Creating Mates Using Smart Mate

You can use Smart Mate with Design Assistance to drag a component with one or more degrees of freedom and automatically create fully constrained mates with another component.

Before you begin: Create or import the components to mate. This procedure uses the following components.

See Also
About Smart Mate

Context:

Important: Smart Mate cannot be enabled in Perspective view. From the View section of action bar, click View Modes and clear the Perspective selection.

  1. Click Smart Mate from the Assembly section of action bar.
    The Smart Mate feature is active. Click Smart Mate again to turn Smart Mate off.
  2. In the 3D area, drag a component to another component and pause where you want the components to mate.

    In this example, the right tray panel was dragged to the mounting bar. When dragging the component, it becomes translucent. The target component is highlighted when a mate or mate set is suggested.

  3. Release the mouse when the correct component and target mates highlight.
    The Smart Mate context toolbar displays.

    The components become mated and the tree is updated.
  4. From the context toolbar, click the following options:
    OptionDescription
    Expand. Opens the Smart Mate dialog box providing all available options.
    OK. The suggested mate command finishes, the components stay in the current location, and the context toolbar closes.
    Cancel. Cancels the mate placement and closes the context toolbar.
  5. Optional: Create a second set of mates by selecting the surfaces before dragging the component.
  6. Drag the component to the other component and pause where you want the components to mate.

    In this example, the left tray panel was dragged to the mounting bar.

    The Smart Mate context toolbar displays.

  7. Optional: Click Expand to open In the Smart Mate dialog box to review and edit the mates.
    • Click to expand mate sections.
    • Click to remove selections.
  8. Click in the Smart Mate dialog box (or context toolbar) to accept the suggestions and close Smart Mate.