Extended modules > Mold Design > General molding tools > Check wall thickness
  
Check wall thickness
You can check the wall thickness of a part using planar sections along a given direction. Mold Design creates a finite set of equidistant planar sections at which it checks for a specified minimal or maximal wall thickness, or both. The sections can be manipulated individually in the Wall Thickness Check Results browser, and the whole set can be retained as a workplane set for further use.
To check the wall thickness of a part,
1. Click Mold Design and then, in the Analysis group, click the arrow next to Wall Thickness.
2. Click 2D. The Wall Thickness dialog box opens.
3. If necessary, click Part and specify a different part to check.
4. Specify the parameters of the boundary box to contain the set of planar sections:
Specify the Direction (using the Direction 3D tool) along which the part is to be checked.
(Optional) Click the Base Point of the boundary box, that is, the point at which the first planar section is created.
(Optional) Click the End Point of the boundary box.
Enter the Number of planar sections to check. If you specify a Number before the Distance (see below), the Distance value is then calculated automatically.
Enter the Distance between planar sections. If you specify a Distance before the Number (see above), the Number value is calculated automatically. If you change either of the Number or Distance parameters after both have been given, the boundary box expands or contracts to accommodate the change.
Click Optimize Num to optimize the number of planar sections to cover the part (given the distance between them).
Click Optimize Dist to optimize the distance between the planar sections given their number.
5. To check for minimal wall thickness, enter the minimum thickness desired in the Minimal field.
6. To check for maximal wall thickness, enter the maximum thickness desired in the Maximal field.
7. To control how corner vertices are handled by the thickness check, select one of the following filter options from the Vertex Filter list:
None: Display all corner vertices in the feedback (no filtering occurs during the check).
< 90 degree: Display only those corner vertices that have an angle of less than 90 degrees (all others are filtered out).
All: Do not display any corner vertices in the check feedback (that is, filter out all corner vertices).
The graphic below shows the differences between the filter options during a minimal wall thickness check:
8. The top right edge has an angle of greater than 90 degree, and is therefore filtered out in both the All and < 90 degree modes. The top left edge has an angle of less than 90 degree, and is only filtered out with All option.
9. Click Calculate to perform the check. The planar sections that contain critical areas (highlighted in red) become visible on the part in the viewport. They show profile geometry within the part along the defined direction, indicating where the minimal or maximal thickness limits (or both) are met or not.
10. Click Show Browser to open the Wall Thickness Check Results browser which displays the names of the planar sections along with toggle switches to hide or show them in the viewport. The other two columns in the browser indicate if each planar section satisfies the minimal or maximal thickness limit, or if one of the values was not checked.
11. To keep the planar section permanently as a workplane set, click Keep Set on. The new workplane set (which already exists temporarily while the wall thickness check is active) is included in the Structure Browser.
12. Click OK to complete the operation.