A computer-based feature recognition method is used to recognize features in a part of which are of a similar shape. A predetermined set of attributes are generated to represent a user-defined feature. This set is then used to produce an attributed graph which captures the feature shape. The graph is used in recognizing features of a shape similar to the feature shape in a solid model. To recognize a family of a shape feature with a variable number of faces, the shape feature is represented using a grammar employing symbols, rules and a terminating condition. Each symbol denotes an attributed face-adjacency graph and the rules denote permissible topological variations.
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