Mold fill pattern: see how your part fills from its gates

What it helps you with

• Choosing where to gate: try a position, move it, and compare.
• Keeping weld lines off cosmetic faces and away from the parts that take load, where a weld line is weak and visible.
• Finding what fills last, since those places need venting so air is not trapped.
• Balancing a part with several gates, so no one region fills long after the rest.

What you see

Fill order

The part coloured from blue at the gate to red where the plastic arrives last, as a share of the shot.

Weld lines

Dark lines where two flow fronts meet, with their total length.

Last to fill

White dots on the places that fill last.

Unreached

Any part of the surface the plastic does not reach from the gates you placed.

How to use it

1. 1

   Open your part and pick Fill

   Drop a STEP file on the page, choose Analyze, then the Fill map.

2. 2

   Place your gates

   Click on the part to place a gate, up to eight of them, and drag a gate to move it.

3. 3

   Run the fill

   Press Run fill. It takes a second or two on a large part, and a bar shows how far it has got.

4. 4

   Compare

   Move a gate, add one, or clear them and start again, then run it again. Watch where the weld lines and the last-to-fill spots go.

5. 5

   Download the report

   The Fill Pattern Report: the fill from above and from below, and where each gate and each last-to-fill spot is, in the coordinates of your CAD file, so you can talk gates and vents over with your moulder.

What it is not

This is a fill order, not a mould-flow simulation. The plastic does not cool here, so it says nothing about fill times, pressures, temperatures or short shots, and the material you pick does not change it. Use it to compare gate positions early, and leave the final call to a full simulation or your moulder. The fill map is in beta.

Questions