January 28, 2010 - Geometric Limited released version 2.1 of DFMPro for Pro/ENGINEER and SolidWorks with a number of advancements and a new Injection Molding module, which helps designers check manufacturability of plastic designs within the CAD environment. DFMPro is a unique automated DFM review tool facilitating upstream manufacturability validation and identification of areas in design that are difficult, expensive, or impossible to manufacture. It allows quick and in-depth examination of product manufacturability through advanced design rules for manufacturing processes like milling, drilling, turning, sheet metal fabrication, and injection molding. Some of the highlights of the new version are:
- New Injection Molding module with packaged DFM rules derived from well-known industry-accepted best practices.
- Support for imported models using Geometric’s patented Feature Recognition techniques to analyze 3D models independent of the originating CAD system.
- Support for assemblies: DFMPro rules can be executed on assemblies, thus significantly reducing the time for execution.
- Additional rules in machining and sheet metal fabrication to improve the extent of automated design for manufacturing reviews .
- Support for customization, batch mode operation and automated report generation: Using the DFMPro customization framework, users can write their own rules, execute the rules in a batch mode, and generate reports of DFM analyses without manual intervention.
Users can validate the designs to check for uniform wall thickness, recommended rib parameters, appropriate draft angles on core and cavity surfaces, undercuts, thin steel conditions on mold, and many other common rules.
All the parts in an assembly can be validated using a single execution.
