Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

I spent quite a bit of time modeling up a male sided mold to press skateboards in a vaccum bag. I want to create a female mold from this file, but need to make sure there is a 1/2" off set to account for board thickness. I've looked at derive and mold but since I have zero experience with either command I have spent hours going in circles.

The attached picture is what my mold looks like. Just a big rectangle that is 2" thick with some rounded contours cut on the top.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[#2]

I'm not saying you can't get to where you need to be from what you've got right now, but if I understand your workflow correctly, it's probably not the way that I'd go about it.

What I would do is model the finished product that you want first, and then from that I'd derive out the mold pieces, either by creating a multiple-solid body and using create part from that, or by creating a new part file and using the finished skateboard to cut away things that didn't look like the mold I wanted.

Post what you've got so far and we'll take a look, see where we can go with it.

[#3]

Here is a top and side view of what I have so far. So there is no way to some how create a plane above the top view and extrude down to form the top side of a press?

[#4]

Of course there is.  Thing is, though, if you extrude to the mold part that you've already created then you won't have clearance for the part that you're molding.  That's one reason that it's easier to design the finished product first, and build your mold around the product.

But yeah, if all you want is to make an exact matching half to fit what you've got there, just put a work plane above the mold somewhere, put a sketch on it that's the same size or smaller than the overall footprint of what you've got already, and then use EXTRUDE TO NEXT and create a new solid.  From there, go to the MANAGE tab, use MAKE PART and you'll get the two solids as individual .IPT's.

[#5]

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equality wrote:

I spent quite a bit of time modeling up a male sided mold       .......

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Forget the mold for now.
Model the finished part first.
Then I can show you how to create the mold FROM the finished part.
Inventor will create the mold FOR YOU.
If you change the part - the mold will automatically update.

[#6]

To be honest I started with the one sided mold, because I couldn't figure out how to draw the finished product. I just calculated out the concave I wanted and slowly extruded some squares, cut the correct angles on them and then gave them the radius I needed. I've modled up a normal skateboard in Solidworks before following a tutorial, and understand I'll need to use lofting. However when I've tried it, I just cant get the shape right.

I was hoping there was a way to create either the finished product, or the female mold from what I already spent a lot of time on. I guess I'll just have to figure out a way to model up the board first. 

[#7]

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equality wrote:

. I've modled up a normal skateboard in Solidworks ...

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Attach the SolidWorks file here.

The process should be nearly identical in Inventor.