- Identity Check: Which Exam This Sheet Covers
- Exam Facts at a Glance
- Exam-Day Mechanics That Cost Candidates Time
- The 14 Objective Areas in Order
- Parting Line, Parting Surface and Cavity: The Core Chain
- Analysis Domains: Draft, Undercut, Cooling and Opening
- Shut-Offs, Side Cores and Interlocks
- Shrink/Scale and Surfacing Quick Reference
- Failure Diagnosis Cheat Sheet
- A Domain-Ordered Prep Sequence
- Who Hires for Mold Skills
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The issuer's current exam is two hours, hands-on, and requires a 75% minimum grade in a working SOLIDWORKS installation.
- A failed attempt means a 14-day wait and a new exam credit; the timer never pauses, even through a crash.
- Fourteen objective areas run from Parting Line Creation through Surfacing, with no published percentage weights.
- Each attempt costs USD 20 in North America, and unused purchased credits do not expire.
Identity Check: Which Exam This Sheet Covers
This cheat sheet covers the Certified SOLIDWORKS Advanced Professional Mold Making credential, abbreviated CSWAP-MM throughout this site. Be aware that SOLIDWORKS currently titles the exam SOLIDWORKS Mold Making Professional (CSWP-MM), and you will also see the older alias CSWPA-MM in forums, study blogs and search results. They all point to the same Mold Making certification delivered by SOLIDWORKS (Dassault Systemes). It is not the Surfacing exam, not the core CSWP, not xMold and not a plastics credential, so make sure any practice material you use matches the mold tools workflow rather than another sub-exam.
If you are still orienting yourself, the explainers What Is CSWAP-MM? and What Does CSWAP-MM Stand For? cover the naming history in more depth. This page is the compressed version: what to memorize, what to practice and what to avoid.
Exam Facts at a Glance
| Item | What the issuer's current pages specify |
|---|---|
| Governing body | SOLIDWORKS, Dassault Systemes |
| Current exam title | SOLIDWORKS Mold Making Professional (CSWP-MM); CSWPA-MM is a legacy alias |
| Format | Hands-on assessment of mold-tool use and associated mold-making knowledge, not a multiple-choice-only test |
| Duration | Two hours |
| Passing grade | Minimum 75% |
| Software requirement | SOLIDWORKS 2015 or later (a minimum supported version, not the outline's publication year) |
| Fee | USD 20 per attempt, North America catalog price |
| Retake rule | 14-day wait plus a new exam credit |
| Prerequisites | None formally imposed; a prior CSWP is not required |
| Delivery | SOLIDWORKS/3DEXPERIENCE Certification Center via VirtualTester |
| Question count | Not verified for the live exam |
For deeper treatment of individual facts, see CSWAP-MM Passing Score 2026, CSWAP-MM Requirements 2026 and CSWAP-MM Certification Cost 2026. For scheduling, CSWAP-MM Exam Dates 2026 explains the testing logistics.
Exam-Day Mechanics That Cost Candidates Time
Setup you control
- Your own SOLIDWORKS installation. You need a working copy (2015 or later) and internet access. The exam fee does not include software or training.
- VirtualTester Web Client. Current testing uses the web client at webclient.virtualtester.com. Some older or general instructions still mention TesterPRO, so do not be thrown if you see the older label.
- Dual monitors are recommended. One screen for the exam instructions, one for SOLIDWORKS. This is a genuine time saver on a two-hour hands-on test.
Rules that bite
- No pausing. The timer continues through a computer crash or restart. Close heavy background applications, save your work often and make sure your machine is stable before you launch.
- Credits. Unused purchased exam credits do not expire, which means you can buy ahead without a deadline. That rule is about credits only and says nothing about how long a credential stays valid.
- Subscription benefit. Eligible commercial subscription customers may qualify for exam benefits under the issuer's subscription offer, which provides up to three eligible exams per seat twice a year, subject to license and exam restrictions. Ask your reseller or employer before paying out of pocket.
Key Takeaway
Treat the first five minutes as a system check: confirm the web client loads, your SOLIDWORKS version opens the supplied files, and your second monitor is positioned. Every minute lost to setup is a minute taken from a clock that cannot be paused.
The 14 Objective Areas in Order
The issuer publishes 14 top-level objective areas for Mold Making. They are listed below in the issuer's order. No percentage weights are published, so do not assume equal weighting or build a study plan around invented percentages. The issuer describes hands-on challenges in many of these areas, which is why drilling on real geometry beats reading about them. A fuller walkthrough lives in CSWAP-MM Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 14 Content Areas.
