Feature-based numerical control programming can enhance the process planning efficiency for complex structural parts in aeronautic industry. Feature recognition is often being a useful tool to the domain. In order to handle the variety and uncertainty of the feature interpretation of feature recognition of structural parts, a region-based feature recognition approach is proposed. On the basis of the characteristics of the structural parts, the approach employs the fact that topology surfaces of structural parts have directions, and utilizes region as the foundation of feature recognition. By recognition and combination of regions, the approach acquires the features of a structural part. The approach is efficient in recognizing the features of structural parts which have apparent directional characteristic.