Introducing SolidWorks Plastics
Take a minute and look inside your refrigerator. Have you ever wondered how the crisper bins were created? Let’s try another appliance. Have you ever thought about how the knobs on your washer or dryer were created? These items make our every day lives much easier, and they are produced using plastics injection molding—a complicated and often costly manufacturing method used for items we use every day.
Approximately 80% of plastic parts are manufactured by the injection molding process, and yesterday, SolidWorks announced the availability of SolidWorks Plastics, software that will help users predict and avoid manufacturing defects during the earliest stages of part and mold design. From the automotive industry to life sciences, any company that relies on the injection molding process to bring a product to market can now use SolidWorks Plastics to cut manufacturing costs and speed time to market.
There are two different products available. For plastics part designers, SolidWorks Plastics Professional enables you to optimize parts for manufacturability in the early stages of design. Easy to learn and use, SolidWorks Plastics Professional is fully embedded within the SolidWorks CAD environment so you can analyze and modify designs at the same time you optimize for form, fit, and function.
SolidWorks Plastics Premium gives anyone who designs or builds injection molds an accurate, easy-to-use way to optimize them. You can quickly create and analyze single-cavity, multi-cavity, and family mold layouts, including sprues, runners, and gates. You can even balance runner systems and estimate cycle time, clamp tonnage, and shot size, enabling you to optimize feed system design and avoid costly mold rework.
The first release of SolidWorks Plastics 2012 will be available in North America starting in April, with other regions and countries to follow later this year. Visit our website to learn more about SolidWorks Plastics and to watch our First Look: SolidWorks Plastics video.
