Irrespective of that, the artificial leg must be aligned properly to eliminate unnecessary inhibitions. Apart from manufacturing a well fitting socket, and selecting the appropriate functional components of the prosthesis, the prosthetist has to routinely optimize the static alignment during the fitting process. Hereby, objective measures and guidelines are scarce. Despite various more or less useful tools that are available, the alignment optimization in praxis is often based on subjective gait assessment and rules of thumb. Commonly accepted is the notion, that the gait pattern should be most symmetrically, that is step lengths, stance times, knee angles etc. should be identical between sound and prosthetic leg.