Two-dimensional mold design is the computer-generated equivalent of a board drawing – otherwise known as stick drawings. The advantage of 2-D over board drawings is that the geometry should be correct, rather than just close – so if you need to scale any geometry accurately,

you can check the design via access to a computer with CAD.

The 2-D design is quick to produce with the assistance of standard component templates, which is helpful with layouts being used for quoting. A downside to this is that the geometry is not parametric – you have to move the geometry to change the dimension. With parametric sketching (3-D drawings), the geometry is changed by changing the dimensions.
As with all mold designing, the designer should be filing all of the standard components that he will use in the design in an easy-to-find format – draw it once, use it often. The component manufacturer now provides many of these geometry files. For those custom-but-reusable items, the designer should draw only it once and then file it away for future use.
With this design layout, the designer is not concerned with placing items of the mold in all of the mold base plates – such as leader pins, bushings, screws, and so on. Once it is shown in the plan view and a section is cut, you are finished.

The 2-D design must be changed in all areas that a view is shown manually. For instance, if a part gets 1/8 of an inch longer, all of the views that relate to that increase should be changed manually.

When creating a native 2-D design, the design can be customized to look like a board drawing – section cuts can be adjusted if the section cut line does not go through the detail that needs to be shown. Basically, the 2-D design can produce a very pleasing and easy-to-follow picture of what the mold should look like when it is complete.
As a reminder, all geometry must be created and changed manually. This will be discussed more when considering the use of 3-D parametric geometry. But for now, if a line or item is moved or changed anywhere in the design, it must be changed everywhere else in the design that it appears; it will not automatically change or be updated.