A composite design begins with the creation of a new composite feature. The system guides you in setting up the Composite Design environment by prompting you to select one or more materials, define the layup surface and the stacking direction, and define the first rosette.

The plies and cores you create are added to the Laminate Tree, providing a clear view of the stacking sequence, the color coding, and the properties. The color coding that assigns the same color to the plies of same type ensures the ply traceability throughout the design. You can reorder the manual ply and core ply features to change the staking sequence order of plies and cores. You can define smooth transitions between plies and use the laminate section to have a clear insight of the stacking structure.

Once you define a composite design, you can use a draping simulation to check the producibility of plies and cores, splice or dart plies to prepare them for manufacturing, calculate the flat patterns, and export an analysis model to the DXF or DWG format.

When you create a composite feature, a ply-based solid can be created as a representation of the total laminate design, with an optional IML surface.

You can validate the design and then validate the changes using the integrated structural analysis in Creo Simulate or export the analysis model and perform analysis using third-party analysis tools.

Finally, you can use a predefined template to automatically create a ply book that provides a complete drawing set with a single sheet per laminate object.