Rapid prototyping quickly verifies designs and reduces development time and cost. In today's rapidly changing marketplace, product development cycles have been compressed into weeks for what may have taken months or years in the past. Computer-Aided Design, or CAD, has revolutionized the way products are developed, and offers the designer a wide range of options to physically build parts and assemblies to validate form, fit and function. This article will discuss the use of CAD models in rapid prototyping to verify designs as it pertains to injection molding and die casting.

One of the most powerful advantages associated with CAD modeling is the ability to create physical 3D prototypes of the design using the actual CAD model data itself. These prototypes can be used to evaluate the shape of the product for aesthetics or ergonomics, testing and verifying component performance, and to ensure part fits and function before committing to production tooling, such as injection molds and die casting dies.

The prototypes can be produced quickly and inexpensively, usually within a few days and for a few hundred dollars, more or less depending on the size of the parts and the number needed. And because they are made directly from the CAD models themselves, any design mistakes made, such as interference between parts or omitted features, can be corrected in the CAD model. Then a new set of prototypes can be produced to verify the corrections. http://cadmodels.org/?q=rapid_prototyping