Create Mate connector tangent to surface

gauthier_östervall

I am trying to create mate connector tangent to a surface. Actually, I think I would like to have them from a curve, but they seem to need a surface or part. That's ok.



Ideally, I would like the blue to be normal to the surface, and either red or green tangent to the surface. I cannot apply direction the way I want. How do I do it? Here's the project.
Thanks!

John_P_Desilets

Hello @gauthier_östervall

I would recommend sketching a construction line in the direction that you want the mate connector to point. In this example, I made a line tangent to the curve. The line can be used to determine the location and orientation of the mate, and the owner of the mate is the surface.  Here is a link to the example. Hope this helps and good luck!

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/4e4b7b8491630936cefac3c8/w/6ba09cc57c0670d19ace7eff/e/922f1028e6920a5953e8593a

gauthier_östervall

@John_P_Desilets
Thanks for your reply! I got this far in the original project, I just hoped I could tell Onshape to align the green or red to that construction line. But even trying to align the mate connectors secondary axis to that construction line doesn't work.

Now I see, that I should have a radius as a construction line, that would probably work.

John_P_Desilets

Hello @gauthier_östervall

If you select "move" in the dialog, you can also rotate the mate in either X Y or Z after the initial placement. Is this what you are looking for?

matthew_stacy

John_P_Desilets said:

Hello @gauthier_östervall

I would recommend sketching a construction line in the direction that you want the mate connector to point. In this example, I made a line tangent to the curve. The line can be used to determine the location and orientation of the mate, and the owner of the mate is the surface.  Here is a link to the example. Hope this helps and good luck!

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/4e4b7b8491630936cefac3c8/w/6ba09cc57c0670d19ace7eff/e/922f1028e6920a5953e8593a

@john_P@John_P_Desilets, is it possible to extend this approach to align a sketch plane (or mate connector) tangent or normal to the end of a 3d curve?

eric_pesty

You could also look at using the "Multi Mate Connector" featurescript. It's a bit more complicated to use but it does offer many different options for defining a mate connector (including along a "path"):

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/5d8da63844bedebe5cff72b1/v/a2f8d68037aff39e9d20f7a1/e/11dcab8f665add80b9aced0a

matthew_stacy

Thanks @eric_pesty.  The multi-mate connector is a bit clunky, but does appears to provide adequate functionality to locate a sketch at either end of a 3d curve, oriented tangent or normal to.  Generic mate connectors (those not created within a sketch or feature) have to belong to a surface or part which may require an artificial surrogate depending on the use case.

Hopefully the team at OS will refine the functionality of Multi Mate Connector and add that to the standard move/realign manipulation workflow.