Mate help for planar objects needed

[cadmaniac]

I am trying to find a better way to mate an object with planar sides into a slot with planar sides evenly spaced on each side. Up to now I have been having to measure the distances and use distance mates between the planar surfaces. Concentric does it easily with cylindrical objects. Is there a Concentric mate for a square peg in a square hole? Thanks.

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[ctopher]

I make all my parts with the origin in the middle, especially square ones, for this reason. Create a plane thru the center of the slot and mate one of the parts planes coincident to the slot plane.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP1.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site

 

[TheTick]

Every time I cut a slot the sketch has centerlines and a center point. These are usually plenty for mate references. The only problem is that you have to toggle the slot feature's sketch visibility in the assembly.

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[cadmaniac]

I will give that a try. I would rather have a mate set for "evenly distributed", but no such luck. I have noticed that when I create parts in context of the assembly, I have little control over the orgin. I briefly tried to re-locate the orgin, but it ended up being a feature that had unpleasant consequences when doing edits on the part. What is the best way to align a part's orgin to the UCS? Thanks.

Anyone can be Captain in a calm sea.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

The parts default UCS is always at the origin of that part. However, when you create a part from within an assy, the parts origin is automatically placed at the assy origin, regardless of where the actual parts geometry is placed.

To avoid this, create an individual (not inside the assy) part(with or without geometry) first, then insert & mate it (using the main planes & or origin) so that the origin is placed at a logical position in the assy, relative to the new part. Geometry can then be created or constrained to other components (or geometry) in the assy.

This way the origin of the individual part is always at a "logical" point in the part, whilst still creating an "in-contexted" part.


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[mncad]

cadmaniac,

If the part you are mating to the slot has a plane thru the center look into the Symmetric mate. You will have to click on the Advanced Mates tab in the mate window to get to it.

mncad

 

[brengine]

Not exactly the preferred method, but often times I will turn on "Temporary Axis" and mate a planar surace to one of the axis running thru the slot's ends.

Ken