A CAD-CAE Integrated Injection Molding Design System

Abstract

. In the injection molding design process, interaction between design and analysis is very intensive. This is to ensure that the plastic part being designed is manufacturable by the injection molding process. However, such interaction is not supported by current computer-aided systems (CAD and CAE), because design and analysis are realized as isolated modules. Although most of CAE systems provide built-in modeling tools, these are only meant for developing an analysis model with very limited CAD functionality. On the other hand, some CAD systems have allowed certain CAE systems to run under their environments, but inherently they use different data models, thus communication between them is poor. This paper presents an innovative, CAD-CAE integrated, injection molding design system. This system uses an integrated data model for both design and analysis. The system is built on top of existing CAD and CAE systems, which not only greatly saves development effort, but also makes full use of the strong functionality of commercial computer aided systems. The system architecture consists of four layers: a CAD and CAE platform layer; a CAD-CAE feature layer; a model layer; and a GUI layer. Two design cases were studied to illustrate the iterative design-analysis process and use of the developed system.