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      <title>Mold Tools Overview</title>
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      <div class="title_topic2" id="xps10_pagetitle">Mold Tools Overview</div>
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      <p class="para_topic">Mold Tools helps you create parting geometry, including solid and surface patches, splitting solid bodies, and creating enlarged surfaces. You use these functions to create parting surfaces and solids for internal openings of the product model before doing the external parting.</p>
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      <div class="title_figure">Mold Tools button</div>
      <p class="para_topic">Mold Wizard provides a suite of tools to aid in creating molds for product models. To see the name of a tool in the Mold Tools toolbar, pause the cursor over the tool image below. For details, click a tool button image in the toolbar.</p>
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      <div class="title_figure">Mold Tools Toolbar</div>
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                  <p class="para_note_body">NOTE: If the three buttons on the left side of the Mold Tools toolbar (Subtract, Replace Face, and Sew), are grayed out, you need to enable the functionality for those buttons. In NX, pick Application &rarr; Modeling to start the Modeling application and make the buttons active.</p>
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                  <p class="para_note_body">NOTE: The Mold Tools toolbar can be customized by editing the file at ...\moldwizard\application\moldtools.tbr. You can add more NX features into the toolbar.</p>
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      <p class="para_topic">Product models that include openings within the part require you to design a shut off for each opening. There are two patch-up methods for designing shut-offs:</p>
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            <p class="para_item">Sheet patch-up</p>
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         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Solid patch-up</p>
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      <p class="para_topic">Sheet patches are used to model the shut-off surface required to form an opening in a product model. Solid Patches are used to fill a void that will usually have multiple shut-off faces, such as an opening with a snap-latch feature. The solid patch-up method simplifies the product model by filling the opening. The bodies used to fill the openings are automatically geometry-linked to the cavity and core components and can be later united to define the desired shut-off.</p>
      <p class="para_topic">Trim region patch is another tool used to patch the opening area of the product. You do not need to unite linked geometries of solid patch to core and cavity. You should have a solid patch body trimmed by faces of the opening area to fit the product shape, then use the trimmed region tool to trim the region extracted from the solid patch by a loop of edges or curves. If trim succeeds, the trim region is linked to cavity and core.</p>
      <div class="title_division">Sheet Patch-Up Tools</div>
      <p class="para_division">You create parting surfaces for internal openings with the following Sheet Patch-Up tools:</p>
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         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Surface Patch</p>
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         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Edge Patch</p>
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         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Existing Surface</p>
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         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Enlarge Surface</p>
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      <div class="title_division">Solid Patch-Up Tools</div>
      <p class="para_division">Solid Patch-up bodies are created and formed by the following process:</p>
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         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Use the Create Box button to create the solid patch-box to fill the open area.</p>
         </li>
         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Use the Split Solid function to trim the patch-box to fit the product shape, or divide a solid into two associative pieces.</p>
         </li>
         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Use the Subtract function to fit the patch-box by subtracting the product model from the patch-box with the Retain Tool option. The Subtract function is a convenient way to shape solid patch-boxes. </p>
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                        <p class="para_note_body">NOTE: You should understand the modeling operations that occur in the background to determine when it is appropriate to use this function.</p>
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         </li>
         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Use the Profile Split function to extrude a profile of edges or curves and use them to trim the patch-box.</p>
         </li>
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      <p class="para_division">When the patch-box has been completely shaped to match the product model and form the desired shut-off faces, it is united to the product model with the Solid Patch function. The patch-body is geometry-linked to the cavity and core components on the patch-body layer category. The patch bodies can be united to the cavity or core bodies as needed.</p>
      <div class="title_division">Trim Region Patch-Up Tools</div>
      <p class="para_division">You use Trim Region Patch to convert solid patch to sheet patch.</p>
      <ol type="1" start="1">
         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Use the Create Box button to create the solid patch-box to fill the open area.</p>
         </li>
         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Use the Mold Split function or Replace Face function to trim the patch-box to fit the product shape.</p>
         </li>
         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Use the Profile Split function to extrude a profile of edges or curves and use them to trim the patch-box.</p>
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      <p class="para_division">When the patch-box has been completely shaped to match the product model and formed the desired shut-off faces, the Trim Region function is used to extract all face of the patch-box to a region and the Traverse function is used to get a loop of edges or curves, and then trim the region by the loop. The patch region is linked to cavity and core to use as a part of the parting surface directly.</p>
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               <div class="para_note">
                  <p class="para_note_body">NOTE: There are a number of Mold Wizard preference settings for Mold Tools functions that you can customize, such as the default tolerance value.</p>
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      <div class="title_division">See Also</div>
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         <li>
            <p class="para_item"> <a class="links" href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="top.openFile('moldwizard/moldwizard_defaults.html');return(false);">Setting Defaults and Preferences.</a></p>
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