Introduction to Assemblies Replicate Step

scott_davis733

I have spent hours trying to backtrack a student's attempt to do the universal join assembly. At first, she could not select individual faces. I rechecked everything and reset the mates and made sure the face of the bushing was mounted to the face of the cube. I can now select individual faces but when I click the green check, nothing happens and no mate is listed in the features column. So confusing!

Also, any tips on how to get the triad manipulator to orient down so I can select anti-align versus align with Z? It is right as of now, I think, but I am not sure why it does it one way sometimes and not others and how to change it accordingly.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/27675aca03650141d58b2370/w/618ffbae6bfe99b5ffa99407/e/26720f7b8ee9f59208136a62

john_mcclary

You can move the triad manipulator by dragging and dropping the origin of the triad onto another reference point. It's the small circle where all three axis meet.

If you're not getting mate connectors then you are probably not selecting them while mating. 
Remember you are mousing over faces/edges/points then an example of a mate connector appears, you need to click once the mate connector is where you want it. Sometimes you need to click twice, or get your mouse closer. Make sure the connector is listed in the dialog box before selecting your next mate point.

Holding shift while mousing over a reference will temporarily lock those so you can select them easier 

scott_davis733

John, I appreciate the feedback. However, the issue is that the arrows point the way they want to point. For the universal joint exercise, the Z arrow needs to point down so that you can choose Anti-Align with Z in order to follow the instructions. 

The main issue is that selecting individual faces in the replicate mate do not work for some reason. I select the part I want to replicate and it shows up in the popup. I make sure individual faces are selected and then select each face. However, when I check the green check, nothing happens. Although I am fairly new to Onshape, this is not an obvious mistake. I was able to do this successfully when I did the exercise myself, but I cannot seem to find the problem in a copy I made of another student's exercise. I have attached a screencast of the issue: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wd0n1mBG3f4aemY_fNrN_NSjIRgcPEyP/view

I have also tried to reassess the mates to make sure they were mated correctly. This is likely the issue, but I cannot figure it out.

scott_davis733

I figured out the mate issue! The instructions point to the planar face of the cube, but it looks like it points to the center mate connector. When I redid this and selected the face rather than the center of the hole, it replicated perfectly! I wish the instructions had additional instructions for what happens if you do it wrong! 

I still need to know how to get the Z on the triad manipulator to reorient down, so that I can choose Anti-Align with Z. I find that half the time, it wants to align with Z when it first appears.