The local tool and mold industry appears to be busy again. There's lots of work now finally, but the pressures are high. Yet overseas competition is still there, and although some of the business has come back to North America, margins are lower and time constraints are higher.

To survive in this an environment you must become more and more efficient. If you can design and build your mold for less than you quoted, if you can get the jobs done faster than your competition, only then can you maintain a healthy profit margin and keep work coming.

This month, we introduce you to a new design service AtSource Design Team, whose goal is exactly to pursue that efficiency and help mold shops succeed. In our Tip and Trick, we explain how to efficiently manage KeyCreator's memory usage, simultaneously making your system faster, and solving stability problems that hamper many companies' work.

Cornerstone Intelligent Software Corp. is now collaborating with AtSource Design Team. AtSource, with manager and lead designer Ed Michener, aims to provide high-quality, full service mold design services to the industry.

The collaboration with Cornerstone is expected to provide multiple benefits.




Improved Design Software. First, Cornerstone will get direct and immediate feedback on our software products from AtSource. Cornerstone will use this knowledge to produce better software for everyone.

Efficient Design. Through our partnership, Cornerstone will ensure AtSource Design Team is using its software tools to the max, including, Expert Mold Designer, and the upcoming XMD-S.

Outsourcing. AtSource Design Team is ready to take on the overflow from your engineering department, design, surfacing, whatever it may be they may be able to assist you.

Consulting. Cornerstone is ready to improve your company's efficiency as well. Call Cornerstone any time for training and consulting services.

For mold design services, contact:
Ed Michener
AtSource Design Team
ed@atsourcedesignteam.com
www.atsourcedesignteam.com
T: 519-737-1115 M: 519-965-7041

10 Tips to Save Memory and Increase Performance

If you've ever had to work with large, complex files before, you probably observed that not only is it slower to work with than small jobs, it also shows a greater tendency to crash.  Crashes are nearly always caused by either corrupted geometry, or running out of memory.  And of course the crashes caused by running out of memory can lead to corrupted geometry.
 
So what can you do?  Don't go buy more memory, it won't help!  The problem is that KeyCreator, as a 32 bit application, can't access much more than 1.5GB of it. Kubotek is working on a 64 bit version of its software which will solve this problem. 
 
In the meantime, there are many ways you can do now to reduce your memory usage and avoid this problem in your mold designs.  With a little effort, you can dramatically reduce memory consumption to well under 1GB, and work much more efficiently.
 
Click here for 10 ways that each can save over 100MB from a large job.