Software Review: MoldDesign From Bentley

Peter Prior is an experienced moldmaker intimately familiar with major CAD/CAM systems. As a manager at Irish Design Systems (Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland), he has worked through the learning curves on all of them - sheerly out of necessity. "Our customers have such a diverse range of systems, and we need to import their CAD data accurately. Having all of the packages in-house was the only solution," Prior says. Irish Design Systems not only designs molds and products, it also distributes mold bases for Strack (Ludenscheid, Germany). In addition, covering the automotive, electronic, and healthcare markets means a wide range of customers and systems, according to Prior.

For the past year, Prior and his mold designers tested a beta version of a new offering from Bentley Systems (Exton, PA) targeted at mold base design. And the results have changed the picture considerably. Now commercially available, MoldDesign is a desktop, PC package that uses rules-based technology and parametric libraries to generate detailed 3-D solid models of the mold from the original part.

In a recent phone interview, IMM asked Prior to give us some feedback on the new package. "We receive designs as 3-D CAD models," Prior says, "which we formerly had to convert to 2-D in order to design the mold. Using MoldDesign, we can work directly with the 3-D part model and then pass along the solid model that manufacturing needs to make the molds for production. And we can do it on a PC rather than a workstation. As a result, we've increased productivity by a factor of three in some cases."

Dick Trask, product marketing manager for Bentley, believes that Prior's experience is not unique. Trask spent 15 years at DuPont working with moldmakers and molders on designing parts for moldability. "The package works within our Microstation Modeler," explains Trask, "which means that customers can get 3-D mold base design, solid modeling, and detailed drawings for less than $9000. It allows the mold designer to economically design and manufacture the mold base in a 3-D environment." (Note: For those already using Microstation, pricing for MoldDesign starts at $2950.)

MoldDesign contains nine standard mold base libraries - including D-M-E, Hasco, National, Futuba, Rabourdine, EOC, and Strack. These parts are all parametrically driven as well. "That means," says Trask, "that you can size your own leader pin, position it into the mold base, and the software automatically drills the holes." Other components can also be custom built by the user, then added to the existing library.

When toolmakers go through the process of building a mold base, they need a bill of materials to order parts. The package automatically creates the list at the touch of a button - either a partial or complete one.

Detailed drawings are another need. Says Trask, "A robust detailing capability within the Modeler folds 3-D solid plates on 2-D for automatic detail drawings. These are totally associative - that is, if you change the solid, the program updates the 2-D drawing and vice versa."