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Injection Molding
Defining plastic part properties
Categorize your plastic part components and define their materials to allow the SimForm app solver to identify them.
Define plastic part properties
You must categorize your plastic part components and define their materials to allow the SimForm app solver to identify them.

Injection Molding
- Injection molding overview
  Use SimForm to perform thermal cooling analyses for your plastic injection mold designs. These analyses help you identify hot spots on the plastic part and develop cooling layouts to improve part quality and reduce cycle times.
- Setting up a simulation workflow
  You can set up and run a SimForm project by uploading your CAD file, categorizing components, selecting materials, and running simulations.
- Navigating the app interface
  The SimForm interface allows you to create and access projects and jobs, as well as add and manage users and account credits.
- Using projects and jobs
  Use projects and jobs in SimForm to manage and organize your mold design tests.
- Setting up a simulation
  Use the setup page to categorize and define your model components properties for the solver to identify them.
- Defining mold properties
  Defining mold properties based on your analysis type ensures that the SimForm solver correctly identifies the mold components in your CAD model and considers their material properties in the thermal analysis.
- Defining plastic part properties
  Categorize your plastic part components and define their materials to allow the SimForm app solver to identify them.
  - Define plastic part properties
    You must categorize your plastic part components and define their materials to allow the SimForm app solver to identify them.
  - Define a new plastic material
    Define and add custom materials for plastic part components to evaluate the thermal performance of different materials.
  - Custom Part Material options
    The custom part material window lets you define a new plastic part material in your job.
- Defining cooling channels
  In a channel assessment job, if your model contains cooling channels, you must define the components that represent them so the solver can identify them.
- Defining manufacturing constraints
  In a channel recommender job, manufacturing constraints let you specify practical limits for how cooling channels can be manufactured in your mold.
- Running a simulation
  When running a simulation, the solver relies on specific assumptions and automated processes to ensure accurate and efficient results.
- Viewing results
  The results page allows you to view and explore the thermal analysis results of your job after its simulation is completed.
- Tutorials
  These examples are designed to help you become familiar with some of the major features available in SimForm.
- Glossary

Define plastic part properties

You must categorize your plastic part components and define their materials to allow the SimForm app solver to identify them.

A job with an uploaded mold design.

In the display window, select a component that defines a plastic part.
You can select the components individually or use Ctrl-click to select multiple components of the same type.
In the Plastic Part card, click add to assign the component as a plastic part.
Each time you add a component, the number of categorized elements is updated so that you can track the categorization of your model.
Click hide to hide the categorized components from the display window.
Hiding the categorized components allows you to verify that all your components are correctly categorized and to identify components that are not yet categorized.
Repeat the steps 1-3 to categorize all the plastic parts components.
In the Plastic Part card, you can click expand to view the list of categorized components for verification. You can click remove to remove a categorized component to correct it.
(Optional) Select the cold runner component and in the Plastic Part card, in the Runners section, click add to assign it as a cold runner.
SimForm indicates the number of categorized cold runners.
In the Plastic Part card, expand the Select Material list and select a material from the list or click Add Material to create a custom material.

If your model contains cooling channels, categorize them; otherwise, submit your job to solve it.