SolidWorks Mold Tools
We’ve seen some increased activity in the past couple of months around the SolidWorks Mold Tools. More than a decade ago I wrote the original training book on the Mold Tools, which they insisted on naming with the words “Mold Design” in the title. I was of course opposed to that because the book had nothing at all to do with mold design. It was cavity and core modeling.
We used to have tools like MoldWorks, which had an automated, but fairly regimented way of working through a mold. It came with a library for some of the most common mold components, which was useful if you happen to use what they send you. Most CAD libraries that have much value are the ones you build yourself, when it comes right down to it. You could customize it for your own purposes, but I found it took a while for me to get my head around this product. It still exists, but I haven’t kept up with it. MoldWorks helped you build the entire mold, while SplitWorks does what the SolidWorks Mold Tools do – just split cavity and core. And then there was ElectrodeWorks, which helped you create electrodes to burn various things you can’t machine.
The SolidWorks mold tools push you through a process:
- You had to start with a part, and they recommend you add yo
Plastic part with parting line ur shrink factor to the part before getting started.
- Add special mold folders to the FeatureManager. These are essentially surface body folders that organize surfaces and help you see when you have a complete cavity or core side surface.
Cavity and core blocks with plastic part - Establish parting lines. This is a fairly awkward tool that walks you around part edges and allows you to establish the parting line edges. In my experience, this is awkward, slow, and inaccurate, but to get the process to work, you have to feed SolidWorks this information.
- Establish shut-off surfaces. Once you have the outer parting lines figured out, the software can identify the shut-off surfaces for you. It then asks you to build surfaces that close these holes.
- Establish parting surfaces. Once you have the part, the parting lines, and the shut-offs, you can pretty easily select the faces to use for the cavity/core faces.
- Then you establish the insert block, and the software splits it.
- You can get core geometry for pulls, lifters, side cores, or whatever you
SolidWorks Mold Tools FeatureManager for a simple part have.
The process doesn’t go beyond that into the overall mold assembly, plates, ejectors, sprue, gates, pins, cooling, slides, strippers, or whatever. You pretty much get the inserts with part geometry in them.
I found there was an obsession with interlock geometry, even when it would probably not be used in a real mold. Sometimes even planar parting lines could be difficult if the plastic part had a concave silhouette. This might have been part of the reason for preferring interlocks (requires less of a planar extension).
One of the things you need to be ready for with the SolidWorks Mold Tools is manual intervention. For whatever reason, it is easy for things to simply not work. It isn’t always clear to me why things don’t work, and if you have enough time you might be able to go back through all of the selections of edges and faces and make sure everything is correct. When it doesn’t work, you don’t necessarily know it until the end, when it won’t split the insert block.
At one point I had several friends who were mold designers. All of the mold designers I’ve known have been independents. Further, most of the mold designers I’ve known are currently retired. I’ve never seen a room full of mold designers all clicking away diligently. They might exist somewhere, but I never met them.
All of the mold designers I talked to about the Mold Tools have said that they use the formal tools for a couple of things, but then go rogue and do the rest of the process manually. While really easy parts might go through the automated and regimented process easily, real world projects almost always require some manual intervention. It turns out to be easier just to do this by default rather than working through the tools and waiting for them to fail. For me, it usually fails when you’re trying to automatically knit together the surfaces to make the split. The parting surface is usually a problem, because the SolidWorks process doesn’t always allow for the type of surface your project requires. It’s hard to automate something that isn’t standard.
SolidWorks also offers a certification on the mold tools, which I passed back in 
2009. In order to pass the test, you’ve got to have a grasp of surfacing, assemblies, external references, and general modeling. The fact that a lot of mold designers don’t follow the process 100% may mean that there isn’t really a lot of enthusiasm for the certification. People who have been doing this work for decades don’t need to risk failing a test on tools they don’t use to do it (tools which may in fact not be able to really do the needed tasks).
Do you have any experience with the SolidWorks Mold Tools? How about the Mold Tools Certification? Please share your experience with the tools and the test in the comments. Thanks!
Hi Matt,
I use the mold tools to check draft, split surfaces, create the cavity – core folders and the cavity – core surfaces. That’s where I usually stop using the mold tools, 99% of my parting line surfaces are created manually on complex parting lines for medical devices and face masks with wild roller coaster parting lines. I have created mold start assemblies in Solidworks, complete with cavity – core blocks, mold base with pockets driven by the the cavity – core assembly. Our company (4 mold designers) has created all the mold components with configurations driven by spread sheets. We have mold drawings and separate BOM driven by the mold start assemblies. All the assemblies use top down design method. We have using this method for 15 years.
