I'm having trouble creating a parting surface to connect these for parts. Using the parting surface radiates a circle that covers the bottom of the other 3 parts. I've read about a way to create a parting surface manually, but can't get anything to work. I can create a single part mold without much trouble, just having trouble getting a multiple cavity one. Would really appreciate any help I can get .
I don't know if this helps or not but the following was made using your part file. Are you trying to figure out how to make the mating half of the mold? If you use this part file, you could modify the green and red core/cavity after they are created in order to place your mounting holes, runners, etc. Once you're all done, you can use Save Bodies to create a part file of each one that maintains relation to this part file. That way, if you ever update the part the cavity and core will automatically update the part geometry.
Thanks Alex, that's really helpful. That's it exactly, I was trying to get the mating half, but couldn't keep the parting surface from covering the other 3 parts.
Okay, that helps me understand what you were going for. As others have mentioned, you will likely have to construct your parting surface manually as I did in my file. The parting surface tool is useful for a single part some of the time. The rest of the time I find that I have to at least modify it or just make it from scratch to save a headache.
Good luck!
It looks like you created the 4 parts, then raised the surface under each part, then created your plane afterwards, would that be right?
That's correct. I made a linear pattern of 4 parts and then used offset surface (0") to copy the faces of the part that I wanted to be in each half of the mold. Then I manually made a planar surface with 4 holes in it for the parting surface. After I placed all of these in the correct mold tools folders, I used the tooling split and it worked great.
Thanks Alex that's exactly what I was looking for. Appreciate all the responses.
Dustin,
You can use mold tools, but SW can create core cavity surface only for single solid, if it's multi body part with shut-off surfaces
Here is my option:
Hope this helps
Hi John,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to the post. So do you mean create one parts mold, then combine copies of that mold till I get the 4 cavities?
Not sure if it's part of the problem, I wasn't inserting mold folders before using the existing surface tools. From what I understand that helps solidworks better identify the cavity? I have a mentor of sorts, we work together, but he designs steel parts in solidworks then makes the drawings. So he doesn't have a lot of mold experience.