Research And Development On The 3D Casting Process CAD System Based On UG

With the development of computer technology, CAD technology has been widely used in industrial production, and has began the transition from the original 2D CAD to 3D CAD technology. In the casting production, casting process design using 3D CAD technology is the inevitable trend, because the integration of 3D-CAD, CAE and CAM is more easily and forms enterprise CIMS system. The steel casting process CAD system mainly studied in this paper is based on the Unigraphics(for short UG) CAD platform, which is a powerful modeling and assembly tool developed by EDS Corporation. During the traditional casting production, technologists can design rational casting process by their experience, theoretical knowledge and related reference manuals, which is fussy and easily makes mistake. Casting CAE is still mainly used to simulate the casting process, which can help technologist find out problems of casting process but can't help them design casting process at the beginning, before CAE simulation. Casting process CAD system can help technologist design and optimize casting process greatly before CAE simulation, and then improve the casting process with CAE simulation and verification functions. So, the research and development for Casting Process Design CAD are conducted under this background in this paper.This paper analyzes the current status and development trend of CAD casting process. The Casting Process CAD System's architecture is designed considering both requirements of Baoji Petroleum Machinery Co. Ltd. and foundry industry standards. By means of the secondary development API interface UG/Open provided by UG and VC development tools, the Steel Casting Process CAD is developed based on UG.Steel Casting Process CAD System includes a number of modules: initializing module, simple process design module, riser and riser-patch design module, chiller design module, gating design module and information-output module. Among them, riser design is the key of the Casting Process CAD System, which includes hot-spot-circle calculation, riser-patch parameters calculation, riser layout and so on. The riser design depends on the partial modulus of casting entity, which means the modulus is only affected by some part of casting entity, not entirely, and riser layouts according to partial module calculated by the system too. The riser-patch design uses two methods, which are Rolling-circle method and Experiential Formula method. Steel Casting Process CAD System includes common foundry standards in its database and manages the database using ADO technology. The system also allows user change the data stored in the database directly by some interface tools. Throughout the designing of process, users can check the current processing data using the information-output tools provided by CAD system.The casting CAD system studied in this paper is mainly for the steel castings. The system has the same interfaces as UG itself and provides a variety of tools to design casting process, which increases efficiency and accuracy of process design greatly. With the system, a completed casting process can be used for CAE simulation and then improved, that is more scientific.