Whether designing the mold for an iPod or a refrigerator door, moldmakers are always looking for faster methods to help them produce molds.

One thing they would like to avoid is the need to constantly export, import and repair data between design and validation. For plastic part designers and mold-makers this is especially true. In this industry there is much overlap between disciplines: product design, product validation, mold design and mold validation—where does one job stop and the other begin? Having a tool that can handle part design, mold design, part structural analysis as well as mold filling analysis is becoming a necessity to getting the job done on time

The process of translating data between disparate software tools, long an industry standard, takes time and increases the risk of errors. It also widens the communications gap between product designers and moldmakers. By providing product design, mold design and validation tools directly in one package, the communication gap between designers and moldmakers is bridged and the product development cycle can be accelerated.

Over recent years, plastic part designers and moldmakers have primarily focused their efforts to improve the design of products and molds in two areas: 3-D solid CAD software and simulation software for validating part and mold designs upfront before tooling is cut. While moldmakers have made great strides in implementing 3-D mold design and analysis tools, far fewer have established an environment to take advantage of the integration of design and validation. In other words, design and validation are still seen as separate environments and the models are still “thrown over the fence” from one package to another.
In most cases, the inability to integrate is based on the fact that these software packages do not share a common file format, thus translation of data is required between these systems. A separation of duties based on software occurs, which affects a company’s ability to design products and molds concurrently.

When product design and validation software is seamlessly integrated, users can move easily back and forth between these disciplines. Since the user doesn’t have to translate the geometry, they save time, they know they are working on the most current and accurate version of the model, and they can work concurrently with their colleagues—there is no more “fence” to throw their designs over.