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Explicit mate connectors in part studios -- what is the proper use of this feature?
james_aguilar160
Member Posts: 45 ✭
Hi! I was trying to search for this information, but Google was having trouble — too many discussions of other points of mate connectors to find the needle in the haystack.
What do people use explicit mate connectors in part studios for? When should I use them?
I actually have a guess as to the answer, inspired by some frustrating experiences I had last night while editing the apparatus in this document:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/0121ddf5c434a660d42c4957/w/1e09b71f2e2153b1e3ec6101/e/bd437491befbf0a49269b1e3?renderMode=0&uiState=67190bcd2d68bb74661de0b8
A couple of times, my sketches in the "gear housing" studio got messed up by edits to the shapes of other parts, possibly due to injudicious in-context references. One of the things I noticed is that each time I fixed these issues, the instances in the main assembly ("assembly 2") would be broken. And then, when I fixed them, I would have to redo all the mates.
I have also often had mates broken by edits that slightly change the faces of a part, if the mate is defined on a part face whose shape or size changed. For example, I seem to recall that adding a chamfer to a mated face has broken revolutes in my assemblies before. Would having the mates connectors defined in the part studios help with that?
If this guess is not correct, could someone talk a little bit about what the purpose of explicit mate connectors in part studios are?
Comments
I often add explicit mate connectors to a part when I know how it's going to be assembled and, due to the geometry, there won't be an implicit mate connector to make the assembly work.
@james_aguilar160 , Matt answered the mate connector question, but I would like to talk to you about some of the other issues you brought up. Are you aware about edits causing changes to part names, and lost face geometry - and the resulting issues of broken mates, that these changes bring about? This sounds like what you are experiencing - Others may be able to explain this better than I can.
Explicit mate connectors, with parts as owners, can be a good way to make sure that the references are managed properly as you're modeling. It can also be good for defining MC locations which are difficult/impossible to do in an assembly (e.g. the end of a coiled compression spring, or a swoopy consumer product housing). In many cases I will define a mate connector at the origin of the part studio or perhaps some other virtual point which requires sketches or planes in order to keep it parametric.
There are zillion uses for mate connectors beyond just mating parts, but I don't think that's what you're asking.
Yeah I'm aware you can do a bunch of different things with mate connectors (hole placement, sketch plane definition, mirror definition etc.). I just normally find those locations with implicit connectors and I was wondering about the point of the explicitly defined ones. Thanks everyone for the advice. So much to learn!!!