Wood construction techniques?

I asked this over in the SWX forum, but thought I might hit a bigger
audience over here.

I design molds out of wood. Alot of times have mutiple peices stacked
on top of one another for strength.

What would be the best way to go about doing this?

First I did it by starting with an assy sketch of my profile, showing
the various pieces of wood, Then I made seperate peices and assembled
them.

After making over 50 seperate part files and then finding it difficult
to manage them I thought maybe the best way is to extrude the "stacked
wood" profile as one and then split them up later with planes. So I
can get a drawing view of each peice of wood for my cutlist.

And yet again I started going about it a different way and playing
around with the mold tools, thinking that I can use envelopes to
section out the areas that I will have to design inserts for.

I'm new to SWX, if you can't tell already.

Someone suggested weldments but after checking into them more it
doesn't seem like that would be the proper way.

Any ideas appreciated.
Thanks!

 

Try split part.

First, model your pattern as one piece.
Then make surfaces that peel off layers the thickness of the wood or
ren. SW will then make a series of parts for each piece and an assembly
that holds them together.

 

Here's an example of using a multibody file and cutting away the wood
blocks using the final shape (outer surface offset).
You can then split the part into your individual blocks (files)... or
the above can be made of seperate wood blocks assembled to begin with,
then cut away using the surface final part (incontext or using
insert/part).

http://zxys.com/misc/cutwood.zip

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