Cornerstone is undertaking an extensive campaign to expand and improve the power of "smart pattern" components. Starting with the first release of 8.5, many significant enhancements have been made. So far we have made it easier to place them, easier to organize your library, and given you better tools to manage your jobs.  Expect more improvements soon.

Easier Placement
You now have full and easier control of how you put the smart pattern in the design. Especially in the 3D, you can use the construction plane to select any base orientation of your component, and then toggle with ~ to get any of the 6 relative orientations. After placement, you can rotate the component by a specified snap angle, or you can set the angle to 0 to allow any angle or snap to geometry onscreen.

Organize Your Library
Besides including over 800 new solid smart patterns in the distribution, XMD 8.5 now offers dramatic improvements to the way you manage your smart patterns.

No longer do you need to scroll through a list of hundreds or thousands of smart patterns to find your one. With XMD 8.5 you can finally organize them into directories. In fact, we've already done this with our new smart patterns, so it's up to you to organize your library however you wish.

Manage Your Designs
In addition, XMD now automatically copies smart patterns into your job as you use them. This means your job directory is self-contained. You can send your job to anyone without having to figure which smart patterns it needs, and without zipping all 10000 smart patterns into a gigantic file to share. In addition, this gives you the means to modify smart patterns local to your job. Bring in your standard hydraulic cylinder. Stretch the bore. Save it, and update your smart patterns automatically. Your edit will only affect the active job, and you no longer need to come up with unique names for every edit and tweak.

The new release of XMD continues with a series of major enhancements started with R1, and fixes a number of bugs as well.  Major enhancements include numerous improvements to smart patterns, and a newly available 21 day trial license.  
 
A few of the many bugs we fixed:
•    Bottom clamp plate (and others) no longer disappears.
•    Fix bug which caused extra components to show up at 0.0.
•    XMD Config, LicenseManager, and Migrate should now work on all computers.
•    Hotkeys are working again.
 
Read more, and download the latest here:
http://www.corintsoft.com/index.php?content_id=96

We are very excited about this major upgrade. There is much more in it than we could possibly share in a short newsletter article, so we will just share a few highlights. Most important, XMD-S 9.0 delivers fully integrated free-form solid modeling. What will this do for you?

The next major release of XMD will be ready for Beta testing in the next couple weeks. We are very excited about major upgrade. There is much more in it than we could possibly share in a short newsletter article, so we will just share a few highlights.

This new XMD will be dubbed XMD-S 9.0. What's with the S? Well, that letter S represents, no exaggeration, years of development by Cornerstone Intelligent Software and our predecessor, Cornerstone Technology. The S represents a fundamental change to the way you will design molds with XMD. The S represents Solid, Surface and Section modeling, smoothly integrated in intelligent XMD designs.

XMD-S will continue to offer all the intelligence, automation, and easy design building tools you know and love. You won't need to change your habits to use XMD-S. But when you see the added power given by our new tools, combining the full power of KeyCreator's freeform direct modeling technology, with XMD's associative drafting and smart components, you will want to change.

Fully Modeled Designs
Unlike some other mold design packages out there, XMD will update the solid design “as you build it.” In XMD-S we will be simultaneously working in both 3D solid and 2D intelligent drafting.

Whether you are working in section or in 3D, the solid modeling will be done real-time. When you add a waterline or component, it’s done. You don’t have to do any secondary operations to complete the solid model. It already there. We are making extra efforts to fix and heal geometry on the fly.

Slides, lifters and inserts, etc. are going to be a breeze to incorporate into the design. Simply select the solid, select the bottom face and voila, XMD knows what this component is, its size and location. It’s a fully functional XMD component.

Smarter Components and Holes
XMD always tries to be intelligent when it creates components and holes. In the past though it was limited by incomplete models for reasoning about the design. Now that solid modeling is integrated, the old problem of holes assigned to the wrong plate is gone! Components and holes can accurately reflect the complex 3D shapes of your blocks and surfaces.

More to Come
Stay tuned to learn more about enhancements to water, user plates, holes, and more.

A very serious problem has come to our attention: Some of the HASP keys are dying. If yours dies, older versions of XMD just stop working. The program will load okay, but you press any button and XMD just doesn't react. Newer versions of XMD behave better, and will tell you your HASP key is broken.

If this happens to you, PLEASE CALL us. We will freely exchange broken SIMs of all current customers with a new model. If your maintenance has expired, that's okay; we will replace yours with a working SIM, at cost.

MoldMaking Expo is now PDx/amerimold.
Taking place in Cincinnati this year, May 11-13, Cornerstone will be there alongside CAMM, in Booth #330. For more about the show:
http://www.pdx-amerimold.com
Getting into the Medical Mold Business
This nice article tells what it takes to succeed in this niche market segment.
http://www.moldmakingtechnology.com/articles/0210newbusops.html
Cool videos for learning the terminology of molds.
Steinwall, a Minneapolis based injection molder, has produced a great introduction to molds and its terminology. Check it out: http://www.steinwall.com/VID-mold-making-terminology.html

Karl Braun, of Superior Tool and Mold sends us our first Tip and Trick:

The Easy Way to Show Lifters and Slides In Their Retracted Positions
• Use your 3D geometry and copy it to a sublevel of the component that you are retracting. Move it into the retracted position.
• Assign the new level to the necessary Plan View and keep it undislayed. (Use the XMD Level Manager for this.)
• When you create new sections, the retracted components will magically appear in their retracted positions.
WATCH VIDEO

We came across this article about the latest KeyCreator, V9. This article was written by a KeyCreator user. He has a lot of good things to say about KeyCreator. Wireframe, Surfacing, solids and automatic 2D at an extremely reasonable price, without any surprise Add On charges. What you see is what you get.
Click here to read the article

 Please join us by signing up Here.