Research And Development Of Die-Casting Die CAD System Based On Pro/E

As die-casting die being the most important component of die-casting process, the quality of die-casting product and productivity of die-casting production are determined by whether it's designed appropriately. It's troublesome and time-consuming to get a set of die-casting die with traditional approaches, several manuals are to be referenced, much data calculated, many drawings made. Although various CAD/CAM softwares spread widely these years, the differences of standard between overseas and home limit their application in Chinese enterprises. In view of above-mentioned problems, this paper suggests to research and develop the die-casting die CAD system based on Pro/E.In this paper, various methods of further developing Pro/E are analyzed and intercompared, the choice are made to establish the CAD system with the efficient scheme which takes MFC dialog as man-machine interface under VC++6.0, programmed with Pro/TOOLKIT functions in C language. 3-D solid models can be regenerated making use of the Pro/E tools such as Pro/Program, Parameters, Relations; the functional modules are defined and system framework outlined in the system; also the top-down process is recommended, which means to design parts or components firstly and assembly them altogether at last; considering experiencial data and formula from die-casting design practice and structure of parts and components used frequently, several calculating modules of mold plate and die-casting process are built with standard of die-casting die parts(GB/T 4678.1～4678.19-2003) as reference through the course of design ,which soundly grounds the spread of standard parts. When the CAD system runs, according to general process of die-casting die design, few primitive parameters entered, process parameters and dimensions of mold plate and 3-D solid models can be obtained, which relieves the load of calculation and drawing for the designer.Practice indicates that adopting the scheme (which takes MFC dialog as man-machine interface under VC++6.0, programmed with Pro/TOOLKIT functions in C language) to develop die-casting die CAD system can satisfactorily fulfill the task of designing parametric die-casting die in 3-D, making full use of the Windows resources and MFC libraries under visible environment, which dramatically raised the efficiency of designing and developing a software.Result of debugging and running the die-casting die CAD system developed by the author shows that it integrates the functions of calculating and drawing into the course of design, thus certain improvement on design efficiency and reliability can be gained. Basically it is up to desire to realize computer-aided design and drawing of die-casting die. Owing to above-mentioned software developing tools adapted, this CAD system has strong extensibility and a wide worthiness of application and popularization.