tool splitting command

[boldhomer]

I'm a plastic injection mold designer and I've always use the cavity cut in the assemblies to create the A and B mold surface inserts. This generally involves alot of trimming and is time consuming. Recently I have begin playing around with the tooling split command to create the A and B insert, however solidworks puts the solid bodies in the same part file and I haven't figured out an effiecient way to copy these into seperatee part file to be used in an assembly that is still dynamically linked. Anyone have any experience with this or is the cavity cuts in the assembly the best way to go.

 

[rfus]

In the feature manager Solid Bodies folder, right click on the solid body, insert into new part. This will create an in-context part linked to the part file which created this solid. Do this for A and B, and then use this in context parts in your assembly. If I understand correctly this is what you want to achieve.

RFUS

 

[Theophilus]

You can also use Insert > Features > Save Bodies to save out any bodies as separate files. The new saved part file is derived from the original body in your multi-body part (in this case, the mold file). You can change the new part file downstream, but any changes before the "Save Bodies" feature will also trickle downstream into your saved part file(s).

I used to make molds the way you mentioned--it used to be the only way to do it. Last year I had a complex mess to figure out and taught myself the new method--had to shut of holes, make my own parting surfaces, etc.--and it worked great. I highly recommend reading everything in the help files that remotely relate and you'll find it's a powerful new method.

Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe trumps reason.

 

[rikonen]

the way rfus mentioned is the way I have found the most effective. As mentioned, anything changed in the new files will not reflect back to the file where the tooling split occured, to maintain integrity from start to finish in your files the changes need to happen at the parent, in this case where the tooling split occured.