mate connector

walter

need a tutorial or demo on mate connector, can't make offset mates on surfaces,

traveler_hauptman

for now the trick is to create a mate connector at the offset location and then mate to that mate connector.

andrew_troup

Offset checkbox has now been added to "Fastened" mates 

traveler_hauptman

for now the trick is to create a mate connector at the offset location and then mate to that mate connector.

andrew_troup

Offset checkbox has now been added to "Fastened" mates 

andrew_troup

A few things I like about the OnS mate connector concept

1) The fact that connectors are a durable addition to the part, reflecting design intent. I mean that they remain intact even when assembly mating scheme needs wholesale revision. The user is gently encouraged to think ahead, about the design intent of the part within the assembly, not as an isolated piece.

2) The avoidance of overconstraint typical in other packages, where lots of people routinely use 3 face to face (or plane) mates, each locking down 3 degrees of freedom, resulting in 9 out of 6 dof being constrained. This is why flipping a single mate alignment in (say) Solidworks can be time-consuming, especially in someone else's model. Part reorientation in OnS, on the other hand, is trivial.
Over-constraint also extracts a toll on assembly performance and reliability.

3) Radical reduction in number of mates needed, without resorting to the complexity of highly evolved packages where even moderate reduction requires specialised mate types.

4) Mate connectors seem to me to have potential to do duty in other roles: probably as coordinate systems, possibly in lieu of reference points and reference axes, maybe even sharing attributes with manipulation triads. They might come in different 'flavours' (and colours?) to avoid role confusion, but a consistent way of depicting and deploying might be a welcome simplification

5) It seems conceptually elegant to me how OnS have separated the "noun" part of a mate (this is what we want mated) from the "verb" part (this is how we want it mated).

There are other things I like, but they escape me at present. It would be interesting to get some other people's views on good or bad aspects, as they see them.

3dcad

I'm really starting to like mate connectors. At first I felt the are a bit annoying bouncing here and there but after I discovered the power - only one constraint / part - I begun to understand how much these would ease up my work with furniture piece assembly as well as store layout assemblies. No routine clicks, just concentrate on the one to get it right and part is fully defined on it's place. 

I hope in future we could have named connectors. For example when modeling a handle, create screw hole with connector then onto cabinet door, model a hole for handle and when brought to assembly handle would jump to it's place without any additional work. Same system would work for screws, bolts, etc..

lougallo

Offsets are now in most of our mates:  Offset option for Fastened, Slider, Planar, Revolute and Pin/Slot mates (distance)