(This post is for those beginners who are wondering what is design intent)

Use of Design Intent:

Design Intent is the prediction of how the design will behave in the future when certain changes are made or when certain features are applied. In an industry, a design engineer should be able to use the features in such a way that even if any modifications are needed at any time, it should be modifiable in no time.

A part can be designed in a number of ways and different steps but to keep it in the desired way so that it can behave as expected, one should be able to keep the design intent in every step of the design process. One can keep the design intent while making the use of end conditions, feature scope, equations, sketch relations, mates, etc. 

End Conditions: While applying end conditions, care must be taken and it should be predicted in what way it will behave if any additional changes have to be made later. The end conditions should be applied in such a way that it will affect only the current part and not others. For example, in this extruded cut of the sprocket in the wheel, it is required to keep the end condition ‘up to next’ because if ‘through all’ is selected, it can cut other bodies present in the part too.

Feature Scope: Feature Scope appears in the property manager only in the case of multi-bodies. A certain feature can be applied to certain bodies and can be skipped to others by selecting manually from the feature scope. If it is left as default, it will affect all the bodies present in the part. For example, in the same wheel as the above example, the body selected in feature scope is only the sprocket. In this case, using ‘through all’ in the end condition will also keep the design intent.

Equations: Linking the sketch dimensions together, applying global variables will also help in a great way to keep our design intent. It will allow us to edit it at any point in time. While linking the dimensions, correct relation and correct dimensions should be chosen in order to meet the design intent so that whenever we edit the parameters, it will update as expected without any distortion.

Mates: In the assembly, the mates should be applied thinking of any moving parts or fixed parts. For example, in a bike, the chassis is fixed and most of the parts such as the fuel tank, engine, and rear-wheel can be aligned with the mid-plane of the chassis. But the front fork and the parts attached to the front fork have to turn side to side so its mid-plane should not be mated as coincident to the mid-plane of the chassis. This will allow us to keep our design intent.

#