Design Guidance Enhancements

aP Pro 2025 R1 SP3 introduces a new framework for presenting Design for Manufacturability (DFM) feedback. In a subset of process groups, DFM issues are now are classified as Critical, Major, or Minor. This enables you to easily identify the most important issues to address in order to ensure a part can be manufactured with high quality. You also can tailor guidance to your own design standards by adjusting any issue type's severity classifications or associated thresholds.

This enhanced design guidance is available in the most recent versions of the process models for Plastic Molding (CMV 310), Forging (CMV 290 ), and Sheet Metal (CMV 330). Upcoming releases will provide this enhanced guidance in additional process groups. Customers who are using older configured Digital Factories can use the latest aPriori Baseline Digital Factories to explore this updated guidance.

The following sections describe how the enhanced manufacturability feedback is presented in aP Pro. For customers using aPriori cloud solutions, aP Design also will provide prioritized guidance in the very near future, with corresponding release notes and documentation available shortly.

Reviewing Issues and Issue Types by Severity

The Design Guidance tab now displays a summary of issue types and issues, classified by severity. Additional controls allow users to view the definition of a severity classification and to review issues with specific part geometry.

Consider the example part below, which is manufactured by Plastic Injection Molding. The Manufacturability Issues section at the top of the Design Guidance tab now displays a table which lists the number of issues and issue types of each severity level found on the part. In previous releases, it listed only a total count of issues found on the part. Clicking on a row of the table highlights GCDs in the Viewer window that have issues of the corresponding severity level.

Clicking the Info button, , next to the Review button displays a help dialog that lists the meanings of the severity classifications:

Note that if you are using an older version of the manufacturing process models that does not provide prioritized design guidance, then all issues will be Unclassified and will be listed in a fourth row of the table, as shown below:

Clicking the Review button invokes the Potential Manufacturing Issues dialog, which enables users to get more detailed information about the issue types and the GCDs with design issues. When this dialog first appears, it displays only the same table, Manufacturability issues by severity:

Selecting a row in the first table displays two more tables. The middle table, Issue types for selected severity, lists the types and counts of issues of the selected severity, while the lower table, Individual issues for selected issue type, lists GCDs with that issue type and severity. In the example below, the part has two Critical issue types—a High Flow Ratio for the part which will cause a short-shot condition, and a Small Draft Angle condition which will make it difficult to eject the part from the mold without damaging part surfaces. Selecting a GCD in the lower table highlights the issue on the CAD model in the Viewer window so you can visualize the problem. In this example, when you select the Component GCD, the Viewer displays a color-coded material flow simulation which illustrates that the material solidifies before the mold is filled, when gates are located on one edge of the part.

A message panel below the third table provides a short description of the design issue and some suggestions for resolving it.

An example of issues classified as Major severity is shown below. There are two GCDs on the part that have a High Blind Hole Depth to Diameter Ratio issue. You can see SimpleHole:21 is highlighted in yellow in the Viewer pane, and the message panel advises reducing that ratio.

Clicking the button Learn more about this issue type displays a secondary help dialog that typically provides a picture and displays the physics-based root cause of the issue.

Finally, at the bottom of the Potential Manufacturing Issues dialog is a section, Other issues on this GCD. The dialog tells you whether the selected GCD has additional manufacturability issues, so that if you modify your design, you can efficiently address all issues at the same time. Clicking the button Review all issues on this GCD displays a dialog that displays every issue affecting the GCD. In this case, we see that in addition to having a High Blind Hole Depth to Diameter Ratio issue (of Major severity) the feature also has a Small Draft Angle issue which is considered Critical.

Manufacturability Issue Summary Across Multiple Parts

The Part Details, Assembly Details, and Rollup Details tables now display a Design Guidance section. This enables you to assess the number and severity of manufacturability issues across a set of components in one view.

The Design Guidance section of these Details tables contain columns with the counts of Critical Issues, Major Issues, Minor Issues, and Cost Driving Issues found on each part. For parts analyzed in process groups or older versions of manufacturing process models which do not yet provide severity-based manufacturability issues, the Unclassified Issues column will contain a total count of issues found on the part. The Max Severity column displays a value corresponding to the highest severity issue found on the part. For example, if a part has both Critical and Major issues, the Max Severity will be Critical; if the part has only Major and Minor issues, the Max Severity will be Major.

Note that the Design Guidance section is included in the Manufacturing Detail table view and the Part Summary, Assembly Summary, and Roll-Up Summary table views. The Design Guidance columns also are available in the All Data view and can be selected for inclusion in any configured Table Views.

To sort the parts by Max Severity or Counts of Issues by Severity, you can do one of the following:

  • First, switch the display to the List view (instead of the Tree view), using the Options menu. This enables you to click any column header, such as Critical Issues, to sort the rows by that value.

  • select Edit > Copy Table from the menu bar above the Details table and paste the data into a spreadsheet to utilize its sorting capabilities.

Easily Configure Design Guidance

aP Pro now allows Digital Factory administrators to enable or disable specific design guidance issue types. Digital Factory administrators also can modify the severity classification of an issue or modify the criteria that trigger the issue, in order to align with a company’s specific design standards.

For each process group that supports the new prioritized design guidance framework, all the defined manufacturability issue types (also known as “advice rules”) are listed in the lookup table adviceRules. The example below is for Plastic Molding. If you do not wish aPriori to flag a specific type of issue, even if parts exhibits that issue, you can disable the issue type by changing the value in the Enabled column from true to false.

For Plastic Molding, by default, aPriori generates issues of there are sharp internal or external edges on the CAD model. In the example below, you can see that aPriori has found 58 issues of each of these types:

If your company’s design practice is to leave edges sharp in the CAD model, rather than applying Round or Fillet features, you can disable the Sharp External Edge and Sharp Internal Edge issue types by changing the value to false. If you do this, these types of issues will not be displayed in the Potential Manufacturing Issues dialog or included in any error counts displayed elsewhere in the application.

The lookup table manfacturabilitySeverity allows you to adjust the severity classification of a given Manufacturability issue, and/or the thresholds for that classification. This table is shown below for the Plastic Molding process group.

For example, you may wish to adjust the thresholds related to Draft Angle requirements for different injection molding materials. Out of the box, for ABS, aPriori generates a Critical issue for each surface with a draft angle less than 0.01°, a Major issue for each surface with an angle less than 0.5° and no less than 0.01°, and a Minor issue for each surface with an angle less than 1° and no less than 0.5°. You can update the values and rule types as needed to meet your company’s design standards. For example, you may wish to raise the threshold for a Minor draft angle violation from 1 to 2 degrees.