Does Advanced Assembly Extension include shrinkage?

[pimm]

Our Engineering work group has been discussing the direction we would like to go with die design as we have been learning more about Creo and how others use this product.

We presently have Pro Mold, but we have been running into a number of limitations and disadvantages with this product.

There is only one feature that has us holding on to Pro Mold and that is that it includes Shrink.

We are wondering whether the Advanced Assembly Extension, or for that matter any other Creo extension includes the Shrink option.

We only need the Shrinkage by Scale.

It also is important that this is added in the feature tree so we have a visual link that this is added in the model. (We also use this feature ON and OFF in a family table)

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[StephenW]

I have never seen anything like that. I may be wrong, but with assemblies, shrinkage is usually not a consideration like it is with mold design. Welded assemblies usually have some shrinkage (based on construction methods) but I don't believe the software has any way of compensating for it.

[pimm]

So if you have AAX installed and you went to File/Prepare/Model Properties/Shrinkage it will not allow you to modify the model value?

I thought AAX had Shrink, but I might have got this mixed up with Merge Inheritance.

[TomU · Accepted solution]

Nope.  Just tried it.

[pimm]

Thank you for confirming this Tom.

I guess we stick with Pro Mold until a better option becomes available.

[mpeterson]

Certainly better using ProMold which at least gives you a feature in the model tree. I have had to use the scale model before for similar needs because we didn't have Mold and thus you need to remember and/or know the part file has been scaled. I would "save as" and put something in the file name that gave me an indication of the scaled value.

[BrianToussaint]

You'll be waiting for a long time.  I was with a company that had to buy Pro/Mold 20 years ago to be able to do shrinkage.  I doubt that there will ever be any other option.

[pimm]

Brian:  Yes, the other option would most likely involve another software go between to do the dies and shrinkage.

In one sense we would be losing parametrics, but from our experience making a change to die components with their resulting name change makes it extremely challenging to keep the Pro Mold geometry parametric.  Combine this with no undo button in Pro Mold and having many separate model files for each reference model and the parametric disconnect doesn't sound quite as bad.

[BrianToussaint]

Back when I used it to create molds for castings, the only part that I used Pro/Mold for was to get the shrinkage applied to the parts. I was them able to use assembly and surfacing to cut out all core boxes. That way numbers didn't change, if I understood you correctly, and it wouldn't be so bad.  I never used Pro/Mold for anything else. I thought that was very expensive to do just shrinkage.

[pimm]

Brian:  Exactly; it is way over priced for one feature that should be included in the base package.

Last fall we received training for Pro Mold.  The teacher brought components into pro mold to split these components in half, but all of the other work was done inside Assembly.

Just recently we received some forge die design work that was done on the outside using Creo.  The gentleman who built these dies did these completely in Part mode.

I'm getting the picture that a lot of people are in the same predicament with very little use for Pro Mold.

I was hoping that there was a better option for the money that we have spent.

[Inoram]

I would like PTC to come up with a "mold design lite" package. There are some cool tools in the mold design package that are useless for day to day use. Automatic Workpiece being the first one that pops into my head. Also, in my opinion the Flexible modeling package would be great as part of the mold design package.

[pimm]

Matt; Yes, a Mold Design Lite would be great.  It would be great if shrink was included in this.

Presently the Mold Design package is an under valued product for us.  If higher management knew that we only used the mold package for just shrink they would probably pull the plug on us.

We do use the Inheritance Merge in Pro Mold, but that can also be found in AAX.  I do like how  Assembly works in Creo, there are some tools in AAX that look promising but we are at the end of our cost allowance.

I do believe that the base seat of Creo now includes Flexible Modeling.  The base seat price has raised price correspondingly.

[Ehlers]

Hello,

what about buying Molddesign and getting AAX? I think that makes sense!

The Prize should be the same.

[pimm]

Even if Pro Mold and AAX were the same price we still would have to buy extra seats of AAX to go along with the Pro Mold seats we've already purchased and pay maintenance for.

We have to share a license of Pro Mold because of cost.  Management would not allow us to make an additional purchase adding on to what we already have.

If we dropped maintenance for Pro Mold perhaps we could pick up AAX, but then we would lose Shrinkage by Scale.

We are a small company without a big budget.

[Ehlers]

You got me wrong!

I meant: Buying Mold means getting also AAX-Functionality.

The AAX-Functions are included in Mold (Tooldesign Option).

[pimm]

Juergen:

Sorry, I figured there must be some kind of misunderstanding.

I didn't realize there was another extension package that included both.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking this package would still exceed the cost of the Pro Mold license.

If not that would seem to be a perfect match.

[Ehlers]

Molddesign should cover all AAX-Functions. And even more (Shrinkage, Mold ). PTC says that Mold and AAX are not the same! But so far nobody was able to tell what AAX does that Mold can`t do.

[pimm]

Actually, in looking over what the Tool Design Extension is, that appears to be exactly what we do have.   I've heard this many times termed Pro Mold, so that's the point of confusion.

One thing we were hoping to get if we were to go to AAX would be Skeleton Modeling.

We've been unhappy with the template driven Mold or Casting type assembly modeling.  As far as what we do in the Forging world it just is too much work to be of any use.

We were trained with Pro Mold, and the trainer almost completely skipped using the Pro Mold Assembly tool.  Later we received an outside sourced die model and it was built outside of the Assembly template.  Shortly afterwards we too designed our dies outside of the Assembly template, it is so much easier.

We would like AAX, but it's an extra expense we can't handle at this point.

[Ehlers]

So Keep the Moldlicence and do Skeleton-Parts. You already have the functionality!!!

Next step is: Find a good Trainer who knows about mold and improve your skills and save time and enlarge Quality!

Sorry but your choach didnt know about Mold-Functions or had nothing to with it. Forging is very Special and very different to Mold-Design but still ensures that changes in Reference-Part and Split will affect all relevant part. Unfortunately the Mold Seminar Shows very good features but no strategy.

[pimm]

I'm learning concepts and practices as I go as working in Creo is different than our old CAD software.

If I remember correctly Skeleton Modeling would allow you to put assembly placeholders in the assembly before anything was built or structured.  This was a tool that allowed you directly to do Top Down modeling.  I can imagine that you could do some tricks that allow you to essentially perform the same thing in basic assembly.  We haven't got to the point of building any massive model assemblies yet, but I know there are a lot of techniques our group should be able to pick up to where we wouldn't need Skeleton Modeling per se. 

I'm certainly open to the notion that the casting or mold template could work for us, but I've also seen where the whole template works against itself.  In other threads I've voiced my struggle with something as simple as changing a part name that gets inserted into the assembly template.  When you modify tops and bottoms for multiple impressions and their boundaries as well it is a nightmare to keep straight and not cause hard to recover from failures downstream.  If you have to change the size of your die block it is another nightmare.  Everything in our dies is based off the front left match edge, the template die somehow is constrained to the center and I haven't seen how this can be changed.  We have locks in our dies that differ on every side.  There are some areas that need a little clearance, others that don't have any clearance. Where these locks intersect at zero it causes failures in the ability of the software to split the dies.  This was an extremely bad chapter of history for us.  I am open minded about the possibility that some trainer out there would be able to help us make the template interface work for us, but I just don't believe there is any hope.  A lot of the Pro Mold software is not utilized.  (I'm not the only one has came to this conclusion)  There really isn't any return for the money invested into this extension.

Using copy geom features inserted into die part models inserted into an assembly already has proven to work very much better.