- Parting Line Creation
- Cavity Tool
- Draft Analysis
- Undercut Analysis
- Mold Cooling Problem
- Max Mold Opening
- Parting Surface Creation
- Runner and Sprue fill
- Shrink / Scale factor
- Shut-off Surface Creation
- Modifying Shut-off Surfaces
- Create Side Cores
- Create Tapered Interlocks
- Surfacing
The Surfacing heading carries nested topics: Ruled Surface, Planar Surface, Knit Surface, Filled Surface, Extend Surface, Trim Surface and Lofted Surface. These sit inside the single Surfacing line and do not change the top-level count of 14.
Parting Line, Parting Surface and Cavity: The Core Chain
Domains 1, 2 and 7 form the backbone of nearly every mold workflow. Errors early in this chain propagate into everything downstream, so a clean result here saves time later.
Parting Line Creation
Know how the parting line is defined on the part and why the draft direction determines where it can sit.
- Understand the relationship between pull direction and the silhouette edge of the part.
- Recognize when a part needs a stepped or non-planar parting line instead of a flat one.
- Be ready to repair a parting line that fails to close into a loop.
Parting Surface Creation
The parting surface extends from the parting line to separate the cavity and core halves.
- Know how the surface is built and how its extent relates to the mold block.
- Expect problems when a parting line is discontinuous or the surface self-intersects.
- Practice rebuilding a failed parting surface rather than abandoning the model.
Cavity Tool
The cavity feature creates the mold halves from the part, the mold base geometry and the shrinkage settings.
- Understand how the cavity result depends on a correct parting surface and any shut-off surfaces.
- Check results by examining mass and volume values, since a wrong shrink input shows up there.
Analysis Domains: Draft, Undercut, Cooling and Opening
Draft Analysis and Undercut Analysis
These two areas are diagnostic. Draft analysis tells you whether faces release from the mold along the pull direction; undercut analysis tells you which regions are trapped and cannot release. The skill being tested is interpretation: reading the color-coded result, deciding which faces need correction and recognizing which undercuts will force a side core or lifter instead of a draft fix. Practice reading these results on geometry with mixed features, not only simple wedge shapes.
Mold Cooling Problem
Searchers regularly ask about this domain, including in SOLIDWORKS community threads, which makes it a well-known pain point. Treat the cooling area as a spatial reasoning exercise: channel placement relative to the cavity, clearances from the part surface and interference with other mold features. Practice building channels in the mold halves and verifying them, instead of memorizing rules of thumb. This site makes no claim that the exam requires any particular add-on module for cooling; prepare using the standard mold tools described in the issuer's training.
Max Mold Opening
This is a calculation-oriented area: how far the mold must open so the part can be ejected and removed. Candidates should be comfortable measuring part height along the pull direction, accounting for features that extend into either half and reasoning about clearance needed for ejection. Work several examples by hand and then confirm in SOLIDWORKS so you build both the method and the speed.
Shut-Offs, Side Cores and Interlocks
Domains 10 through 13 are where candidates with only surface-level practice tend to struggle, because they require judgment about geometry, not just feature sequencing.
Shut-off Surface Creation and Modification
Shut-off surfaces seal through-openings so the mold halves can separate cleanly.
- Know how shut-offs are generated for holes and openings in the part.
- Be able to modify a shut-off when the automatic result is wrong, such as when it does not fully close or overlaps other geometry.
- Understand how shut-off quality affects the cavity result downstream.
Create Side Cores
Side cores form features that are undercut relative to the main pull direction.
- Connect undercut analysis results directly to the need for a side core.
- Practice defining the side core's pull direction independently from the main mold pull.
- Expect failures when the side core's geometry intersects other mold bodies.
Create Tapered Interlocks
Tapered interlocks align and lock the mold halves against each other.
- Understand the purpose of the taper and how it relates to alignment during closing.
- Practice placing interlocks on the parting surface boundary with sensible sizing.
Shrink/Scale and Surfacing Quick Reference
Shrink / Scale factor
Plastic parts shrink as they cool, so the mold cavity must be scaled up to compensate. The exam expects you to apply a scale factor correctly and to understand its effect on the resulting geometry. A common practical check is the mass and volume of the result: if the scale was applied wrongly or to the wrong reference point, the resulting numbers will not match expectations. Build the habit of checking mass properties after every scale operation.
Surfacing
The Surfacing heading is the broadest of the 14 areas in terms of nested topics. Know the purpose of each so you can pick the right tool quickly:
| Nested topic | Typical mold-making use |
|---|---|
| Ruled Surface | Extending a surface from edges at a defined angle or direction |
| Planar Surface | Closing a flat boundary or sealing a flat opening |
| Knit Surface | Combining separate surface bodies into one for use in the cavity workflow |
| Filled Surface | Patching a gap or hole with a surface that blends to the surrounding geometry |
| Extend Surface | Lengthening an existing surface edge to reach a boundary |
| Trim Surface | Cutting a surface to a boundary or to another surface |
| Lofted Surface | Creating a transition surface between profiles |
Note that this Surfacing area is a component of the Mold Making exam. It is separate from the standalone SOLIDWORKS Surfacing Professional (CSWP-SU) certification, and the two should not be confused when you compare difficulty or plan preparation.
