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Mate Connectors Need Some Love
S1mon
Member Posts: 3,622 PRO
I've become more and more dependent on Multi Mate Connector from @konstantin_shiriazdanov. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to be active and maintaining it any more.
MMC is great for adding MCs to a bunch of parts all at the same place, and it also has some features to allow mate connectors to be placed in locations which can't be easily done with the built in tools. However, it's not great at keeping the internal IDs consistent, so I end up having to redo mates in my assemblies more than I would like. This is a great example of how, as users, we come to depend on custom features because important functionality is missing in Onshape, but without maintenance, these custom tools can be frustrating.
In general, there are so many places where mate connectors could use some little improvements:
Maybe because there are so many "paper cut" level annoyances, and many of these don't get a ton of votes, they don't get the focus they need. However, I see them collectively as a ton of opportunities to make small changes which add to more systematic ways to use the power of MCs to accomplish modeling and assembly tasks.
MMC is great for adding MCs to a bunch of parts all at the same place, and it also has some features to allow mate connectors to be placed in locations which can't be easily done with the built in tools. However, it's not great at keeping the internal IDs consistent, so I end up having to redo mates in my assemblies more than I would like. This is a great example of how, as users, we come to depend on custom features because important functionality is missing in Onshape, but without maintenance, these custom tools can be frustrating.
In general, there are so many places where mate connectors could use some little improvements:
- Allow the standard MC tool to add stable MCs to more than one part at a time (i.e. replace most of what I use MMC for) Ability to assign one mate connector to several parts at time
- More options for placing MCs on curves and surfaces: Mate Connector Normal to End of Curve, Mate Connectors Normal to Rounds and Surfaces, Allow Curves to Use Mate Connectors as Vertices, Align mate connector with primary axis normal to curve or non linear edge
- Allow mate connectors to belong to a sketch, Mate Connectors in Sketches, Allow mate connectors to be owned by surfaces and curves
- Measurement improvements: Measure Angles from Mate Connector, Measure Mate Connector Orientation, measure between mate connectors in mate connector frame, Measure from more mate connectors (midpoints, centroids, etc.)
- More orientation options when creating MCs: Realign Secondary Axis of Mate Connector to a hole or other similar features, Mate Connector definition from another Mate Connector, Mate Connector placed "Between Entity" on two drafted surfaces should lie on the mid-plane, More Primary Axis Options for Origin Mate Connector in Part Studio, 3 point option for implicit mate connector
- Naming/finding: Automatically name mates with name of first part selected, Easier Way to Find Mates Associated with Parts
- Improve UX of limit mates: Mate option to flip offset/limit direction
- Promoting implicit to explicit (we have some clever ease of use things with variables, now is the time to do this with MCs): Toggle Implicit Mate Connector to Explicit Mate Connector, Keep Implicit Mate Connector after Use
- Enabling implicit MCs in more and more places: Move Face with Point to Point Translation, Measure Tool: Implicit Mate connector function to measure distance between two mate connectors
Maybe because there are so many "paper cut" level annoyances, and many of these don't get a ton of votes, they don't get the focus they need. However, I see them collectively as a ton of opportunities to make small changes which add to more systematic ways to use the power of MCs to accomplish modeling and assembly tasks.
Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work
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Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work
One simple improvement to MMC I'd love to see: the ability to name the mate connector.
Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work
Great list, I recently found the need to be able to move a mate connector from the implicit spot up to a face. It would be good to have some sort of move mate connector to, or offset from, an entity, not just "blind."
This IR from 2019 kind of addresses this.
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/11538/move-mate-connector-up-to-selection
I wrote this in other places, and to OS support, but I'll add it here. Why in the world can't a mate connector reference another MC? Its supposed to be a coordinate system.
You can pick the tangent of a round to place a MC, which is about the most unreliable reference that can possibly exist in CAD, but can't pick another MC as a reference.
I end up making dummy sketches simply to place a point, that I then use as a reference for a MC.
It's as if MC are not meant to be the driving datums, as they are in other cad systems in coordinate system form, but rather as secondary to geometry.
I'm reasonably new to Onshape and not following all the above comments, but I have what I think is a much simpler and more pressing one — why can't mates always be defined in the Part Studio and then go with the parts to Assembly studios? This would be an enormous time-saver for parts that are used in many assemblies, also further standardization in use. Indeed I'd like (for the aerospace applications I do) to be able to lock an exported part so that no other mates can be established on it other than the one(s) provided from the part-studio … to prevent downstream mistakes.
Related to this is documentation — lack thereof. There are vague references to "different philosophies" of Parts-studio Mates vs Assembly Mates … but no real documentation I can find. And of course there is the question of why do SOME mates established in a Part Studio go though to Assembly? Clearly there are two different classes of mates … why not give them separate symbols, describe their attributes, so at least users understand what kind(s) of mates can be affixed in the part studio, for subsequent assembly?
Another beef is difficulty of adding some obvious mates, although this may just be because I am a noobie and don't know how?
When you create an explicit mate connector in a part studio, you have to specify the "owner" part. It will then be available in assemblies for that "owner" part. When you insert items into assemblies that have these explicit mate connectors, you can turn on "snap mode" to mate them to assembly geometry. If there is more than one explicit MC, ctrl cycles which one is used. There's an example of that here:
For selecting mate connectors in "empty" space, hover over the surface and hold shift to "lock" the selection to mate connectors on this surface. This lets you select the center of a hole for example, works the same with a hole in a shaft, pick the inner face of the hole and you get three options: one at the center of the bore and one each end.