Catalog-Based Feature Recognition

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Find features your process depends on

Preparing a part for machining often means selecting similar holes and pockets again and again. Catalog-Based Feature Recognition finds supported features and groups their faces and edges, giving your application a clear starting point for the next task.

Use these results to build a feature list, prepare inspection steps, or collect geometry information for a quote.

Build a catalog around your parts

Start with definitions for standard holes, pockets, slots, bosses, ribs, chamfers, and fillet transitions. Your application can provide a reference-model workflow for defining and registering supported patterns used in your own parts.

Assign roles to relevant faces and edges, such as opening, wall, floor, or surrounding face. These roles describe which geometry belongs to a feature and how its parts connect.

How recognition works

Choose a target part and a catalog to search. Recognition checks geometry and connections between faces against the registered definitions. It returns matches with their associated faces and edges, so your application can highlight each feature, show its identity, and attach information to it.

Users can review detected features together, select a particular result, or send an accepted group to the next operation. A catalog can also describe supported combinations, such as a countersink joined to a bore. Definitions for interrupted features help handle patterns affected by another cut.

Put recognition to work

• CAM preparation: group similar holes or pockets before choosing operations.
• Inspection: find features that need measurements or tolerance checks.
• Quoting: collect feature information to support process and cost estimates.
• CAD review: help users locate repeated details and select related geometry.

Your application decides how a match becomes a machining step, an inspection task, or another action. This lets you build around your own process rules and keep review where it matters.

Keep a feature linked to its model geometry

A feature list is more useful when selecting an item highlights its faces and edges. Users can see where a match lies and review its boundaries before another tool uses it. Information added by your application can stay connected to that group for later review.

Feature recognition supports design for manufacturing (DFM) review and cost estimation by supplying matching geometry. Tool access, machine choice, inspection methods, and prices come from your application’s production rules.

Give estimators a consistent starting point for a quote

Two estimators may spend time selecting and counting the same holes or pockets in an incoming part. Manual selection adds work, and similar details can be grouped differently. A shared feature catalog gives your quoting application a common basis for this preparation.

Register supported reference patterns and define relevant face and edge roles, or use automatic searches for standard features. Recognition returns matching geometry for review. Your application can present those groups beside the part and apply shop rules for possible operations, tool choices, or inspection effort.

Estimators can review unusual matches before accepting the feature list. Pricing, setup allowances, material costs, and machine availability remain business rules in your application. This helps a team reuse its agreed pattern definitions while keeping commercial judgment with the people preparing the quote. The same reviewed geometry can also support later CAM or inspection planning.

Prepare geometry and check results

Canonical Recognition can recover analytic shapes such as cylinders from suitable spline geometry. Shape Healing & Validation can help prepare incoming models before a search.

Discuss your feature catalog with representative parts and examples of the patterns you want to find. We can help choose definitions, review matches, and connect results with your application.