2. Click Detect Contacts. The Auto Detect Contacts dialog box opens.

3. Select one or more components to automatically create contacts. If you had selected valid geometric references before opening the Auto Detect Contacts dialog box, your selections appear in the Components collector when the dialog box opens. You can only select parts and not sub-assemblies. You can select quilts in the FEM mode, but not in the native mode.

4. Select the Check for Contact within component check box to create contacts within components. If you do not select this check box, contacts are only created between components.

5. You can specify the value for the separation distance or accept the default value that is close to one percent of the model size. The Separation Distance option is available only when you select the components in your model. Use the Separation Distance option to specify the maximum distance between the surfaces pairs that you want to use to define a contact.

6. Specify an Angle (Between planar surfaces) or accept the default value of 5 degrees to automatically detect the surfaces for contact definition. The allowable range of the angle that you can specify is 0 to 45 degrees only. You can only check the planar surfaces with the angle control.

7. Select the Check for Contact only between planar surfaces check box to limit the search and create contacts only between planar surfaces. Selecting this option ignores the nonplanar surfaces that do not satisfy the separation distance and the angle that you have specified in the Auto Detect Contacts dialog box.

8. Click Start for to create a contact in your model. Creo Simulate searches the model to identify the surfaces within the specified distance to create the contacts. The search may take some time based on the search criteria you have specified. Creo Simulate creates a new contact between each valid surface pair of selected component(s), only if no other contact already exists between the selected surfaces.