- What You Are Actually Studying For
- Exam Mechanics: Format, Fee, and Rules
- Working Through the 14 Objective Areas
- Where Mold Models Break: Troubleshooting Practice
- Building Your Own Hands-On Exercises
- A Domain-Ordered Study Sequence
- Official Preparation Resources and Their Limits
- Exam-Day Execution
- Who Hires for Mold Design Skills
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The exam is hands-on: two hours, a 75% minimum passing grade, and a working SOLIDWORKS 2015 or later installation of your own.
- The issuer lists 14 top-level objective areas, from Parting Line Creation through Surfacing, with no published percentage weights.
- A failed attempt means a 14-day wait and a new exam credit, so treat your first sitting as the real one.
- Practice by building molds from scratch, then deliberately breaking them: failed shut-offs, bad knits, and wrong shrink values teach the most.
What You Are Actually Studying For
The credential this guide covers is the Certified SOLIDWORKS Advanced Professional Mold Making certification, abbreviated CSWAP-MM on this site. Be aware that SOLIDWORKS currently titles the exam SOLIDWORKS Mold Making Professional (CSWP-MM), and you will still see the older alias CSWPA-MM in forums, tutorials, and search results. They all point to the same Mold Making certification issued by SOLIDWORKS, a Dassault Systemes brand. If you want the naming background first, our explainers on what CSWAP-MM is and what the abbreviation stands for cover it in more depth.
The single most important thing to understand about this exam is that it tests doing, not recognizing. SOLIDWORKS describes it as a hands-on assessment of mold-tool use and associated mold-making knowledge. You will be working in your own SOLIDWORKS session, opening provided models, building mold features, and reporting results. Memorizing definitions will not carry you; fluency with the Mold Tools workflow will.
Exam Mechanics: Format, Fee, and Rules
Before you plan any study, lock down the logistics. These are the verified facts from the issuer's current certification pages:
| Item | What the Issuer Specifies |
|---|---|
| Time limit | Two hours |
| Minimum passing grade | 75% |
| Software requirement | SOLIDWORKS 2015 or later, installed and working on your machine |
| Delivery | SOLIDWORKS/3DEXPERIENCE Certification Center via VirtualTester Web Client |
| Fee per attempt | USD 20 listed in the catalog for North America |
| Retake after a fail | 14-day wait plus a new exam credit |
| Prerequisites | None formally required; no prior CSWP imposed |
| Pausing | Not possible; the timer continues through a crash or restart |
A few practical notes follow from this table. First, the 2015 figure is only the minimum supported software version, not the year the exam outline was written, so a modern installation is fine. Second, you need your own working SOLIDWORKS and an internet connection; the issuer recommends dual monitors, which is genuinely useful when one screen holds the exam interface and the other holds your model. Third, unused purchased exam credits do not expire, which means buying a credit does not start a countdown on you. For the full financial picture, including training costs that sit outside the exam fee, see our certification cost breakdown and the page on requirements and eligibility.
A note on old sample guides
Some third-party mirrors of a legacy sample guide describe a nine-question, 90-minute format with a 30-day retake wait. Those details conflict with the issuer's current two-hour limit and 14-day rule, and the live question count is not something we can verify. Plan around the current issuer figures, and do not build your pacing strategy on a legacy question count. Our guide to the passing score goes into how the 75% threshold should shape your approach.
Working Through the 14 Objective Areas
The issuer publishes 14 top-level objective areas for Mold Making. It does not publish percentage weights, so do not assume any area is "worth more." Treat all fourteen as fair game and weight your time by your own weakness. A deeper per-area breakdown lives in our complete domains guide; here is how to think about them as a working sequence.
The setup and analysis group
Parting Line Creation
Everything downstream depends on a correct parting line. You must understand how the Parting Lines tool uses a pull direction, how draft is evaluated against it, and what happens when a silhouette edge is missing or split.
- Practice choosing and reversing pull direction deliberately
- Recognize when you must split a face or edit the line manually
- Know how a bad parting line surfaces later as a failed parting surface
Draft Analysis
Draft Analysis shows you which faces will release and which will not. Learn to read the color output against your pull direction and a stated minimum draft angle.
- Interpret positive-draft, negative-draft, and requires-draft faces
- Understand how face classification changes if the pull direction changes
Undercut Analysis
Undercut Analysis identifies regions that cannot be released along the pull direction and separates trapped areas from areas that need side action.
- Distinguish undercuts reachable from one side from fully trapped regions
- Connect your findings to the later side-core objective
The sizing and flow group
Shrink / Scale Factor
Shrinkage scaling is deceptively easy to get wrong. Know the difference between scaling about the centroid versus the origin, uniform versus non-uniform scaling, and when scaling is applied relative to the rest of your workflow.
