About the Plastic and Coolant Parts

The plastic part represents the mold cavity to be filled with plastic, and the coolant parts represent the cooling system.

Plastic and coolant parts must be represented by 3DShapes using solid geometry. If you choose to include the injection system (sprue, runners, gates) in your simulation, you must model it along with all of its cavities as a single body. Similarly, if you have a multi-cavity mold, you must create a single body that includes the injection system that feeds all of the cavities that you wish to simulate. Simulation of multiple, disjoint cavities is not supported.

To create the product structure needed for a plastic simulation:

  • Create a product that will contain all of the geometry needed for the simulation. Additional geometry can be included for convenience and ignored by the simulation.
  • Use a 3DShape with solid geometry to represent each plastic part and cooling circuit.
  • If a 3DShape contains more than one body, make sure that the body you want to use in the simulation is specified as the part body.

Preparing your geometry with this product structure allows you to select the plastic part and coolant parts for the simulation. For more information, see Choosing the Plastic Part for a Molding Simulation and Choosing the Coolant Parts for a Molding Simulation.

Note: If you use Mold Tooling Design to build your geometry, the app automatically creates the proper product structure for your simulation (see Preparing for Fill and Cool Simulation).