Importing a custom material into SOLIDWORKS Plastics

June 1, 2021 by Alon Finkelstein

SOLIDWORKS Plastics comes preloaded with an extensive library of plastic materials to use in your plastic simulation studies. The vast database includes thousands of unique materials, grouped into 133 resin families. Alternatively, they can be sorted by the 196 different manufacturers that provided their plastics material data to SOLIDWORKS Plastics. For most simulations, assigning a plastic resin to the model is a simple matter of searching the database, choosing your material, and applying it to your injection molded part. However, […]

Insert Molding with SOLIDWORKS Plastics

May 4, 2021 by Bill Reuss

What is the correct term – insert molding or insert overmolding? I hear the terms used almost interchangeably in conversations about SOLIDWORKS Plastics. I always ask the speaker for clarification. The ask is not because I do not understand what both terms mean, I want to make sure that we are discussing the same thing. Let’s clarify the terms so we can move forward with today’s blog. Insert molding is the process of adding an insert, typically a metal component, […]

SOLIDWORKS 2021 Installation Guide Part 4 –Composer, Plastics, Inspection, MBD and Simulation Installation

November 19, 2020 by John Van Engen

What do I need to know to install my Composer, Plastics, Inspection, MBD, or Simulation package? First, all these products are installed thru the SOLIDWORKS installation manager. To download the installation manager, you will need to click the SOLIDWORKS download link. Run the installation manager and enter the serial number for your products. If you have all your licenses set up to be renewed at the same time you may have only one SOLIDWORKS serial number for all your assets. […]

A person looking at the camera Description generated with very high confidence

SOLIDWORKS 2021 What’s New – SOLIDWORKS Plastics Material Library Updates

November 10, 2020 by Robert Warren

SOLIDWORKS Plastics has introduced several new enhancements this year for 2021. Year over Year SOLIDWORKS Plastics has been adapted to behave more like SOLIDWORKS Simulation including familiar workflows and interface. This year has marked the apex of these changes making the interface different than before but familiar at the same time. This blog will be covering the Material Database changes to Plastics, but you can read about the additional changes in the blogs listed below. Plastics Redesigned Manager Tree Plastics […]

Chart, funnel chart Description automatically generated

SOLIDWORKS 2021 What’s New – SOLIDWORKS Plastics Tutorial Validating Injection Molding Process

November 6, 2020 by Bill Reuss

A question that my colleagues and I are often asked is ‘how accurate are the results from <insert simulation product name here>?’. You might think that is an easy answer. In some instances, it absolutely is. To me, the better question is ‘if I set up my study/project correctly, can I trust the results’. That gets to the heart of the matter when it comes to analysis. If we are going to design better products by utilizing analysis tools, the […]

SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2021 What’s New – Robust Default Interaction Settings

November 3, 2020 by Drew Buchanan

SOLIDWORKS 2021 Robust Default Interaction Settings With every single new release of SOLIDWORKS, I am always impressed by new features that make the simulation process easier for users. SOLIDWORKS 2021 embraces this idea and there are numerous enhancements that make the simulation experience even more user friendly. In this blog I will be going over the Robust Default Interaction Settings enhancement, which makes assembly and multi-body simulation much easier. If you were to setup a multi-body or assembly simulation in […]

SOLIDWORKS 2021 What’s New – SW Plastics – Enhanced Modeling of Baffles and Bubblers

October 31, 2020 by Alon Finkelstein

In recent years, the developers of SOLIDWORKS have exerted significant time and effort into improving the functionality, interface and usability of SOLIDWORKS Plastics. The 2021 release of SOLIDWORKS Plastics continues that trend with improvements in all areas, including a redesigned plastics manager tree, multi-material over molding processes, improved solver performance, an expanded material database, added functionality to co-injection processes and more. This blog will focus on enhanced modeling capabilities of baffles and bubblers. A baffle is a type of cooling […]

SOLIDWORKS 2021 What’s New – SW Plastics Enhanced Modeling of Sketch-Based Runners

October 28, 2020 by Kurt Kurtin

As noted in the many blogs you’ve likely seen in the CATI What’s New series, SOLIDWORKS Plastics has been significantly enhanced in the 2021 release. Check out the two key enhancements to the sketch-based runner design that will contribute to more accuracy in your injection molding simulations! The SOLIDWORKS modeling APIs are now used by the algorithm, resulting in more realistic shapes of the runner cross-sections and junctions. An enhanced meshing scheme applies tetrahedral elements at the runner core and […]

A close up of a map Description automatically generated

SOLIDWORKS 2021 What’s New – SOLIDWORKS Plastics Multi-Material Overmolding Enhancements

October 16, 2020 by Bill Reuss

SOLIDWORKS 2021 brings many changes and enhancements to our injection molding analysis work. I recommend you start with a blog written by my colleague, Drew Buchanan, SOLIDWORKS Plastics – Redesigned PlasticsManager Tree. Like the SOLIDWORKS Plastics user interface, the process for performing multi-material injection overmolding has been revamped in SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2021. Let’s take a look at comparing the old and the new process for setting up a multi-material overmolding SOLIDWORKS Plastics study. Multi-material overmolding analysis requires a license of […]

SOLIDWORKS 2021 What’s New – SOLIDWORKS Plastics Redesigned PlasticsManager Tree

October 13, 2020 by Drew Buchanan

With the release of SOLIDWORKS 2021 comes a great new change to the user interface SOLIDWORKS Plastics. The PlasticsManager Design tree has been redesigned in SOLIDWORKS 2021 to provide a more streamlined and logical workflow for setting up Plastics Simulation studies. In this blog I will be highlighting the changes in the Plastics interface for SOLIDWORKS 2021. Change 1: New Study Interface The first major change to the PlasticsManager tree is the new study interface. In 2021 they have replaced […]