Mold Demo
Creating Parting Line: Load the included Vampire Boy model.
Go to Tab > Moldable Part
Create a parting line curve by activating the mold toolbar feature by selecting the
Moldable Part tab. Then click on the Parting Line Curve icon on the toolbar and
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click on the Show Parting Line Color icon to show the parting line. The arrow on the screen indicates the mold pull direction. You can change the direction by clicking on
the Set Direction icon to check the best parting line solution. Once everything is set, click on Apply to create the parting line curve.
The parting line curve direction is already set for this model, but be sure the parting line draft angle is set to zero. To check if the draft angle is set to zero for this evaluation, go to Tools > Option > Parting line draft angle. For using the Parting Line tool, always set the draft to zero so that you will get a clear blue line. If the draft is not set to zero, the parting line curve will not be created in the correct location.
Currently, the mold pull direction is already set correctly. If you want to show people the different pull direction, click on the Set Direction icon to change the setting.
Showing Curvature Plot
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The parting line curve is very dense and trying to pick up all the details necessary. If you want to look at the level of quality of the parting line curve, you can turn on the curvature plot and create a curvature plot of each curve. Go to:
View > Design Curves -> Create Curvature Plots. Then click on the parting line curves on the model. By default, the plot is set in 2D to show the noise in Z direction only; you can also set to show the noise in X and Y direction by changing the 2D Curvature icon to 3D Curvature icon on the Dynabar. [as shown below]
2D curvature plot showing on noise in Z direction
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3D curvature plot showing noise in X and Y direction
In most cases, you will only want to use the 2D curvature plot in the Z direction. The number shown on the curvature plot indicates the minimum radius curvature of the curve. This number can be used to determine the tool size for machining in the future. To find the tool radius, simply take the inverse of the curvature value. The equation used in this calculation is shown below:
C = 1/R ; C = curvature, R = radius
Editing Parting Line Curve
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machining. To avoid this problem, I am going to smooth the parting line curve. To
smooth the parting line curve, click on the Select icon on the toolbar and then click
on the parting line curve. Change the number on the Points box to reduce the
number of points on the curve. In most cases, you can reduce the number of point by half
then refit it. Be aware that it may have drifted from sharp details in the XY plane.
Usually, after reducing the points on the parting line, the parting line will likely still be very close to the original parting line. However it does not work for every case. In most situations, you can just reduce the points and refit it just for demo purposes.
Now I will refit the parting line curve by clicking on the Fit Curve
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