Designed for rapid capture of design alternatives, Creo Sketch’s defining characteristics are its compatibility with the Creo line and its price.

Today PTC released Creo Sketch 1.0, a 2D sketching tool, as part of the new line of Creo product development applications which replace and extend the former Pro/Engineer and CoCreate product lines. The idea is to have a basic sketch tool for product development, something for anyone who needs to simply draw an idea which will then be passed along to others in the company using PTC Creo applications.

Anyone who has used a contemporary sketch tool will quickly be at home in Creo Sketch—and that’s both a blessing and a curse for the product. There are many fine sketch programs on the market. Unless the user needs to communicate design ideas with other Creo users, there’s nothing special except the price to attract users. While completely adequate as a general purpose sketch tool, it only rises to the top of the heap when used as part of a Creo design ecosystem. Many designers are gravitating to the iPad; Creo Sketch only works in Windows, and there are currently too few Windows tablets to give Creo Sketch an edge. One hardware advantage for Creo Sketch is its support for the Wacom line of drawing tools.

Creo Sketch has the usual assortment of paint effects, curves, lines, layers, and editing commands. Its minimalist user interface balances the Windows 7 ribbon bar with the other apps in the Creo line. I found it easy to use. But no sketch tool is good enough to make my scratchings worth publishing, so the images here are courtesy PTC.

The intended role for Creo Sketch is to provide a simple tool to communicate the proverbial napkin sketch within the Creo environment. A completed drawing can become the background for developing a 3D model using the Trace Sketch command. For sharing outside the Creo environment, Creo Sketch supports TIFF, BMP, JPG, and PNG drawing formats.

Like any commercial software company giving away free product, you have to fill out a form with contact information first. There are certainly more intrusive inquiries than the one for Creo Sketch.

If you have any curiousity about what PTC is up to with Creo, or lack a sketching tool designed with a CAD user’s ethic, Creo Sketch is certainly worth a look.

List of features

Sketching

• Free and flexible pencils, markers and airbrushes

– Choose from a standard palette or make your own

• Standard look and feel of all Creo apps

• Full tablet support for products such as Wacom

– Adds pressure sensitivity to the brushes

• Advanced effect brushes

– Blur

– Sharpen

– Lighten

– Darken

– Smudge

• Cloning and stamping tools

• Full layer control and definition

• Support for textures

• Open and save common file formats, including TIFF, BMP, JPG, and PNG

Precision

• Create lines, arcs, circles, rectangles and splines

• Trace along curves with any brush

• Copy and pattern curves

• Full text support

Communication

• Share visual ideas quickly with integrated email feature

• Directly open into other Creo apps such as a Trace Sketch

Language support

• English

More information: Creo Sketch product page.