Best Of

This is a situation that happens on a regular basis. Over time, I have tried different approaches to handle these clerances.

• model them right away
• modify the parts later (offsets and the like)
• create a configurable clerance element

When modeling the clearances right away, it is easy to shoot yourself in the foot, for there might be too little information at that stage of the design, and modifying the clearance later might affect other parts built e.g. on the same geometry.

Modifying parts with standard features does not always cover all aspects of the clearance, might require several features, and is hard to keep track of. Also, it might unnoticedly affect mating of the parts.

I like the latter best. That way, I can model everything with a tight fit and when I'm done, I create a feature that takes care of the specific clearance (maybe even in-context). This could be a "clearance" body and a boolean, for example, or a surface and a thickness-remove. This allows to model with exact fits, keeping the model structure lean, and modify the clearance after the fact, also with regards of clearances to be subject to changes late in the project timeline. Ideally, there would then be a (set of) clearance variable(s).

I"ll make this one my official entry.