Hello. Found this Usenet group recently and hope that you can help me with a problem in Solidworks.
I have been using the mold tool functions in Solidworks 2009 and can make a mold on a complex part in a rather short time. The problem is that it isn't flexible if changes appears during the project. We work 100% with customer parts, so all parts in my mold designs are imported from different cad systems. If the customer sends a new part it's often quicker to start all over with the inserts than to try and reimport it because of all errors.
Another approach would be to use the "older" cavity function in Solidworks. I shut off all holes by extruding a thin boss. Outer parting surface is created with planar, ruled, radiate and lofted surfaces.
Everything works well until the cavity is made and it's time to cut the part with my parting surface. In 9 out of 10 cases, the "cut with surface" doesn't work and it's failing because of "geometric condition". The solution is often to extrude the parting surface about 0,2-0,5 mm into the cativy. Then it often works, but it takes a lot of time to do this extra step that shoulden't be required since the parting surface goes all the way in to the cavity.
How do you handle this problem? I'm running SW 2009 SP2.1 but this problem is the same also on older versions.
Thank you in advance for your answers.