After many years of lame use of Solidworks due to self-taught and that I was the only foreigner in the early days of China making molds, I have finally went to classes in Hong Kong to formally learn solidworks, so I have gone throught the concept of mold design and can work it but then I get stuck at more advanced levels where I want to do a face or body split because I have raised parting lines, also extracting cores are not clear and more difficult than necessary
I've been designing parts, molds and all kinds of products and tools what not for almost 50 years, and think that for a mold design package should be a tool which can make use of experience and add to that a value added benefit by freeing up design time to go home and play, you should be able to translate faces or bodies and build a block and then add that on to the block and that would take care of your cavity and core and side core actions, however this is not so and the steps to go through are too many.

I think that Solidworks is only semi-functional because the programmers are not mold makers but from many combined fields and try to make an everything tool and don't fully address the mold making functionality and simplify it to a user friendly work process, this mold making could actually fit right into the present Mold Design Menues.

I would actually enjoy starting a thread here that addresses the Mold Design Package and see about improving this package and the skills of using the present tool as it is.

Maybe there are people out there who can add their skills here and comment on ways of improvments to the individual skills level and the programming level,

hope to hear from all of you.