Mold Software

A recent study conducted by Missler Software on the leading CAD/CAM solutions for the mold industry on offer today has confirmed the continued strength of its TopSolid’Mold solution, the company states. TopSolid’Mold is an integrated CAD/CAM solution for the design of molds and the machining of tools for moldmakers and cutting tool makers.

TopSolid’Mold manages the design of the mold, the machining of the mold base, milling mold cavities, electrode production and mold assembly. Here are just some of the solution’s strong points: 

Import and repair tools: Importing external data is a key step in the design of any tool. TopSolid can directly exploit the following formats: Parasolid, IGES, Catia v4 & v5, Pro-E, UG, STEP, SolidWorks, SolidEdge, ACIS, DXF, DWG, STL and VDA. In addition to its data recovery capacities TopSolid has intelligent correction tools to isolate and repair geometrical problems often associated with imported external data. (fill in holes, sewing functions, adjust continuity, etc.). In order to speed up the process of preparing the design before starting the mold design TopSolid’Mold provides tools to analyze the plastic part, and select appropriate molding strategies quickly. 

Specialized functions for moldmakers: Contrary to many generic design applications, TopSolid’Mold has functions to create parting lines and surfaces, wizards to install standard and preset components plus its fully integrated and associative drafting function which help to rationalize the design process of tools, while taking manufacturing imperatives into consideration.

·         TopSolid’Mold provides a complete set of features to split core & cavity blocks

·         TopSolid’Mold provides intelligent tools to extract inserts from molding blocks, and prepare all movements required to unmold the part. Such tools and wizards reduce human errors by using automatic features to detect insert area and remove associated material.

 

Capitalize company know-how: All moldmakers know that to be efficient they need to preserve their company know-how and standardize their design process to optimize production. TopSolid’Mold allows companies to use and adapt standard mold bases (HASCO, Meusburger, Futaba, Misumi, Rabourdin, etc.). In addition, TopSolid’Mold’s smart 3D standard components enables moldmakers store their manufacturing process in TopSolid’Mold standard components thereby reducing human error as the components generate automatically their own processes.  

Collaborative design tools: TopSolid’Mold enables companies to assign  several designers to the same mold design by sharing the workload in order to reduce the length of the design cycles. A first user can complete the design of a movement while another one is making cooling circuits, in the same plate! TopSolid can also manage the conflicts resulting from changes that are made simultaneously to the same part or subassembly. The effective control of desynchronization also allows remote users to work on the same project. 

Design electrodes: Once the 3D tool design process is complete, it is often necessary to design and build dozens of electrodes which can become a repetitive and painstaking process. In addition to efficiently designing electrodes, TopSolid’Electrode also guarantees that they are compatible with all the specific characteristics resulting from EDM machining. TopSolid'Electrode is fully associative with TopSolid’Mold. It provides several strategies to create the 3D model of the electrode and produce associated documents.  

Associated machining: Parts designed in 3D can be machined directly using the TopSolid’Cam and TopSolid’Wire CAM modules, without necessarily having to re-enter the geometry data in the workshop, or generating a draft in the Manufacturing Methods Department. TopSolid’Cam automatically detects and machines hole features and tolerances coming from the 3D design. Using an associative link TopSolid’Cam automatically updates tool path when the design changes.

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