Failure Diagnosis Cheat Sheet
On a hands-on exam, knowing how to recover from a failed feature matters as much as knowing the happy path. Use this as a quick reference for the failure patterns candidates commonly report.
| Symptom | Likely cause to check first |
|---|---|
| Parting surface will not build | Parting line is not a closed or continuous loop, or the pull direction is wrong |
| Cavity feature fails or gives odd bodies | Parting surface or shut-off surfaces do not fully separate the block |
| Shut-off surface leaves a gap | Opening edges not fully selected, or surface needs manual modification |
| Side core collides with mold body | Side core direction or extent overlaps geometry it should not touch |
| Knit will not form a solid | Gaps or overlaps between surface bodies; check tolerance and edges |
| Mass or volume looks wrong after scaling | Scale factor applied to wrong value or reference point |
| Undercut flagged after draft fix | Remaining trapped regions need a side core or lifter, not more draft |
Key Takeaway
Build your own flawed practice files. Take a working mold model, deliberately break a parting line or leave a shut-off gap, then time how fast you diagnose and repair it. Fix speed is a different skill from build speed, and the exam rewards both.
A Domain-Ordered Prep Sequence
Generic study advice is a poor fit for a hands-on CAD exam, so here is a sequence tied to the domains themselves. It follows dependency order: skills early in the chain are needed for everything after.
Foundations: Draft, Undercut and Parting Line
- Run draft and undercut analysis on several parts and interpret every color result.
- Create parting lines on parts with simple and stepped geometry.
- Repair at least one broken parting line.
Separation: Parting Surface, Shut-offs and Cavity
- Build parting surfaces, then create and modify shut-off surfaces.
- Generate the cavity and verify the result by checking mass and volume.
Complex Features: Side Cores, Interlocks, Shrink and Surfacing
- Create side cores from undercut analysis results and add tapered interlocks.
- Apply shrink/scale and drill each nested surfacing tool on messy geometry.
Systems and Timed Runs: Cooling, Opening, Runner and Sprue
- Practice cooling channel placement, max mold opening calculations and runner/sprue paths.
- Complete full timed two-hour mock runs with your second monitor set up as on exam day.
If you want a broader plan around this sequence, CSWAP-MM Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt expands on pacing, and How Hard Is the CSWAP-MM Exam? helps you judge how much time you personally need. The issuer's recommended preparation is the Mold Design Using SOLIDWORKS course and the CSWP-Mold Making Exam Prep Course; the course table of contents is public, but it is curriculum rather than an official list of exam domains. You can also test your recall with the practice questions at our CSWAP-MM practice test site, which complement hands-on CAD sessions rather than replace them.
Who Hires for Mold Skills
Mold design skills are relevant wherever injection-molded or cast components are produced: mold shops, tooling suppliers, product development groups and manufacturers that design parts with molding in mind. Typical roles include mold designer, tooling engineer and design engineer for molded parts. The certification works as a signal of verified skill with the SOLIDWORKS mold tools, which can matter in a resume screen or when you move between employers.
Be careful with numbers you may find online. This article does not assert a certification-wide pass rate or a salary premium for the credential, because no reliable figure was verified. For a measured look at the data question, see CSWAP-MM Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows; for the career side, read CSWAP-MM Salary Guide 2026, CSWAP-MM Jobs and Is the CSWAP-MM Certification Worth It?.
Frequently Asked Questions
The issuer's current exam page specifies two hours and a minimum passing grade of 75%. Older sample material describing 90 minutes and a point-based scheme is legacy and should not be used for planning.
The current catalog lists USD 20 per attempt for North America. A failed attempt requires a 14-day wait and a new exam credit. Unused purchased credits do not expire, and training and software are separate from the exam fee.
No. The program FAQ states professional certification exams have no formal prerequisites, and a prior CSWP is not imposed for Mold Making. Practical SOLIDWORKS skill still matters a great deal for a hands-on exam.
No. The exam cannot be paused, and the timer keeps running through a computer crash or restart. Prepare a stable machine with SOLIDWORKS 2015 or later, reliable internet and ideally two monitors.
No. CSWPA-MM is a common legacy and search alias for the same Mold Making certification, which the issuer now titles SOLIDWORKS Mold Making Professional (CSWP-MM). It is distinct from the Surfacing exam, even though Surfacing appears as one objective area inside Mold Making.