Phil M
Mold Designer
Hi Matt.
Also very pleased to see you back.
We do HPDC tools for Aluminium casting, and I have never used the mold tool function for this.
There are 2 main reasons for this.
1. Complexity of part/parting line
The “real world” parts are much more complex than the demo files that the reseller use to show this function. All our parting surfaces are done manually and we don’t have to consider making a perfect split line on the part itself to follow for the split. This also applies for side cores/slides. Everything is done manually and in the end we use the “cavity” function.
2. Flexibility in design
The workorder of the mold tool is wrong. It requires you to begin with the splitting of the core and cavity. This is one of the last stage in my modelling strategy. We receive a lot of files during the development phase, and we need to do more or less all tool design ready before the final, released model, is delivered from our customer. Before this we sometimes have begun already with the drilling of cooling channels e.tc. in the tool. Flexibility in design is very important.
Mikael,
Real world stuff is always more complex than demos. I’ve used this stuff on real projects, and it can work, but almost always requires some intervention. It’s probably a mistake to just write something off because its different from what you normally do, if it can save you time. I think if you spend a little time with it, you will recognize some things that you can use it for. It’s not a 100% load of shite.
Using the Cavity function works, but it can get you into a lot of trouble because it depends on relationships between solid geometry. It works better to use surfaces to make the splits.
As for the cooling lines, and other work for the rest of the mold, these SW tools don’t even begin to tell you how to do anything outside of the insert blocks. Sizing, cooling, ejection, injection, runners, gates, all that has to be done before you do the SW process. They are mostly independent.
Hi Matt,
I’m a mold designer but I don’t use the SW mold tools as they are intended. I started doing mold design using CadKey, and the methods I used there have sort of transitioned over to SW. My go to function is the cavity feature, and occasionally the use of surfaces to help establish geometry for parting lines or shut-offs. Each cavity block, insert, slide face, etc. is it’s own part with its own features. I have seen designs where a component is built by performing a cavity of a cavity of a cavity to generate the component geometry.
I guess my point is if you ask four mold designers how to do something you get four different answers. There isn’t a software out there that is the silver bullet of mold design that will satisfy everyone.
Glad to see you back.
I think Unigraphics can be the best bet among all?
A little over four years ago I was the engineer at an injection molding company, and it was usually a new project every week. Often the parts were routine enough I pumped them through mold tools, with various degrees of coaxing.
We did a trial of Solid Edge and while we had it I made it my pre-processor for any dumb solids we got from customers. First used it to optimize geometry. Had one dumb solid that would take around 5 minutes to load in SW, but SE fixed it and it then took seconds in SW. Secondly would use Solid Edge for parting lines, since all too often SolidWorks would sometimes leave a face without a parting line.
Oh yeah, I have a number of SOLIDWORKS Certificates, CSWP, EPDM, EPDM Trainer, Solution Partner 2008-2012, I used to hang them on my office wall, I really enjoy the Hawaiian vacation photos that replaced them
Honestly, people that hire me have never heard of them, so the Value Lies In The Eyes Of The Beholder
Knitting Surfaces is always a crap shoot, fails often, or crashes, take your pick.
Parting Lines using MoldTools results in the gnashing of teeth.
I really don’t like the idea of:
1. Keeping the molded part in the “scaled” state
2. Having the molded part, and all the mold parts, closed up in a single part file, What the Heck?
I will always go rouge using SOLIDWORKS…hey man, check out Direct Editing, LOVE using it! Move/Copy Bodies, yee ha!
Really enjoying your blog, thanks.
They have really upgraded the level of mold tools. Back then you can easily crack that exam in less than 10 mins. because it was all about “only mold tools”. Now, with new iteration, the things have changed a lot. You need to know lots of command and stuff to crack the examination.
Hi Matt,
Pleased to see you back – its been a long time although I did follow your sojourn through Solid Edge (sometimes). Anyway SplitWorks, MoldWorks and ElectrodeWorks are still very much alive and kicking in fact we have just released a new version of MoldWorks including a module for venting.If you would like to see more of what we have done lately then check out our web site which has online demos.