Clear Names All Other Patterns Use clear, meaningful, short and memorable names\index{name} for objects. Always, except for work you intend to throw away. Objects have names. You use these to remember how you have organized a model, to refer to parts as you create and edit links, and to communicate a model to others. Clear, meaningful, short and memorable names are a prerequisite for making a model useful beyond its immediate creation. Good names are clear; they convey what you intend. They are meaningful; usually this means they relate to either the form or function of a design. They are as short as they need to be (and no shorter). A good and useful convention for concision is CamelCasing, putting words together with no spacing or linking punctuation and capitalizing each word (separate numbers with punctuation). Memorable names relate to design concepts. Bad names are easier to invent than good ones. Perhaps the worst naming scheme is by object type. "Point01," "vector03" and "coordinateSystem06" provide no new information; the type of an object is readily accessible as one of its properties. Naming is active. If you watch an experienced parametric designer, you will certainly witness a process of naming, reflection and renaming. As models increase in complexity, this expensive refactoring returns a benefit. Without it, modeling stalls in confusion and error. Be warned. Unless you are much smarter than any parametric modeler I have ever seen, you need to attend carefully to the names of model parts. It takes time and effort, but returns capability and reliability. \genNote[marginBottom]{ \pbOneCol[r]{ \textsf{ \textbf{Some likely good names}\\ MainBeam3\\ RoofPanel\\ SouthFacade\\ DesignSurface\\ PlaceHolder\\ Truss8\\ Purlin8\_3\\ Foundation\\ RoseWindow\\ Pane3\_7\\ ColumnA\_7\\ Hypotenuse\\ \vspace{30mm} \textbf{Some usually bad names}\\ Point02\\ BSplineA\\ foobar\\ aardvark\\ here\\ there\\ angle6\\ parabola\\ thingamabob\\ IansPlane\\ abc\\ AfDrAp\\ \vspace{15mm} \textsf{Source for tag cloud:\\ www.wordle.net} } } }{-15mm}