From consumer products to the medical and aerospace industries, plastic and cast parts are critical to successful product designs. SOLIDWORKS provides a set of fully integrated plastic part, cast part, and mold design tools so designers can easily validate that the parts they design can be molded successfully. Tools allow designers to check for draft, thickness, and undercuts to ensure the correct geometry for molding. SOLIDWORKS also includes basic and advanced photorealistic rendering tools to create real-life images of models, including proper texture and translucency.

Mold design tools speed the creation of plastic and cast part tooling by providing automated functionality for shrinkage compensation, parting surfaces, and mold splitting. The mold always references the part design — if the design changes, the mold will update accordingly. That means changes to the part design can be incorporated faster and easier.

In addition, mold-filling simulations using SOLIDWORKS Plastics show how melted plastic will flow during the injection molding process to predict manufacturing-related defects on parts and molds, enabling you to quickly evaluate part performance and manufacturability during the design process.

Plastic and cast part design tools include:

• Shell tool for ensuring uniform wall thickness
• Draft tool to add proper draft for mold extraction
• Fillet tool to create even the most complex fillets
• Tools to check draft, undercuts, thickness and surface characteristics like curvature
• Rib tool for adding stiffening ribs
• Complex surfacing tools to create and edit complex geometry, including stylish, curve-continuous (C2) surfaces
• Special purpose tools, including wrap tools
• Design for hardware-less assembly using Fastener Features, including Mounting Boss, Snap Hook & Groove, and Lip/Groove
• Vent design tool to plan for air flow cooling

Use SOLIDWORKS 3D design to streamline the design and manufacture of welded structures, frames, and bases that form the backbone of products developed in many industries. Quickly create designs that have extrusions and generate cut lists and bills of materials needed for manufacturing. SOLIDWORKS accelerates the design process, saving time and development costs, and increasing productivity.

Weldments Design Overview

SOLIDWORKS weldments design functionality enables you to design a weldment structure as a single multibody part, sketching the basic framework, creating structural members with groups of sketch segments, and adding elements like gussets and end caps to complete the structure.

• Work from a library of pre-defined structural shapes
• Generate 3D sketch lines for structural profiles to follow
• Automatically trim structural members at intersections
• Add stiffening plates, gussets, and end caps
• Add optional weld beads to the design
• Generate drawings, BOMs, cut lists, and other manufacturing documentation

Gain the flexibility to quickly and cost-effectively create sheet metal part designs using SOLIDWORKS 3D design, accelerating the design process, saving time and development costs, and increasing productivity. Using SOLIDWORKS you can:

• Design SOLIDWORKS 3D solid sheet metal parts and assemblies
• Convert SOLIDWORKS 3D models or imported CAD models directly to SOLIDWORKS sheet metal models and automatically input your own bend radius, thickness, and K-factor
• Design around a group of parts in an assembly

Automatically estimate sheet metal manufacturing costs as you design. At completion, automatically flatten your 3D sheet metal part to generate flat patterns that include bend compensation for manufacturing.

Sheet Metal Design Overview

Since many industries require a wide range of sheet metal parts to house or enclose their designs, SOLIDWORKS makes a flexible design approach possible. With SOLIDWORKS you can:

• Convert SOLIDWORKS or imported CAD models, create original parts, or design around a group of parts
• Generate Base, Edge, Miter, and Swept Flanges
• Generate bends, including Lofted Bends, Sketched Bends, and more
• Use Bend Tables for bend allowance/bend deduction
• Use Forming Tools to create features like ribs, louvers, lances, embosses, and extruded flanges
• Add weld details to sheet metal parts on models or drawings
• Automatically flatten parts to generate flat patterns for manufacturing with bend compensation
• Automatically estimate sheet metal part manufacturing cost as you design