The last and perhaps most time-consuming interaction between moldmakers and part designers involves customer-driven design changes that occur after acceptance of the proposal yet prior to actual production.

Almost without fail, moldmakers will have worked out any moldability problems and be well on their way to cutting a production mold when the customer sends along a design change. In the past, these type of late modifications—whether emanating from an engineering change order (ECO) or a simple marketing-driven change in aesthetics—could create both delays and cost overruns because of the amount of time and effort required to update all of the mold components to address the change.

With today’s parametric 3-D CAD packages; however, mold developers can tie interrelated components together, so if the part changes, the related components—the mold components in this case—will change and update accordingly. Whenever a customer sends along a new CAD file that incorporates a required change, moldmakers can simply import the model into the original part design and use it to automatically update the mold design. This approach not only saves time and effort, but also eliminates the possibility of making costly mistakes to account for the change. Using a parametric 3-D CAD system, changes made anywhere in the process automatically update all mold models and documentation, including parts, assemblies and drawings.