PTC and Stratasys Collaborate to Optimise 3D Printing Workflows

PTC and Stratasys announced the companies are working together to deliver a seamless experience between PTC Creo® design software and Stratasys 3D Printing Solutions. The joint vision is to make additive manufacturing more accessible to designers and manufacturers and to allow them to fully realize the advantages of the technology. These advantages include geometric freedom and part functionality, economic low volume and on-demand manufacturing, the production of customized products, and more.

Today, designers and manufacturers typically need to use multiple tools along with 3D CAD software to design, optimize, and validate parts for 3D printing. This can be a cumbersome, inefficient, and sometimes a disconnected process that makes it difficult to accurately produce the final manufactured part. It may necessitate additional efforts and increase time and resources.

The goal of the integrated solution is to define and deliver design for additive manufacturing. This is the ability to seamlessly create, optimize, validate and produce parts through the additive manufacturing process.

PTC and Stratasys begin to deliver this vision by offering a seamless workflow from design to 3D print, now available in PTC Creo 3.0. This new integrated workflow streamlines the 3D printing experience by allowing users to perform informed design specification, file preparation, print optimization and print execution for Stratasys 3D Printing Solutions from within the PTC Creo environment.

The first 3D printer which can take full advantage of the new joint solution is the Stratasys Objet500 Connex3 Multi-color, Multi-material 3D Production System, which delivers 3D printed parts with multi-color and multi-material combinations, superior surface quality, color accuracy and functionality. Integration with additional Stratasys 3D Printing Solutions is planned for future releases.

“In sharing a common vision of the future of additive manufacturing, Stratasys and PTC have forged a close relationship that begins to benefit our common customers today,” said Mike Campbell, executive vice president, CAD, PTC. “I’m excited about the impact I believe our collaboration will have on new designs across all industries as additive manufacturing continues to grow in production usage, and as our integration and respective products’ capabilities continuously improve.”

PTC and Stratasys aim to drive further adoption of additive manufacturing across a wide range of industries, from automotive and consumer electronics to aerospace and defense, with substantial benefits for designers, engineers and manufacturers in the production of prototypes, manufacturing tools and finished products.

”Lowering the barriers involved in designing for 3D printing and unlocking the vast potential of additive manufacturing are primary goals of Stratasys’ strategic vision,” said Dan Yalon, executive vice president, business development, marketing & vertical solutions, Stratasys. “By cooperating together, PTC and Stratasys intend to bring significant value to our customers – making additive manufacturing more accessible while providing practical, easy-to-use tools for designing and manufacturing using 3D printing.”