Design rules

Experiware checks your design against the process forming each layer and reports what it finds in the Problems section. The report is live, recomputed on every committed edit. A design with errors still builds, still displays and still exports. See Export for what the dialog says about outstanding findings.

Rules are data

There is no fixed list of checks. Each process carries a rule deck: a table of rules, each with a severity of Error or Warning and, for all but Floating island, a threshold of its own. Change a threshold in the Fab processes window and the report changes with it.

A rule the deck does not carry is not checked. Silence about the roof of a molded part means the molding process carries no roof rule, not that your roofs are fine. A rigid part’s roof does not sag, so the molding deck has no roof rule to state.

Which process governs

Every finding names the process whose deck set the limit: the one governing the layer the finding is on. Under a per-layer override that is not the process you were last looking at. A finding reading wall 3 µm < 8 µm min · film tells you the film process set that 8.

What is checked

Min feature — a void narrower than the process resolves, measured on the formed shape rather than on the width you typed.
Min wall — a wall or gap between features thinner than the process can hold, and features that overlap outright.
Min inner radius and Min outer radius — a corner formed below the process’s floor, measured at the radius it is actually formed at. A corner left sharp has a radius of 0 and is measured like any other.
Max aspect ratio — a feature deeper than its own width by more than the process allows.
Min roof — a roof thin enough to sag shut.
Max roof span and Max roof span ratio — an unsupported roof reaching further than the process allows, either as an absolute width or as a multiple of the roof’s own thickness.
Allowed depths — a depth the instrument cannot reach, authored as intervals.
Allowed depth increments — a step between two depths the process cannot produce. Under From stock a step passes when the sheets you buy stack up to it, in any combination and with repeats; under At least any step at or above the one number passes.
Max depths / layer — more distinct depths in one layer than the process forms in one go.
Max faces / layer — a layer opening from more faces than the process can work. A through feature counts as both faces, since a through cut is worked from either side.
Fits extent — features running outside the working area, margin included, on a disc (a wafer) or a rectangle (a platen or a sheet).
Floating island — material fully enclosed by through-cut void, with nothing holding it.

What is not checked yet

The deck table lists every rule the app knows. Two of them take a threshold that nothing measures against:

Min aspect ratio — a feature far wider than it is deep.
Min secondary-op spacing — two secondary operations, such as drilled ports, too close together.

No preset enables either, and each carries a dim not checked yet note wherever it appears, so an empty report does not mean they passed. See Problems for the line the report carries when one is enabled.

The two checks outside the deck

Wall capability asks whether the process can form a wall kind at all, and it reads the process’s wall list rather than the deck. An empty wall list allows nothing, where an absent deck rule checks nothing. It is always an error, since a fab that cannot form a shape cannot form it at any threshold. A kind left stale after a stack switch is reported and never changed for you.

Structural defects are always checked and are not configurable: an outline that crosses itself, a hole outside its region, a hole touching its region’s wall, compartments that overlap or that meet without sharing a whole wall. No process forms any of these, so there is no threshold to set and no entry to omit.

Geometry already flagged as defective is not measured against the deck. A hole that escaped its region would report a wall thickness that means nothing, so you get one finding explaining the defect instead of two that disagree.

What a finding stands for

A pillar array at too tight a pitch offends in thousands of places and takes one edit to fix. A finding says how many places it stands for instead of listing them. See Problems for what the viewport marks.

Reading a large report rule by rule shows whether it is one systemic problem or thirty separate ones. Where one rule accounts for nearly the whole report, the cause is usually a wrong process or a units slip. See Problems.

Experiware Guide