used as the platform for the new mold design application.
Fig. 1 shows a Windows-native 3D injection mold designsystem compared with IMOLD. Users’ applications can be
created and run as a standalone exe file or as a User DLL
or Extension DLL in SolidWorks. The SolidWorks Add-In
Manager allows users to control which third party software
is loaded at any time during their SolidWorks session. More
than one package can be loaded at once, and the settings
will be maintained across SolidWorks sessions.
3.1. SolidWorks
SolidWorks recently emerged as one of the 3D product de-
sign software for Windows, providing one of the most pow-
erful and intuitive mechanical design solution in its class. In
SolidWorks, parts are created by building a “base feature,”
and adding other features such as bosses, cuts, holes, fil-
lets, or shells. The base feature may be an extrusion, revo-
lution, swept profile, or loft. To create a base feature, sketch
a two-dimensional geometric profile and move the profile
through space to create a volume. Geometry can be sketched
on construction planes or on planar surfaces of parts.
Feature-based solid-modeling programs are making
two-dimensional design techniques obsolete. However,
Unix-based solid-modeling software are expensive. With
the introduction of SolidWorks for Microsoft Windows,
the cost is less than the price of earlier dimension driven
solid-modeling programs [3].
3.2. Parasolid as a 3D kernel
SolidWorks uses Parasolid as a 3D kernel. Parasolid ker-
nel modeling toolkit, is recognized as a world’s leading,
production-proven core solid modeler. Designed as an exact
boundary-representation solid modeler, Parasolid provides
robust solid-modeling, generalized cellular modeling and in-
tegrated surface/sheet modeling capabilities and is designed
for easy integration into CAD/CAM/CAE systems to give
rapid time to market. Its extensive functionality is supplied
as a library of routines with an object-oriented program-
ming interface. It is essentially a solid modeler, which can
be used to [4]: (i) build and manipulate solid objects; (ii)
calculate mass and moments of inertia, and perform inter-
ference detection; (iii) output the objects in various picto-
rial ways; (iv) store the objects in some sort of database or
archive and retrieve them later; and (iv) support freeform
surfaces.
3.3. API [5]
The SolidWorks application programming interface (API)
is an OLE programming interface to SolidWorks. The API
contains hundreds of functions that can be called fromVisual
Basic, VBA (Excel, Access, etc.), C, C++, or SolidWorks
macro files. These functions provide the programmer with
direct access to SolidWorks functionality such as creating
a line, extruding a boss, or verifying the parameters of a
surface.
The API interface uses an object-oriented approach. All
the API functions are methods or properties that apply to an
object. Fig. 2 is one particular view of the SolidWorks API
objects.
SolidWorks exposes functionality through OLE automa-
tion using Dispatch and also through standard COM objects.
The Dispatch interface [6] will package arguments and re-
turn values as Variants so that languages such as Basic can1、引言
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