Smart Mate with Design Assistance

About Smart Mate

Smart Mate is a Design Assistance tool to help you quickly create mates by dragging components toward each other.

This page discusses:

Once you have created two or more components, you can automatically mate components by activating the Smart Mate command from the Assembly section of action bar. When Smart Mate is on:

  • Drag a component you want to mate toward the other component.
  • Preselect planar or cylindrical faces to mate on the components. Then drag one component to the other component.
  • If the dragged component belongs to a subassembly, then Smart Mate considers the entire subassembly.
  • You cannot use Smart Mate with components that have pre-existing active mates.

Free Drag Mate Suggestions

Drag a component on or near the component where you want to create a mate. While dragging the component, pauses the component next to the target component (without releasing it) for viable Smart Mate suggestions. The closest possible suggested geometry highlights. When dragging a component, it becomes translucent confirming it is the selected component and prevents it from obscuring other components. Smart Mate analyzes the dragged component and nearby components for the most likely mate suggestions.

If you do not want that suggestion, drag the component away and if there is another viable suggestion, the component snaps to the new suggestion. If the dragged component has existing mates with other components, the component does not become translucent.

Free Drag Snap

To show a preview of the mate solution, the dragged component snaps into the suggestion position. The component only snaps to solutions that are close to the initial orientation of the component (within an angle of 30 degrees). When the component snaps into position, it changes to a translucent yellow. Each mating face pair highlights in a different color. The sets of colors match with the colors used in the selection dialog boxes.

If you continue the drag after a snap, the component reverts back to the non-yellow translucent state. To stop Smart Mate suggestions, drag the component away from any target component and release the mouse when you stop dragging.

Smart Mate Dialog Box

When you release the mouse while the drag component is in a snapped location, the Smart Mate context toolbar displays, allowing you accept, cancel, or open the Smart Mate dialog box. The dialog allows you to edit or delete mating faces and select new ones.

The dialog box lists individual mate sections fields and allows you to edit the fields with only suitable selections. For example, Concentric mates allow only cylindrical body face selections; Coincident mates only allow planar body face selections.

After releasing the dragged component, the dialog box and tree shows the suggested sets of mates, fully constrained in its suggested position. You can accept or cancel the suggestions in the dialog box (or context toolbar). You can edit or delete the mates in the dialog box in the tree.

 

See Also
Creating Mates Using Smart Mate