New mold-design tools at AutoFact.

This year's AutoFact Show, held in Detroit by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, saw plenty of design software developments, including both new and improved packages for plastics molds. The show was also a forum for significant introductions of mold-filling simulation software from AC Technology of Louisville, Ky., and Cray Research of Eagan, Minn. (see PT, Dec. '94, p. 9 for an initial report).

CAD/CAM FOR MOLD DESIGN

Pro/Engineer software from Parametric Technology Corp. of Waltham, Mass., has token on some new functionality of interest to mold designers. Among the 700 enhancements found in new Release 14 are more types of draft features added to the mold-design module. Roman Bukary, application engineer for the Pro/Moldesign module, explains that the previous version contained only regular and split draft features while the new version offers curve-driven and tangent drafts as well.

Release 14 also features a new module, Pro/Legacy, for bringing existing CAD data into the Pro/Engineer environment. And it boasts an interface to STEP, a new international standard (ISO 10303) for exchanging product model data.

Matra Datavision of Trumbull, Conn., came out with Moldmaker, a stand-alone software package for mold design. Moldmaker includes feature-based solid and surface modeling, parametric mold-base libraries, and integrated drafting capabilities. At present, the object-oriented mold components library comprises parts catalogs from D-M-E, Hasco, and others. The system can also accommodate non-standard mold bases. According to Matra marketing v.p. George LeBlanc, Mold-maker can automate previously time-consuming design tasks. For example, after users select the mold base and components, Mold-maker will create positioning holes subject to predefined tolerances from the library or from the user. The program also generates bills of materials automatically.

Matra also announced a mold tooling module for its Euclid 3 CAD/CAM/CAE software. Using existing Euclid 3 part models, the module either creates non-standard tooling components or delves into the parts library for standard components.

In other CAD news, IBM/Dassault of White Plains, N.Y., demonstrated its new Version 4 Release 1.3 of Catia Solutions. Among its eight new enhancements are part-stress analysis for users who are not expert in finite-element analysis (FEA), as well as an assembly fitting simulation and the ability to capture user-defined design rules in the system. This last product, known as Catia Knowledge Engineering, is an expert system that can embrace an organization's collective design knowledge.

Autodesk of Sausalito, Calif., showed off AutoCAD Release 13, which features enhancements that simplify the creation of drawings and 3-D models. Autodesk has also upgraded Auto-CAD Designer, its 3-D solid-modeling product. Most of the changes also revolve around ease-of-use features, including more documentation, an improved interface, and beefed-up feature/constraint editing.

3D Technology Inc. of Trumbull, Conn., brought out a Windows-based 3-D solids modeler called Visi-CAD Solids. It includes a mold-design module that automatically calculates sectional views and highlights any potential collisions between cooling lines. Visi-CAD uses the EDS Unigraphics Para-solid Modeler and is priced at just under $4000.

NEW ANALYSIS TOOLS

Cray Research entered the flow-analysis arena in a big way with new supercomputer-based software that combines multiple melt-flow simulations with Design-of-Experiments (DOE) methodology. Called CMLogic 2.0, the software was developed in conjunction with General Motors, which has used CMLogic to simulate lost-core molding of the Cadillac Northstar engine intake manifold.

To determine injection molding process capabilities and process windows for either existing or future molds, CMLogic software performs multiple Moldflow or C-Mold simulations in a DOE framework. (C-Mold software comes from AC Technology and Mold-flow is from Moldflow Inc., Shelton, Conn.) Each simulation reflects changes in key processing variables. These include cavity fill time, melt and mold temperatures, holding pressure and time, and mold-closed time. Varying these six process parameters according to DOE principles would require 45 simulation runs, explains Mike Obermier, Cray polymer processing specialist. He estimates that the supercomputer can often do all 45 simulations in about the same time as a computer workstation can do just one simulation.

Once CMLogic has run a "virtual DOE," its Molding Simulator lets users explore the results interactively in a way that may foster a better understanding of the multivariate relationships inherent in injection molding. For example, one screen has sliding button bars corresponding to the process parameters for a given job. Changing the setting on one of these bars will update all other affected parameters. This way, molders can run through several "what-if" scenarios to optimize process windows.

CMLogic licenses cost $18,000, not including the mold-filling analysis software. The software runs only on Cray's supercomputers, which cost $150,000 and up. But Cray will soon offer supercomputer time through service bureaus in North Carolina and Minnesota. Prices for that service are expected to start at roughly $5000 on top of the software license.

Other plastics-related software developments included the release of a new C-Mold flow-analysis package from AC Technology. The new release features a whole new Motif-compliant interface for the program and a slew of accuracy-related improvements. Most notably, C-Mold has added a preliminary design tool called Rapid Designer. Its pulldown menus let users quickly select from 4500 polymers and 2500 molding machines, as well as from mold coolants and mold bases, which together yield a rough idea of processing characteristics before launching the full C-Mold analysis.

Moldflow Inc. has integrated its flow-analysis software into IBM/Dassault's Catia. Now users can generate the finite-element model, perform the analysis, and view the results from within the Catia CAD environment.

The company also ported its software to high-speed, "moderately parallel" Power Source computers from Silicon Graphics, Mountain View, Calif.