Mold Tools

Books to help you with SW mold design? Not yet, at least I haven't seen
any.

The mold tools in SW are in general pretty awful, there are a couple of
them that I use, but in general I avoid them. One of the reasons is
that SW is more and more insisting on doing things in multi-bodies
rather in assemblies. In an assembly you can segment your work and
close down the rest of it when you're only working on a single part. In
multi-body, all your eggs are literally in one basket.

The Draft Analysis is pretty good, Split Line is useful, Draft function
works well. The Undercut function always says that all the faces of the
part are undercut (because it classifies them from the wrong side of the
mold, but of course SW tells me that "this is working as designed"), and
the Thickness Analysis for plastic parts is tough to get meaningful
results from, but it does work.

The Parting Line, Shut off surfaces, and especially Parting Surface
functions are not reliable at all. You'd be way better off just doing
things manually rather than trying to use these because you would wind
up going back and repairing problems and working around stuff that just
doesn't work or doesn't give you results you can work with. For
example, the Parting Surface won't work at all if you have small concave
features at the PL, and it will give you results you can't control if
you have a PL that is not planar.

Anyway, I use SplitWorks. It's kind of quirky, but you can always get
it to help you out. The one thing it doesn't handle at all is complex
shut offs. Simple shutoffs it does automatically, but passing shutoffs
are always a manual surfacing job. I believe the other mold split
packages are going to be pretty much in the same boat, although I may be
wrong about that. It has been a couple of years since I used Faceworks
(from Capvidia) and iMold. They each had their drawbacks, which is why
I chose SplitWorks.

If your company won't pay for training, you're kind of in a bad
position. Learning this on your own won't be much fun. VARs are
usually a bad source of information for mold applications, cuz they
typically don't have engineers with mold experience, although you may
get lucky.

There are a couple of sources of info which you might see if you can get
your hands on. First, at the last SolidWorks World, There were two mold
presentations. If you know someone who went and has the CDs, the
powerpoint presentations might be worth having.

Matt

 

"The company that I work for doesn't allow training, you
have to figure it out on your own"

This is now pretty much the standard in a small machining
job shop. Means that documentation is critical. I've put a
lot of effort into getting better documentation done for the
product I prefer.

Perhaps one of the reasons SaladWorks documentation on mold
design is so poor and that there are no books is that
SaladWorks Corp. doesn't want to document how poor their
mold design tools are ? I'm not a mold designer but I have
noticed over the years that many people seem very unhappy
with SaladWorks as mold design tool. Just recently the
person prominently featured in a SaladWorks ads, who is a
regular poster here, stated he would like to see SaladWorks
Corp. withdraw the ad that has him raving about SaladWorks for
mold design. Like you (and I) he has a Cadkey background.

If I were in your shoes, I would stay with Cadkey until
SaladWorks gets better or find away to switch to VX which
seems to have plenty of mold tools that VX creates
themselves rather then rely on a third party. Steve Mackay
posts here and in alt.machines.cnc. He uses VX. You might
want to ask Steve Mackay what he thinks of VX's mold design
capabilities.


jon

 

Hi,

I've been using SolidWorks as a secondary tool for years, with Cadkey 19 as
my main design software. I'm used to doing my core and cavity creation in
assembly mode, the old fashioned way. I have just struggled through my
first attempt at using the new mold tools (new in 2003). The company that I
work for doesn't allow training, you have to figure it out on your own.
Does anyone have any suggestion for books that will bring me up to speed in
SolidWorks? Particularly in mold design?
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

rhuber @ ivanhoetool dot com

 

Oh, goodie .... now we know what he's expert in ....
besides bitch & whine with no clues.
Except who would believe him?