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(continued...) Part Adviser is available as an add-in for Pro/E, SolidWorks, Catia, CoCreate, Solid Edge, Mechanical Desktop and Inventor but Mold Advisor only for the first three.
The benefit of using MPA as an add-in is that simulations can be run and results viewed directly on the solid model, minimising the need to re-export the model to explore multiple design iterations.
In Part Adviser the basic operating procedure is simply selecting a material, specifying the injection location, running the analyses and viewing the results.
An extensive material database is supplied including supplier and trade names plus search tools enabling almost any material property to be specified as criteria.
Materials can be edited or imported and commonly used materials can be added to a personal list for rapid retrieval.
Other processing conditions include mould and melt temperatures and injection pressure and times.
Rather than jump directly into a plastic flow analysis, it is possible to run a moulding window analysis to identify good processing conditions or material suitability.
It is also possible to run a gate location analysis that presents a coloured map indicating locations most likely to give the best fill results although these do need to be assessed in relation to mould practicality.
Once a flow analysis has been run, a confidence of fill map is displayed and results for fill time, injection pressure, pressure drop and flow front temperature can be selected.
Each of these can be animated to observe the flow, with the ability to rotate the model view simultaneously if required.