About Contact Tools

Contact tools enable you to identify where surfaces of your model are contacting, disconnected, or intersecting. This information helps you identify where you might need to define contact or connections to ensure a successful simulation.

See Also
Locating Contacting Bodies
Locating Disconnected Bodies
Locating Intersecting Bodies

Your simulation will usually run successfully when general contact is defined for planar components that just touch each other. However, for curved surfaces you should provide a small initial clearance between surfaces that are touching each other or the simulation is likely to fail. Your simulation is also likely to fail if your model contains disconnected bodies—that is, surfaces that touch but do not have contact defined. These bodies can be repositioned so that any intersecting surfaces are slightly separated or just touching.

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Impact of Display Settings on Model Geometry Visualization

If the contact tools do not find surface pairs that you think they should, most times you must adjust the CAD geometry of your model.

However, sometimes your display accuracy settings can cause the calculated display geometry of your model to differ from the true geometry. A low accuracy setting can introduce tessellation to your display geometry, which in turn can impact the tolerance calculations. Increasing the display accuracy might decrease the separation distance between the surfaces. Alternatively, decreasing the display accuracy might increase the separation distance between the surfaces.