How to deal with overlapping parts

[Taylor Bangs]

I'm in the middle of addressing Philo's comment on the lastest version of one of my parts, dealing with overlapping primtives/quads

Right now, I'm a bit stumped on how to deal with the front and back without any major proportional reworkings, if at all

[Ronald Vallenduuk]

Looking at this image: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Philo/Misc/325771.png
I'd say there's two things you can do.
Option 1: Don't use the pin hole primitive but build it yourself and leave out the ring. Looks like that way it'll fit between the quarter circle discs.
Option 2: Don't use the quarter circle disc primitives but create them yourself to fit around the ndisc.

[Steffen]

the pin hole primitive will give you nice rounded holes when primitives substitution is used,
so dropping them would be a big loss.
i would try to keep them if possible.
you can replace the 1-4ndis corners by ring primitives.

my personal opinion here is that just for getting rid of overlaps you are paying a high price,
i.e., losing primitives substitution, giving you polygonized corners and cylinders.
that price would be too high for me to pay.
the visual loss of polygonized corners and cylinders is so high
in my eyes that is is not worth the gain of getting rid of overlaps.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Yes, definitely dropping pin holes primitives would be a very bad idea, as they also provide automatic connectivity for editors that support it (SR3D builder).

the visual loss of polygonized corners and cylinders is so high
in my eyes that is is not worth the gain of getting rid of overlaps.

I kind of agree with that - note that in my review I mentionned top surface (where overlap elimination was rather easy) and not front/back
An overlap is really annoying only in two cases: if part is transparent (overlapping surfaces create locally less transparent areas) and, to a lesser extend, on curved surface (visual artifacts caused by smooth shading behaving differently on the overlaping areas).
If you really want to remove overlap there, I would use method 2 of Ronald: leave connhole primitive, and build quads around outer ring of primitive. I'd use Coverer for that...
A final note: when possible, T-junctions (there are a lot in your part) should be avoided (at least when it's easy - sometimes removing them leads to an unwanted increase of triangles in part). For more information about T-junctions and why they should be avoided, see http://news.lugnet.com/cad/dat/parts/?n=6086