- Verify results by checking mass or volume before and after scaling
- Watch the order of operations: scaling after the wrong step compounds errors
Runner and Sprue Fill
This objective concerns the flow path that delivers material to the cavity. Be comfortable with the sprue and runner geometry you create and with how it affects the resulting fill volume.
Mold Cooling Problem
The cooling objective is a frequent topic in community discussions, which tells you candidates find it confusing. Expect a measured, calculation-style problem tied to your model rather than a vocabulary question. Practice setting up channels precisely and verifying their placement and size against stated requirements.
Max Mold Opening
This tests whether you can determine the opening stroke needed to eject the part cleanly. Work out how part height, core and cavity extents, and clearance combine into a required opening distance, then confirm it against the geometry rather than guessing.
The tooling construction group
Cavity Tool
Know how the Cavity feature subtracts the design part from the mold blocks, and be able to confirm the result is a clean cavity and core with the right volumes.
Parting Surface Creation
Learn to generate parting surfaces from your parting line, adjust their size and extent, and diagnose why one fails to build.
Shut-off Surface Creation and Modifying Shut-off Surfaces
Shut-offs close through-holes and openings so the cavity can separate into core and cavity halves. These two objectives are paired: one is about creating them, the other about editing them when the automatic result is wrong or incomplete.
- Know what each shut-off patch is, and why some must be added or removed manually
- Practice modifying existing shut-offs instead of redoing the whole step
Create Side Cores
Side cores handle undercuts that cannot release along the main pull. Be able to create them from selected undercut regions and confirm they separate properly from the core and cavity.
Create Tapered Interlocks
Tapered interlocks align and lock mold halves. Understand how to specify the taper and size so the interlock functions rather than merely appears.
Surfacing
The Surfacing objective area includes these issuer-listed nested topics: Ruled Surface, Planar Surface, Knit Surface, Filled Surface, Extend Surface, Trim Surface, and Lofted Surface. In mold work these tools repair gaps, build custom shut-off patches, and close awkward geometry where automatic tools fall short.
- Be able to knit surfaces into a closed body and diagnose gaps that block knitting
- Use extend and trim to fit patches precisely
- Reach for filled and lofted surfaces on complex openings
Key Takeaway
Because there are no published weights, do not skip a "small-looking" area. Fourteen areas with a 75% bar means a single weak area can cost you, so close your gaps before exam day rather than banking on strength elsewhere.
Where Mold Models Break: Troubleshooting Practice
The fastest way to improve is to learn the failure modes, because a hands-on exam punishes models that almost work. Build each of the following failures on purpose, then fix it.
Parting surfaces that will not build
When a parting surface fails, the cause usually traces upstream: a gap in the parting line, a face that is not properly drafted, or a pull direction that does not match the geometry. Train yourself to inspect the parting line first rather than fiddling with the surface settings.
Shut-off patches that miss an opening
Automatic shut-off detection can skip an opening or fill the wrong region. Practice scanning the list of detected shut-offs, identifying what was missed, and using the modify tools to correct it. This directly rehearses the "Modifying Shut-off Surfaces" objective.
Side cores that will not separate
If a side core refuses to split cleanly, the usual culprits are an undercut region that is not fully selected, an overlap with the core or cavity, or geometry that traps the slide. Revisit the undercut analysis rather than adjusting the side core blindly.
Surfaces that refuse to knit
Knit failures typically come from tiny gaps, overlapping edges, or tolerance mismatches. Learn to find the offending edges, trim or extend to close the gap, and re-knit until you get a closed result.
Shrink values and mass that do not agree
If your scaled volume or mass is off from what you expect, check the scaling point, the factor, and whether you scaled the right body. A quick before-and-after mass comparison is your built-in sanity check, and it is worth making a habit.
Building Your Own Hands-On Exercises
Because the exam is practical, multiple-choice-only question banks are a poor primary tool. Use them only to confirm terminology. For skill, design your own exercises:
- Start with a simple molded part. A lidded box with a few bosses and holes is enough. Run the entire flow: draft analysis, undercut analysis, parting line, shut-offs, parting surface, cavity.
- Add one complication at a time. Introduce a side-hole requiring a side core, then a through-opening requiring a custom shut-off patch, then a curved face requiring surfacing repair.
- Time yourself against two hours. Run a full workflow under a two-hour clock so you learn where you lose time.
- Verify with numbers. Record volumes or mass before and after shrink scaling and after the cavity step, then check they behave sensibly.
- Break and repair. Deliberately introduce a gap or wrong pull direction, then practice diagnosing it cold.
When you want to check recall of terms and concepts alongside your CAD practice, our CSWAP-MM practice tests are a useful companion for terminology and concept review, while your own modeling builds the hands-on fluency the exam requires.
A Domain-Ordered Study Sequence
Rather than a generic calendar, sequence your study in the order the mold workflow itself runs, because each stage feeds the next. Adjust the pace to your experience; the point is the ordering logic.
