My company is considering using Creo/Windchill to control some of our manufacturing equipment. For example, currently we use a lot of standard metal extrusions cut to different lengths. Right now we have a saw operator that cuts all of these parts. We want to export our cultists from Windchill or from our Creo assembly models to the saw, eliminating the need for someone to operate the saw all day. Or use our models to control our mills or plasma cutters. For these we currently export a .dxf, and an operator loads the .dxf to the machine and executes the programs. For this we are more interested in eliminating the step of exporting the .dxf file and want to use the sheetmetal model to control these machines.
I’m not sure where to begin my research on how to accomplish these types of tasks. I’m looking for some advice on where to begin with the research and maybe some experiences others have had with doing this.