How to move an object so that one face of the object snaps to another object's face?

florian_ford

Hi guys,

Coming from SpaceClaim realm, I am so used to the "Up To" feature, where I move the "triade"'s center to a face of the to-be-moved object, then I hit the "Up To" button, then click on the "triade's" arrow corresponding to the axis I want to constrain the movement to and then I click the destination face and the object is moved "Up To" that face.

I am trying to replicate that behavior in OS but don't find it obvious at all. How can I achieve this?

I would also like to be able to "Ctrl+Drag Triade's Handle" to copy object. Is something similar available in OS?

Jlabs

I'm not sure if I'm approaching this problem correctly, but what I've done for the "move up to" problem is added a mate connector to both the part I want to move and to the destination face/part. Then you can do a 3d transform using mate connectors and they'll snap together. Occasionally I'll have to add a sketch here or there to correctly position the mate connectors.

Another possible solution is to create a sketch construction line and use the "transform by line" type in the transform tool.

florian_ford

This sounds pretty complicated. The way i achieved it was by measuring the distance to the destination face and moving, using the triad, by the exact distance. But this is not as easy as the way SpaceClaim does it...

Jlabs

It's actually very simple. Click the point where you want the part to be moved, then add a mate connector. Second, click the point on the part you want to move and add a mate connector. Finally, choose the transform command and choose "transform by mate connector". You may have to flip or re-orient your mate connectors to get the alignment how you want it.

3dcad

@florian_ford
Can you please open up your workflow a bit. I don't see a reason to move stuff around so much unless you have imported parts that you wan't to combine as single part.
Assembly worspace is where you connect parts together if you haven't created them together in part studio. There mate connectors appear automatically and connecting two parts needs 4 mouse clicks to perform.

For copying stuff you can use pattern or check copy option in transform dialog. But I don't recommend copying parts as you can use same part multiple times in assembly and keep editing easy.