Analysis foundations
- Draft Analysis and Undercut Analysis on several parts
- Parting Line Creation, including manual edits
- Reason: every later step inherits these decisions
Closing and splitting the mold
- Shut-off Surface Creation and Modifying Shut-off Surfaces
- Parting Surface Creation and the Cavity Tool
- Reason: this is where models most often fail, so give it the most repetition
Complex tooling and surfacing
- Create Side Cores and Create Tapered Interlocks
- Surfacing: knit, extend, trim, filled, lofted, ruled, planar
- Reason: these depend on clean upstream geometry
Calculation-style objectives and full runs
- Shrink / Scale Factor, Runner and Sprue fill, Mold Cooling Problem, Max Mold Opening
- Two or three complete timed run-throughs under a two-hour limit
- Reason: precision and verification habits matter most under time pressure
If you are new to the workflow, stretch this plan out; if you already do mold design daily, you may compress it and spend extra time on the objectives you rarely touch. For help gauging where you stand, read our take on how difficult the exam is, and note that no certification-wide pass rate is established, so be skeptical of any figure you see quoted. Our pass rate analysis explains what the available information does and does not show.
Official Preparation Resources and Their Limits
SOLIDWORKS recommends two preparation resources: Mold Design Using SOLIDWORKS and the CSWP-Mold Making Exam Prep Course. The training guide is published under document number PMT2505-ENG, and its public table of contents is available from the issuer's mold design course page. Two honest caveats apply. The table of contents is a curriculum outline, not a statement of exact exam coverage, so do not treat its lesson headings as additional exam domains. And training is separate from the exam fee, so budget for it independently if you choose to take it.
The official sample exam archives linked from the issuer's exam page could not be retrieved during our research, so do not assume a specific sample is available to you. Check the issuer's exam page directly for whatever it currently offers, and supplement with your own exercises. Additional structured options are covered on our training page.
Exam-Day Execution
Because the timer cannot be paused, and continues through a computer crash or restart, your preparation includes environmental control.
- Test your setup beforehand. Confirm SOLIDWORKS launches cleanly, that Mold Tools are available, and that you can reach the VirtualTester Web Client with a stable internet connection.
- Use two monitors if you can. One for the exam interface, one for your model.
- Close everything else. Background processes are a crash risk you can eliminate.
- Save frequently. A restart does not stop the clock, so recovery speed matters.
- Triage on the way in. Read all tasks first, do the ones you are fastest at, and return to the harder ones, keeping an eye on the 75% threshold rather than perfection.
- Verify numeric answers. Where a result is reported as a number, double-check it against the model before submitting.
For scheduling and timing considerations, our guide to exam dates and scheduling covers the practical side, and the one-page cheat sheet is handy for a final skim the day before.
Who Hires for Mold Design Skills
Mold design skills matter most in organizations that design and build tooling: injection mold shops, tool and die makers, plastics product manufacturers, and engineering firms that serve consumer, medical, and industrial product makers. Typical roles include mold designer, tooling engineer, and product engineer who must hand off manufacturable parts. For a view of the market, see our page on CSWAP-MM jobs.
Be realistic about value. No certification-specific salary premium is established here, so treat any dollar claim with caution and read our salary guide and ROI analysis for a careful treatment. One concrete fact: Mold Making can count as one of the advanced-topic certifications used alongside the CSWP toward SOLIDWORKS Design Expert (CSWE) eligibility. That does not make it a prerequisite for the Mold Making exam itself, but it can matter if you are building toward the larger credential.
Frequently Asked Questions
The current issuer page specifies a two-hour exam and a minimum passing grade of 75%. Older third-party sample guides describing 90 minutes conflict with the current limit, so rely on the issuer's figures.
No. The issuer's program FAQ states that professional certification exams have no formal prerequisites, and a prior CSWP is not imposed for Mold Making. A prior CSWP can still help you count toward CSWE eligibility later.
You must wait 14 days and use a new exam credit before retaking. Purchased credits do not expire, so you can buy one in advance, but the failed attempt itself consumes a credit.
You need your own working installation of SOLIDWORKS 2015 or later, an internet connection, and access to the VirtualTester Web Client. Dual monitors are recommended. The exam cannot be paused, and the timer continues even if your computer crashes or restarts.
No. Surfacing Professional (CSWP-SU) is a separate credential. Surfacing topics such as ruled, planar, knit, filled, extend, trim, and lofted surfaces appear within the Mold Making objectives as one of fourteen areas, but studying for Mold Making means covering the full Mold Making list.
Approach the preparation as a modeling apprenticeship rather than a memorization drive, work the 14 areas in workflow order, and walk into your first attempt with timed, verified, self-built exercises behind you. For the full structure of what is covered, revisit our complete guide to all 14 content areas, and reinforce terminology with the CSWAP-MM practice tests.