Assembly mate

timo_8

Mating things seems really wierd and I find it quite counter intuitive.

How can I easilly mate 2 faces to each other so that it doesnt snap to any point?

What I'm trying to do is to mate the "bottom" face of the extrusion to the baseplate and get the extrusion flush with the shortedge.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/53a139fbec5543c2ba268e34/w/edb4f698353e4908930e4c66

david_sohlstrom

@Timo  Here is a copy of your assembly with one leg constrained. Take a look and you will see how I did it.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/6767d7910e1342c2a671d97e/w/636d1fae8c344517918d3d0c/e/5d7b24c9c14945478b7bb7f5

Dave

cyclonewade

Hi Timo,

I ended up adding a mate connector in the 30x60 strut member located by a midpoint sketch element. 

I'm sure others have different ideas.

Good luck.

cyclonewade

Hey Timo,

I unable to preview your model with the link provided above.  How about a new link or some screen shots.  The document needs to be public for anyone in the forum to look at it with a link.   I too had hard to time with the higher level mates at first, but now I'm a convert.    

W.

timo_8

The document should be public now

david_sohlstrom

@Timo  Here is a copy of your assembly with one leg constrained. Take a look and you will see how I did it.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/6767d7910e1342c2a671d97e/w/636d1fae8c344517918d3d0c/e/5d7b24c9c14945478b7bb7f5

Dave

cyclonewade

Hi Timo,

I ended up adding a mate connector in the 30x60 strut member located by a midpoint sketch element. 

I'm sure others have different ideas.

Good luck.

timo_8

David thanks for the help.
So basically there is no "easy" way to do it.
Maybe in the future we'll see other mate methods..

Best regards,
TT

cyclonewade

David_Sohlstrom said:

@Timo  Here is a copy of your assembly with one leg constrained. Take a look and you will see how I did it.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/6767d7910e1342c2a671d97e/w/636d1fae8c344517918d3d0c/e/5d7b24c9c14945478b7bb7f5

Dave

Good idea!  I just don't like the idea of having to manage a distance offset if the profile changes.

david_sohlstrom

This is a ton easier than doing the same thing in Alibre/Geomagic. 8 mate connectors rather than 36 it would take in A/GM to get all three legs constrained.
Once you get a handle on it you'll say duh.

Dave

timo_8

CycloneWade, ok that will work great, thanks!

Now that would be a good addition to the snap mates if onshape could detect that point automatically, the basic shape of that extrusion is rectangular after all! So 4 corner points and 4 midpoints..

cyclonewade

David_Sohlstrom said:

This is a ton easier than doing the same thing in Alibre/Geomagic. 8 mate connectors rather than 36 it would take in A/GM to get all three legs constrained.
Once you get a handle on it you'll say duh.

Dave

@Dave_Sohlstrom

In SW Brand, it would have taken 3 mates per Strut member but only if a plane when through the center of the strut.  It would also require a width mate between two points on the edge.  I'm not even sure width mate works with two points.  If points didn't work, then three planes would have to be created on the plate for centering the strut on each edge face.


Update...A mate with a plane between two points is turns out to be a symmetry mate.

3dcad

I think Onshape mate connectors grand idea is to connect where it would connect in real world. I don't miss traditional constraints at all, instead of clicking this and that and making feature tree grow you can just think of one mate and that's it.

Adding mate connectors in place during part modeling forces you to think ahead and be a little bit smarter from the beginning.

jonathan_stedman

I like the way you can add a connector mate on an edge and then when you do a fillet or chamfer to that edge, the mate stays on the old, now virtual , edge.  So I fillet and chamfer at the end after defining  my mates.