Automatic Generation of Parting Surfaces and Mold Halves

Abstract

Abstract The design of mold halves is crucial to the manufacturability of molded parts. Unfortunately, the modeling of mold halves in current CAD systems is a tedious task. For this reason, designers prefer to rely on their visualization capabilities rather than modeling the mold halves. Relying on visualization hinder designers creativity and is a source of mistakes. Our goal to automate the generation of mold halves in solid model-based CAD systems. The method we developed is based on the generation of a parting surface and the use of standard solid modeling tools. Beside resolving the visualization problem, generation of mold halves models will benefit downstream activities such as mold manufacturing, rapid-prototyping, and finite-element analysis. We believe that the automation of mold halves generation is an essential part of design for manufacturability.