Table of Contents:
Welcome
Installation and settings
In this section, we will cover the Pro/ENGINEER installation and the different settings to optimize the use of Pro/Moldesign.
During the installation of Pro/ENGINEER, it is recommended to select the "Options": Mold Component Catalog and Pro/Plastic Advisor.
- Mold Components Catalog: by installing this option, a collection of components will be installed on your machine, but this is not the main goal we are pursuing here. This option also gives access to the Automatic Workpiece Creation (which we will cover later).
- Pro/Plastic Advisor: this is not a mandatory action; it make sense only if you have access to this optional module. Pro/Plastic Advisor is a tool that is used to help understand and plan a component with a set of analysis such as Filling analysis, Welding lines analysis, and Air trap location analysis, as well as others; this tool helps to plan where to locate gates and how many to have, where to position venting, and so on.
Settings: CONFIG.PRO
It is HIGHLY recommended to have the following CONFIG.PRO options set:
- ENABLE_ABSOLUTE_ACCURACY YES
- ACCURACY_LOWER_BOUND 0.00000001
Most of the issues you may have in future complex mold designs might have to do with part accuracy!
Note: The accuracy of the RefPart (reference model) and the Mold Assembly are automatically set to the Design Model value.
Other CONFIG.PRO options you may want to investigate yourself are (* denotes default setting):
- SHRINKAGE_VALUE_DISPLAY PERCENT_SHRINK* or FINAL VALUE
- (Default) PERCENT_SHRINK will present the value with a percentage,
- FINAL_VALUE will present the final dimension after shrinkage is performed.
- DEFAULT_SHRINK_FORMULA SIMPLE* or ASME
- (Default) SIMPLE will select (1+S) formula,
- ASME standard will select 1/(1+S)
- ALLOW_SHRINK_DIM_BEFORE YES or NO*
- Default is NO,
- YES will allow the calculation before relations.
Settings: Template Files
By default, Pro/ENGINEER installs default Mold template files during installation;
- They are located in the directory [ProE installation folder]
/templates/ - The are named mmns_mfg_mold.mfg and inlbs_mfg_mold.mfg,
- They do not have associated drawings by default: An excellent practice would be to create your own start template and associate a drawing file to it to save you time on the initial drawing creation; simply give the drawing the same name as the Mold template, add the mold .asm to it, and also be sure that the config.pro option "rename_drawings_with_object" is set to "both".