Hey everyone, welcome to my first article in a series on Draft Analysis. In this series, I’m going to go over the basics of this tool that is helpful to anyone working on cast or molded parts. This first article will be an introduction and overview to what this tool does.
There’s one thing that I want to clarify before we get started is that this is a tool to make sure that your part has enough draft for how you’re planning to make it. It DOES NOT add draft to the part. That is something you can do either when you are creating a feature such as an extrusion, or something you can add afterward by using the Draft command. However, once draft has been applied, it will check your part based on the parameters you put in to make sure it meets your requirements. We will be adding draft to the part in the last article in this series.
What is draft? It’s the angle that is put on the side faces of the part so that the part doesn’t get trapped in the mold or cast. There are many factors that go into determining the draft angle of a part, but I won’t be covering that in this article (sorry!) Ask your local mold or cast maker, hopefully they can help.
Figure 1: Mold experts.
Let’s take a look at this part, a plastic power strip cover. This part will be made by a simple mold with just core and a cavity. After taking a look at this part, I figure that the most logical place for the mold to split will be the Top Plane. I’m going to use that plane the neutral plane.
Figure 2: Power strip cover with Top Plane shown.
To start the draft analysis, switch over to the Evaluate tab on the Command Manager. You’ll find it grouped next to similar tools for analyzing different aspects of your part. Left click to enter the tool.
Figure 3: Draft Analysis button on the Evaluate Tab
That’s going to wrap up this first article on Draft Analysis. In the next article, I’ll go into setting up the tool and using the different options. Please check back for that article, and thanks for reading! Also, if you prefer to watch a video here a link to my video on Draft Analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PteHTMtS2t0
