How to Make Bodies "hard" so they do not Pass-Through. Contact Sets?

[John.schiller]

Hello. Not an engineer or professional.

I'm working with very basic models and would like to prevent pass-through so I can see how parts fit together (or not).

I've researched Contact Sets but that function doesn't work very well when I try to (example) insert a screw into  threaded hole. The screw stops advancing into the hole and then the program locks up. 

Is there a better option?

Thanks,

[innovatenate]

Are you just looking to see if there are any interferences between bodies? If so there is a command in the Inspect menu that you can use to analyze how much overlap exists between components. 

With regards to the contact sets, that is how you would prevent components from passing through one another. However, contact sets tend to work best in simple situations. In your example, you are detecting contact on a helical face of a screw/bolt which is complex geometry. A contact set would tend to work better when there are two planar faces or a cylindrical face bumping into a planar face. 

Another finer point of the contact set is it tends to work best when there is only one point of contact.

I hope this helps!