This topic consists of best practices, which are a set of guidelines to help you generate good-quality design alternatives using the Automated Modeling tool.

Best Practices - Faces to Connect

The faces you select have a big impact on the generated design alternatives. Following these guidelines can help ensure that you quickly generate good-quality design alternatives:

• Simplify your model to improve the speed and quality of design alternatives. You can remove bodies or features that are not relevant to the geometry you want to create using the Automated Modeling tool. For example, removing features such as fillets, chamfers, holes, or pockets that can complicate a generation of design alternatives and replacing selected objects with primitive shapes.

  

• Divide a single face on a body into two faces that remain on the same body using the Split Face tool to control more precisely where the generated new geometry connects to the existing body. This helps you specify where the connection will be made.

  

• Avoid faces that are very small in proportion to the size of the geometry you want to create.

  

• Use the Automated Modeling tool multiple times, with a smaller selection of faces, if you want to connect many faces together. Selecting a lot of faces may increase the time needed to generate design alternatives.

Video (3:05)

Watch this short video to learn about the best practices when selecting Faces to Connect.

Best Practices - Bodies to Avoid

Specifying Bodies to Avoid is optional and you can generate design alternatives without it. However, in some cases it will be necessary to prevent new geometry from being generated in certain areas of the design.

• Create new bodies, which you then select as Bodies to Avoid, in places where a new geometry should not interfere with other assemblies in the design. This can be used to represent clearances, human interaction, or moving components.

  

• Create new bodies, which you then select as Bodies to Avoid, to create different types of shapes that may be more aesthetically pleasing and interesting.

  

• Select internal, rather than external, faces on a solid body if you want Automated Modeling to be able to generate shapes around that body. When you select an external face as a Face to Connect, the rest of the body automatically becomes a Body to Avoid so Automated Modeling will not be able to generate shapes around the body. It's important in case if you want to connect faces in the existing design.

  

Video (3:21)

Watch this short video to learn about the best practices when selecting Bodies to Avoid.

Best Practices - Symmetry

Creating symmetrical designs often provides performance and aesthetic advantages. If your setup has a recognizable plane of symmetry, Automated Modeling automatically generates design alternatives that are symmetrical across that plane. The symmetry plane also carries over to the Form contextual environment, so edits you make to one side of the body are automatically applied to the other side.

To ensure you receive symmetrical design alternatives:

• Make sure that your setup is perfectly symmetrical. This requires that Faces to Connect and Bodies to Avoid are perfectly mirrored, so that there is a recognizable symmetry plane.