How to create a mate connector 'in the air'?

Henk_de_Vlaam

In an assy a part with a fillet is inserted. In that assy I like to use/create a Mate Connector that is on the (virtual) edge that was used to create the fillet.
Of course I can move the MC along one of the red arrows but then its position depends on the fillet radius, which is undesirable for the design intent.

How do I create/get that MC 'in the air' without using Move?

Jake_Rosenfeld

@Henk_de_V

This is an interesting workflow.  I have a couple ideas.  First, if possible, You could make the mate connector before filleting, and then do the fillet.  Since a blend like this does not always come from a fillet operation, or maybe it is more desirable to do the mate connectors all the way at the end, the way I would do this is as follows:

1. Make a plane that cuts through the blended edge
2. Start a sketch on that plane
3. Use the intersection tool to get an intersection of both faces onto the sketch
4. Put down a point
5. Add two coincident constraints to the point, one for each intersection line
6. The vertex should now be fully constrained, and in the location of the virtual sharp.  You can use it for modeling, or add a mate connector onto it.

Hopefully this helps, but maybe if you do this often it is too many steps to do this every time.  If so , it's a pretty easy custom feature to write, and me or someone else may want to try their hand at it.

Jake_Rosenfeld

Hi @Henk_de_V !

You're right! I did not read your question closely enough, and missed that you were asking about doing this in the Assembly.  I'm glad my answer could help a bit, and please submit an improvement request (In the "Improvement Requests" category of this forum) for creating a mate connector on the virtual sharp of a blend.

Jake_Rosenfeld

@Henk_de_V

This is an interesting workflow.  I have a couple ideas.  First, if possible, You could make the mate connector before filleting, and then do the fillet.  Since a blend like this does not always come from a fillet operation, or maybe it is more desirable to do the mate connectors all the way at the end, the way I would do this is as follows:

1. Make a plane that cuts through the blended edge
2. Start a sketch on that plane
3. Use the intersection tool to get an intersection of both faces onto the sketch
4. Put down a point
5. Add two coincident constraints to the point, one for each intersection line
6. The vertex should now be fully constrained, and in the location of the virtual sharp.  You can use it for modeling, or add a mate connector onto it.

Hopefully this helps, but maybe if you do this often it is too many steps to do this every time.  If so , it's a pretty easy custom feature to write, and me or someone else may want to try their hand at it.

Henk_de_Vlaam

Hi @Jake_Rosenfeld,

Henk_de_V said:

[...] In that assy I like to use/create a Mate Connector that is on the (virtual) edge that was used to create the fillet.
Of course I can move the MC along one of the red arrows but then its position depends on the fillet radius, which is undesirable for the design intent. [...]

So, the question was to select/create a MC in the ASSY. May be that was not clear enough.

Jake_Rosenfeld said:

@Henk_de_V

[...] First, if possible, You could make the mate connector before filleting, and then do the fillet.  [...]

I am aware of making an independent MC in the Part Studio like you describe over here. That was the way I made the MC that you see in the picture. However, I don't rather like to pollute the part studio. 
But, I think I can conclude that there is no way to use/create an Assy-MC in this case. Right?

For the rest, thank you for your extensive answer. The alternative way in case of "non fillet blend" is very useful.

Jake_Rosenfeld

Hi @Henk_de_V !

You're right! I did not read your question closely enough, and missed that you were asking about doing this in the Assembly.  I'm glad my answer could help a bit, and please submit an improvement request (In the "Improvement Requests" category of this forum) for creating a mate connector on the virtual sharp of a blend.

romeograham

@Henk_de_V
One other thought (that still doesn't get to your original request, but is another workflow to consider).

Make a reference sketch in the Part Studio (use the edge that will be wiped out by the fillet for reference). 
Then Instance the SKETCH in the assembly. That will give you some geometry (the sketch line or point) to attach the Mate Connector to in the assembly.

You can hide the reference sketch in the Part Studio, so it won't be too messy, but it will conserve design intent in the Assembly.

Henk_de_Vlaam

@romeo_graham392,

 

joseph_brown170

Hi I'm not sure if this has been solved yet, it's been a few years.  Inability to do mates like this was one of the main reasons I moved away from Fusion 360.  If something like this can't be easily done and requires multiple levels of geometry setup, why not just allow a "Solidworks-style" of mating to be created where you can just mate 3 planes and get this same effect?

eric_pesty

joseph_brown170 said:

why not just allow a "Solidworks-style" of mating to be created where you can just mate 3 planes and get this same effect?

Onshape does allow you to use multiple mates, in this case something like a slider and a planar would do the job (depending on what you are mating to on the other side) and can be a "valid" way of doing it (just not generally best practice in Onshape but it works).

You can also manually add an offset equal to the radius (but this won't update automatically if you change the radius). You can generally tell when this is going to be an issue so I tend to be proactive and add a mate connector in the part when I expect this (which is really easy to do if you add it before the fillet feature).

But yes, "Virtual sharp" mate connectors would be the easiest way to solve cases like this for sure (at the assembly level).