Research And Development On The Riser CAD System Of Steel Casting Based On UG

With the development of computer hardware and Windows operating system, 3D-CAD has been used widely on PC during the latest decade. In the field of casting process CAD, the 3D software is the inevitable trend in the future, because it is easier to realize the integration of casting process CAD/CAE/CAM. Unigraphics software developed by UGS Corporation becomes all-important choice of more and more foundry companies for its powerful solid modeling and assembly environment. In the traditional casting process design, it demands technologist to master plenty of theory and referring to many correlative manuals, and it is cockamamie and fallible to design the size of riser. However, riser design is not only the key of casting process, but also very important for CAE simulation. So it is strongly recommended to do some research on it. In the paper, riser system designed for steel casting is developed with VC6.0 as foreground application and Excel as background application. It's based on UG/Open by analyzing the actuality and trend about casting process CAD, and combines with the users'demand tightly. The study mainly includes two parts, one is the design system of riser for steel casting and the other is the riser drawing system. These two parts are connected by Excel database,which is achieved by ODBC technique. In the design part, a practical simple method called equivalent flat or bar of hot spot circle method is used to calculate the modulus of cast. This method simplifies user's input, and increases the efficiency of riser design without reducing accuracy. There are two methods to design riser for steel casting, one is proportion method, and the other is modulus method. The riser drawing system includes two parts, and user can not only draw standard riser based on standard riser database, but also draw user riser by user's riser database. This riser CAD system is not only a main module of the casting process CAD software, but also an independently software. It has provided friendly user interface and independent data operating, and it also shares the same style with UG. In the course of research, the design methods of riser for steel casting have been fined by referring lots of casting process resources, and shrink the range of riser parameters, so the accuracy of riser design by the methods has been improved markedly. On the other hand, the riser drawing system improves the efficiency of drawing riser by the parameter technique and assembly environment in UG. This riser system is easy-to-use relating with practical production, so it will have a bright application prospect.