Creo is a family or suite of Computer-aided design (CAD) apps supporting product design for discrete manufacturers and is developed by PTC. The suite consists of apps, each delivering a distinct set of capabilities for a user role within product development.

Creo runs on Microsoft Windows and provides apps for 3D CAD parametric feature solid modeling, 3D direct modeling, 2D orthographic views, Finite Element Analysis and simulation, schematic design, technical illustrations, and viewing and visualization.

Creo Elements/Pro and Creo Parametric compete directly with CATIA, Siemens NX/Solidedge, and SolidWorks. The Creo suite of apps replace and supersede PTC’s products formerly known as Pro/ENGINEER, CoCreate, and ProductView. Creo has many different software package solutions and features. Creo Illustrate is a good example.

PTC began developing Creo in 2009, and announced it using the code name Project Lightning at PlanetPTC Live, in Las Vegas, in June 2010.^[2] In October 2010, PTC unveiled the product name for Project Lightning to be Creo.^[3] PTC released Creo 1.0 in June 2011.^[4]

Creo apps are available in English, German, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simplified, and Chinese Traditional. The extent of localization varies from full translation of the product (including Help) to user interface only.

Creo is part of a broader product development system developed by PTC. It connects to PTC’s other solutions that aid product development, including Windchill for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Mathcad for engineering calculations and Arbortext for enterprise publishing software.