CATIA for Engineers enables Digital Prototyping including Analysis and Simulation for design and validation of function quality and performance at all stages ofthe design.
Mechanical engineering is complex as assemblies are designed to perform a specific task with a specific target performance. Digital prototyping, combined with digital analysis and simulation, allows product development teams to virtually create and analyze a mechanical product in its environment. Mechanical engineers must be equipped with these tools so that they can gain insight into key factors in quality and performance early in the product development phase.
CATIA Mold Tooling Design
Complete tooling process coverage for mold tooling injection designers
Mold tooling injection designers need to quickly design a tool based on their know-how. In addition, they need to ensure wall thickness uniformity and proper cooling of plastic parts as well as address issues such as shrinkage and mold removal. Product quality depends on mold design accuracy, so they can benefit greatly from a tool that specifically covers these processes.
CATIA Mold Tooling Design specifically responds to the needs of Mold Tooling Injection designers. A predefined Layout allows users to insert and manage several Inserts in a positioned Mold Base, which greatly enhances productivity. It also features a dedicated Live command that fits the dimensions of the tool to the prints. Standard plastic mold bases coming from suppliers (DME, HASCO, FUTABA, etc.) are created in one-shot by selecting the recommended configuration. Plus, designers can generate cooling circuits in the mold base, thanks to an ergonomic command, ensuring design productivity.
- Check validity of imported topology
- Reuse existing data extensively with powerful recognition tools
- Identify and define Slider Pulling Direction
- Detail molding areas
- Optimize and reduce cycle time with wall thickness analysis
- Check accuracy and improve quality of imported shapes
- Access to supplier equipped mold bases and components catalogs...
- ... or create standard or company-specific mold bases with ease.
- Increase mold quality and reduce cycle time
- Work faster with the creation of reusable tooling components
Intrinsic validity checking of each surfaceHealing Assistant checks the intrinsic validity of each surface, detecting self intersections in boundaries, wrong topologies, thin surfaces, etc. The surfaces to be repaired are moved to specific bodies for easier handling. It can also check connections between surfaces to find holes (G0 gaps in mm), sharp edges (G1 gaps in degrees), and curvature breaks (G2 gaps in %). Plus, surfaces involved in gaps can also be moved to specific bodies for easier analysis and repair.
Delete Impacts contextual commandTo prevent users from managing too many links on impacts made by Tooling components, the new contextual “Delete Impacts” command allows users to quickly delete all impacts made by the selected components.
Automated tool to carry out global and local join operationsCATIA Healing Assistant provides an automated tool to carry out join operations. The Global Join feature can assemble curves or surfaces according to a specified topological tolerance (merging distance). The Local Join feature is available to join only selected edges of a surface, for example to close a gap, according to a local tolerance which can be user-defined or computed automatically.
Offers automated and manual part design feature recreationThis function is intended to recognize a Part Design feature from an Isolated B-Rep. This product is used to retrieve a comprehensive CATIA data structure (Product Structure) from an Isolated B-Rep Part. The user imports a part and can recover elementary Part Design features. It allows better downstream application integration to improve Part simplification for tool definition and flexible local design.
Associative core and cavity separation with parting lines and surface dedicated definition toolsThe Core and Cavity Design workbench ensures that an accurate and associative core and cavity separation can be achieved. It builds robust parting lines and surfaces from the part skin in order to support last minute design changes and more design alternatives. The definition of complex shapes is flexible and allows easy and fast manufacturing dress-up of foreign geometry imported through neutral standards such as IGES and STEP.
Face Color EditorAllows users to change the color of different groups of faces and to create a selection set from them in order to select them in one shot.
Main pulling direction definition, mold area management, and parting line extractionThis quick separation tool is provided to identify the Core and Cavity and undercuts from the main pulling direction. Once the right pulling direction has been easily defined with the compass, the Part is automatically divided in 3 sets. Thus, the Core and Cavity and undercuts areas are recomputed when the input of the main associative pulling direction is modified. The user can easily spot the divided parts due to the following color mapping: green faces can be unmolded, red faces can be unmolded in the opposite direction and blue faces need to be part of slider, loose core, or be split.
Generation of Bill of MaterialsMold designers can generate dedicated and customizable Bill of Materials (BOM's) including specific attribute of the mold (Material, Heat Treatment) and automatic Nomenclature from the configuration of the component. Textual format, HTML or XLS (Excel) formats can be generated interactively. BOM can be based on User-defined attributes. Attributes can be defined either externally via a file (.txt or .xls) or manually. Specific formats can also be defined (subset of user-defined attributes) and re-used for BOM generations. Listing Reports including assembly trees and attributes of each component can be generated.
Standard plastic mold basesMold base creation is a key step in mold design that helps to create, store and reuse standard and company-specific mold bases. The new “Create Mold Base” command is available and provides a user-friendly way for users to create mold bases. CATIA Mold Tooling design provides a user-friendly command that allows end-users to create mold bases for any mold designs.
Insert layout for multi-printUsers can insert and manage several Inserts in a positioned Mold Base thanks to a predefined Layout. Inserts are defined with the FormBlock from the CoreCavity Separation application.
Live definition of Coolant ChannelsUsers can benefit from the Coolant Channel command with a "Live" user interface. The V6 Coolant Channel command offers the new V6 look-and-feel. The Mold Cooling feature serves to dissipate the heat of the molding quickly and uniformly. Because cooling typically accounts for two-thirds of a product’s cycle time and the quality of the molded part depends on uniformity, the Mold Tooling Design product offers the capacity to add cooling pipes and cooling components to a mold. It also provides contextual balloons and manipulators during coolant channels design. By using V6 balloons, users can benefit from context-specific modes and options.
Live dedicated "Impact by Components" commandTooling component impacts are recreated thanks to a new command. For example, when a plate is replaced in a mold base, impacts must be recreated. The new Live, dedicated “Impacted by components,”command meets the need to recreate such impacts. All impacts made by Tooling components in a plate are computed in one-shot.