CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

4 January 2005

Product News

Moldflow Announces the Release of Moldflow Plastics Insight 6.0

Moldflow Corporation announced release 6.0 of Moldflow Plastics Insight® (MPI®).

MPI 6.0 delivers new technologies and key enhancements that help users work more efficiently, significantly reduce solution time, interact better with CAD, structural analysis and other Moldflow applications, and better understand and communicate analysis results.

Two new technologies in MPI 6.0 bring significant breakthroughs for 3D filling and warpage applications. The new coupled 3D Flow solver is up to eight times faster, and renders more accurate temperature and shear heating calculations, new capabilities to predict air traps and to simulate gas penetration in 1D beam elements, and the first-of-its-kind capability to simulate jetting phenomena. Similarly, new 3D Warp solver technology delivers results up to 35 times faster.

Ken Welch, executive VP and general manager of Moldflow's Design Analysis Solutions business unit, states: "Succeeding in today's global market depends on continuously increasing efficiency and performance. This is especially true in the plastics industry, where the widespread use of 3D CAD systems for integrated part and tool design has generated a corresponding shift to CAE analysis technologies that run directly on those 3D models. The new 3D solver technologies in MPI 6.0 embody the culmination of a major research and development undertaking and employ the latest numerical simulation techniques to break down former speed and capacity barriers for our customers who increasingly rely on MPI/3D solutions to increase output and quality."

Gal Sherbelis of GS Design (Rh'anana, Israel), says: "The MPI 6.0 release delivers two significant improvements in the 3D Flow simulation: accuracy and execution time. Using the new version, I was able to simulate a very specific air entrapment problem in an area where the flow front moved from a thin to a thick section; the trapped air bubbles caused a surface defect. MPI 6.0 allowed me to understand the cause of the problem and examine a change to the geometry that would fix it. Plus, the reduction in solver execution time enables me to run more 3D analyses on thin-wall parts, even on models with a large number of elements."

Other key features:

MORE EFFICIENT, PANEL-BASED USER INTERFACE - Reorganized display reduces screen clutter and allows more efficient workflow for most tasks with a new Tools panel and Toolbox, consolidated Project and Study Tasks panel, and single log window that consolidates most textual outputs.

Claudio Dall'Acqua, Moldflow analyst at HRSflow (San Polo Di Piave, Italy), says: "The new user interface organization is more rational than ever and allows quicker access to modeling, meshing, and mesh diagnostic and repair functions. In particular, the new directed diagnostics navigation is very useful. These improvements have helped speed up my pre-processing work. Additionally, I have seen improvement in meshing operations, especially in part thickness calculations on our Fusion models."

IMPROVED PRODUCT INTEGRATION - Export Part/Runner/Cooling model to CAD via IGES format, improved interfaces to ABAQUS® and ANSYS®, a new interface to LS-DYNAT, plus new capabilities to exchange design-through-manufacturing data between Moldflow Manufacturing Solutions and Design Analysis Solutions products. The improved integration between MPI and industry standard structural integration programs allows designers of high performance plastic applications to more accurately account for the effects of processing on the performance of injection molded plastic parts when subject to service loading.

Andy Rose of DSM-DADC (Geleen, The Netherlands) uses both Moldflow and LS-DYNA analyses in his work. "The new LS-DYNA interface allows us to output MPI results for subsequent mechanical analysis using LS-DYNA. This improves our understanding of how injection molded parts will perform under dynamic conditions. For analyzing automotive components, LS-DYNA provides some unique features for dynamic analyses, especially impact and collision (crashworthiness) simulations, which help show achievement of quality and regulatory safety standards. Now we can account for initial stress and (for fiber-reinforced materials) anisotropic material property distributions to achieve a more accurate prediction of part performance under true operating conditions."

STREAMLINED DIAGNOSTIC AND COMMUNICATION TOOLS - Systematically validate mesh quality with directed diagnostics navigation. Generate reports in Microsoft® Word® or PowerPoint® formats, in addition to HTML format. Share information with a distributed design-through-manufacturing team by exporting Moldflow results files and creating comparison criteria files for viewing in the Moldflow Communicator utility.

Alain Cuzel, CAD/CAM Manager at Calor (St-Jean de Bournay, France), says: "The new directed diagnostics navigation tool is a welcome improvement that saves us time in mesh optimization tasks. The automatic view adjustment helps us address meshing issues more efficiently."

Rotraud Freytag, Manager CAE Unit at Upper Austrian Research GmbH (Wels, Austria), says: "As injection molding simulation consultants, we interact with companies in many different industries. The expanded report generation options and new communication tool implemented in MPI 6.0 make it easier to share analysis results with our project partners or customers quickly, thus enabling them to start necessary optimization processes much faster."

MORE INFORMATIVE RESULT DISPLAYS - Isolate warpage due to unbalanced cooling, non-uniform shrinkage and fiber orientation in 3D Warp, view mold internal temperature distributions in 3D Cool, see the plastic re-melt zone in 3D Overmolding, capture changes in the flow front due to jetting in 3D Flow, visualize the Von Mises stresses on the surface of the core in Core Shift, and isolate warpage due to corner effects for Midplane and Fusion Warp analyses.

Availability

MPI 6.0 is available now. For more information, please call Moldflow at 508-358-5848 or go to http://www.moldflow.com .

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