multiple others. IGES files usually have *.igs or *.iges file name extensions.
PTC Creo by Parametric Technology Corporation, known as Pro/Engineer is a 3D CAD, CAM, CAE, and associative solid modeling application. It provides solid modeling, assembly modeling, 2D orthographic views, FEA, direct and parametric modeling, sub-divisional and NURBS surface modeling, and tools for mechanical designers. Its users are mostly mechanical engineers, designers and manufacturers. The app runs on Microsoft Windows.
The application is based on the parametric modeling approach, which means that it uses parameters, dimensions, features, and relationships to enable design automation and optimization of design and product development processes. Companies with family-based or platform-driven product strategy make use of this approach for what they need to perform successful design processes is a prescriptive design strategy.
The capabilities of the product can be split into three main groups, that is Engineering design, Analysis and Manufacturing. Product design processes include the ability to generate geometry of other integrated design disciplines such as industrial and standard pipe work and complete wiring definitions. Creo has numerous analysis tools which help with the development of the product which include human factors, manufacturing tolerance, mould flow and design optimization. As for manufacturing, the app has tooling options for molding, die-casting and progressive tooling design.
PTC Creo file extensions are .prt and .asm.
A CAD file is an output of a CAD software, containing key information about the designed object: its geometry and topology representation, 3D model hierarchy, metadata, and visual attributes depending on the format of the file.
Read moreCAD Exchanger enables RapidSense and RapidPlan to read 3D CAD formats thanks to a unified API, fast data processing, adjustable meshing, and cancellation support.
Read moreWe will start a series of a blog posts dedicated to different 3D CAD file formats. We begin with the veteran among CAD data - IGES.
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