The retract surface defines the level to which the tool retracts after a cut. Depending on your machining needs, you can specify the retract surface to be a plane, cylinder, or a sphere.

After you create a retract surface, if you want to re-use the same retract surface for another process, you can do so by saving the current process as a process template. Creo NC stores the retract surface related information in the process template, which can later be extracted to the desired process.