I’m not quite sure I get the question, by element interaction you mean poke through? Fill the face and then do the buttons on top or crashing into the mesh? But basically polygon modeling has a best practices to take into account if you want a clean model. It’s always easier to model inside out if you ask me, because if you fill the face first, it is a pain to later do the details like holes for the buttons. So you make the holes for the buttons first and then do the face that fills around it. It’s hard to explain but you start getting it as you model more and more.
