Is Mold Wizard a practical cost effective product

[smallwhitedog]

I would like an honest opinion weather Mold Wizard is a product I should influence my company to purchase. We are a prototype supplier for injection mold tooling. I have been very suspicious of these automatic mold packages for years. I believe no software is truly capable of this for there are to many variables involved i.e. lifters, slides, shutoff, etc. So that being said what exactly is the advantage of a complete mold package. I currently accomplish complex tool designs with standard UGNX5 tools at a very rapid rate. does my experience cancel out some of the features I'd be paying for with Mold Wizard? I just wonder what more we would gain (time wise, and financially) by purchasing such an add on product. we currently use NX 5 for CAD And Work NC for CAM. I don't need a sales spiel I need honest abject opinion. I appreciate and welcome any input on my topic thank you in advance.

 

[NXMold]

Moldwizard generally doesent do anything you cant do yourself, its a (humumgous) collection of macros.

The generic moldbase is just a collection of plates, datum structures, and expressions which allow fast integration of some standard parts. Locating rings drop in at the top of the mold and move when resized, same with ko pins, etc.

I use the standard parts catalog and have added some of my own, but some parts I just copy/paste from other places because its a little time consuming to add them to the library.

The pocket tool, standard parts, and cooling tools are worth having. The pocket tool is really fantastic, my favorite moldwizard tool.

If your able to follow the rules and intent the software developers had, the parting manager works nicely. Very easy to replace the piece part model when a revision comes in. If you fight the thing, you'll be unhappy. I surface my own parting lines though, automating that is a dumb gimmick.

The slides and lifters are somewhat poor, as often as not I model my own for as much effort as it would take to make the library components right.


In ProE I used a completely custom moldbase and component library with no Tool Design add-ons, it was incredibly efficient. It required a lot of setup though, thousands of hours, and perpetual maintenance. The UG MoldWizard is good, a lot of shortcuts, but its not the only tool for the job. Out of the box it doesent really work any miracles, it just gives you a good leg up.

If you have the time to invest in developing your own system you could accomplish much of what moldwizard does. There are only a few tools I would really miss.

NX 5.0.3.2 / 6.0.1.5 MoldWizard

 

[hudson888]

The one thing that it is going to do for you is create some consistency in your output and perhaps suggest methods and solutions to those who are less familiar. In that way an experienced mold designer can more easily instruct a less experienced colleague by running them through the steps using the wizard.

A really experienced NX operator on the other hand tends to use such things as a rough guide or starting point and then to deviate from the system that it puts in place by adding in their own elements. There can occasionally be conflicts of interest when that happens but if you're working more or less autonomously then you probably won't mind.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[smallwhitedog]

Thanks for the straight forward answers to my question. This information will be very useful in our future software purchasing decision.