Autodesk has announced the latest release of its Moldflow software suite for plastics injection moulding simulation and optimisation.

Scheduled for next month, Autodesk Moldflow 2010, its second release and part of the Autodesk solution for digital prototyping, offers enhanced performance, accuracy and interoperability with mainstream computer-aided-design (CAD) applications.

The plastics injection moulding software suite is among the first in the computer-aided-engineering (CAE) market to take advantage of the processing power of high-performance graphics-processing-unit (GPU) technology to solve complex computations twice as fast.

Customers will benefit from higher accuracy for their plastics simulations through improvements to 3D mesh analysis quality for parts and assemblies.

Finally, native support for the Autodesk Inventor software and a variety of other CAD models improve Moldflow integration with the product design and development process.

Samir Hanna, vice-president of digital factory and industrial design for the Autodesk Manufacturing Industry Group, said: ‘We’re focused on helping manufacturers reduce errors and improve injection mould performance, resulting in higher product quality and faster time to market.

‘With the second release of Moldflow 2010, we are providing our customers with higher accuracy than ever before.

‘Customers can troubleshoot and optimise plastic parts from the start of the product design cycle all the way to the manufacturing process.’ The unique properties of plastics allow manufacturers to make high-quality parts that are light and strong with a high degree of repeatability.

However, there are also many challenges associated with plastics that are crucial to a product’s success, such as visual defects or warpage (that is, changes that cause the part to no longer fit during assembly), which can result from a design misstep or the manufacturing process.

Designers and engineers can use the Autodesk Moldflow software to balance structural integrity and aesthetics when addressing these challenges, particularly for consumer products, automotive interiors and high-end building products.

Brian Cutler, process simulation engineer of Synventive Molding Solutions, said: ‘The new graphics processing unit and 3D parallel flow capabilities in Moldflow 2010 will allow us to take maximum advantage of our computing power.’ With the 2010 release, Autodesk claims that it simplified the Moldflow product line to bring customers more value at a lower cost.

Autodesk Moldflow Insight offers an in-depth simulation of the industry’s most advanced moulding processes using a large plastics material database.

Autodesk Moldflow Adviser simplifies plastics injection moulding simulation and guides designers through analysis and results interpretation, helping to avoid manufacturing delays and costly mould rework.

A single 3D flow analysis in the latest release taps into hardware advancements by using multiple central-processing-unit (CPU) cores.

Multi-threading technology accelerates Autodesk Moldflow software analysis times by a factor of two, depending on the model.

To achieve even greater speed gains, the Autodesk Moldflow software is said to be the first plastics simulation software to leverage GPU technology from NVIDIA Corporation for analysis calculations in combination with the multiple CPU cores.

Autodesk has enhanced multi-CAD application support in Insight and CAD models that are created or modified in the Inventor software can now be imported directly into both Adviser and Insight.

Insight users can import a part of or a complete assembly at once.

Once the CAD model has been imported, the user has full control over the meshing process and can refine the surface mesh in a specific spot where more detail is required, while leaving another area coarser.

Improvements to meshing technology for 3D models enable more accurate predictions of plastics designs and processes.

For example, the software provides better mesh quality in areas where the part makes a transition from a thick to a thin area, in corners and at the edge of a part.

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