I'm a toolmaker who has a passing (2 semesters in community college) interest in SW. Lately, I've been curious if it's practical/worthwhile to design an entire prog die in SW. I've seen advertisements for 3DQuicktool, but have never tried it. Does anyone design their entire tool in SW? Or, is it more suited for designing certain elements, without doing the entire die? I have played around and modeled a few forming cams, so I understand the benefits of ensuring that complex mating parts won't crash as the tool goes through its stroke. An ex-coworker of mine sent me a jpeg of a tool that he did in SW, but it was only a screenshot without any details. Unfortunately, I have since lost contact with him. Just wondering....... Thanks, Mark
Any prog die designers using SW?
May 22, 2009
2 Replies
4 years ago I worked for a place that made automotive stampings. Most of our prog die vendors used SW.
Whether you use SW or not, it's a good idea to develop parametric 3D modelling skills. Not necessarily SW. Learn one and you can learn the rest.
Yes, there lots of tool designers using SW. We have been since SW2003.
There are add-ins for helping with the tool design in SW.
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We do not use either of those add-ins, just core SolidWorks for our tool designs. SolidWorks is a great design tool for dies. Any of the
3D parametric modeling pacakges would work also.
Cheers,
Anna
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