How to Install Simulation Menu Item In Network Installations of ProE/Creo

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Simulation Mechanical can be installed to the same computer as ProE/Creo, and during the installation, an option will appear to run the "Pro/ENGINEER Installation Utility" which will place the Simulation menu within ProE/Creo.  This menu allows geometry to be transferred directly from ProE/Creo to Simulation Mechanical.

For situations where ProE/Creo is installed to the network and not locally to the same computer as Simulation Mechanical, the option to run the "Pro/ENGINEER Installation Utility" will not be available from the "SimMechConfig.exe" as described in the documentation.  This option is unavailable only because the local installation of ProE/Creo was not found, but we can work-around this limitation.

We can still run the "Pro/ENGINEER Installation Utility" manually from a command prompt and reference the ProE/Creo installation files from this wizard.  When finished, the Simulation menu item will appear in ProE/Creo and models can be transferred directly from ProE/Creo to Simulation Mechanical.

Here are the steps required to run this installation wizard manually:

• Open a command prompt "As an administrator" on the workstation for which Simulation Mechanical was installed
• Type the following command:
  • "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Simulation 2015\Addins\CADProE.exe" /force "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Simulation 2015"
  • (Where "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Simulation 2015" is the path to the Simulation Mechanical installation directory)
• Choose the <Enter> key on your keyboard then follow the prompts and select the ProE/Creo network installation files and finish the wizard.

Once this has been completed, the Simulation menu item should appear from within ProE/Creo and models can be transferred directly to Simulation Mechanical.

Some items to keep in mind are:

• Simulation Mechanical can open ProE/Creo files directly.  So if this connection does not exist, the Part and Assembly files can still be opened from the File|Open dialog within Simulation Mechanical.
• The Simulation Mechanical files are written to the same directory as the originating files.  So if the ProE/Creo files reside across the network, then the Simulation Mechanical files will be saved there as well.  It will be required that read/write permissions exist for the user to access this directory for proper software functionality.  Also, there will be a reduction in performance due to the burden of network connectivity.  The fastest performance will occur when all files reside on the same workstation as the Simulation Mechanical software.