How Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling Drives More Flexible CAD and Mold Design

Previously, I shared with you what is Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling technology and its benefits. Briefly speaking, it is an in-depth combination of solid modeling and surface modeling, enabling you to design products with solids and surfaces simultaneously. After knowing what and why, today, I am going to show you how to use it to drive CAD and mold design.

Flexible CAD Design

• Flexible Boolean operations for both surfaces and solids

In ZW3D, with Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling technology, the Boolean operation works for both solids and surfaces, which means that you can cut surface with solid and vice versa, reducing tedious steps and setting your imagination free. Take the bumper design as an example. It is not easy to get a surface with a square groove, but it can be done by cutting the bumper surface shape with the square solid by just one step of Boolean operation in ZW3D. Big time saver! [video width="1920" height="1040" mp4="https://blog.zwsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/视频一-1.mp4"][/video]

• Direct Editing for native and non-native data

It's quite common to receive CAD files without history from your upstream and downstream suppliers. Here, Direct Editing functions based on the Hybrid Modeling technology help you directly edit the non-native CAD models. While editing, the constraints of the geometry will be remained and the modifications will be updated in real time for dynamical preview. Watch the model below. If you want to reinforce its structure by adding ribs, just use the DE Pattern to pattern the original shape. Convenient, right? [video width="1912" height="1044" mp4="https://blog.zwsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/视频二.mp4"][/video]

• More flexible tools for much easier design

Figure 1. Emboss Morph Wrap

As Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling technology eliminates the barrier between solids and surfaces, it enables lots of useful functions such as Morph to transform the shape easily, Wrap to glue solid or surface shapes to a model, Emboss to convert an image into a 3D surface as the below video shows, etc. [video width="1920" height="1080" mp4="https://blog.zwsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/视频三-Emboss.mp4"][/video] To summarize, ZW3D gives you a highly flexible modeling environment. Dealing with complex product design becomes easier than ever.

Efficient Mold Design

• Powerful verification and healing tools

As mold design is a highly specialized field, many manufacturers choose to outsource it to professional teams. So if you are working on mold design, it is fairly commonplace to receive non-native models with gaps or open edges. Thanks to Solid-surface Hybrid Modeling technology, various verification tools and healing features in ZW3D are ready to help you analyze and automatically heal tiny unmatched faces, detect open edges and fill the gaps of models, ensuring the manufacturability of the product.

Figure 2. non-solid mold parting

• Faster non-solid mold parting

Usually, you can only finish the parting work when the model is perfectly watertight, which is sometimes inefficient especially when you need to offer quotations. Based on the unique Solid-surface Hybrid Modeling technology, ZW3D enables you to do parting work for non-solid part models, making your team more competitive in the fierce market. Splitting molds by parting lines or face region definition is flexible as well. Watch the video to see how it works! [embed]https://youtu.be/pasIze23jOg[/embed] Driven by Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling technology, ZW3D provides more possibilities to create something that cannot be done solely by solid modeling or surface modeling. It can help you deal with product design and mold design more flexibly and efficiently.

That’s all about the application of Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling technology I would like to share today. Why not have a try in ZW3D? If you have more ideas about it, please comment. Until next time.