What We’ll Cover

 Mating Tips
 Symmetric Mate
 Width Mate
 Path Mate
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 Linear/Linear Coupler Mate

 Distance With Limit Mate
 Hinge Mate
 Multi-Mate
 Cam Mate
 Rack & Pinion Gear Mate
 Screw Mate

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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
How Many Mates Do We Need?

 3 Typically
 Can a part be fully constrained with one mate?
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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Mating Tips

 Try to use a common mate reference

 Long chains of mates take longer to solve
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 Do not create mate loops:

 Do not over define mates:

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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
More Mating Tips

 Drag components to test their available degrees of freedom.

 If a component is causing problems, it is often easier to delete all
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its mates and re-create them instead of diagnosing each one.

 Use Sub-Assemblies at the top level assembly.

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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Symmetric Mate

 Allows two similar entities to be symmetric about a face or plane

 Features allowed:
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 Points
 Planes or planar faces
 Spheres of equal radius
 Cylinders of equal radius

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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Width Mate

 Centers a tab within the width of a groove

 Tab references: (purple)
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 Two parallel faces

 Two non-parallel planer faces (with or without draft)
 One cylindrical face or axis

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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Path Mate

 Constrains a selected point to a path

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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Linear/Linear Couple Mate

 Used to establish a translation relation between components

 Can pretty much use any entity to create this mate
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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Distance With Limit Mate

 Limits the movement of a component within a specified range of

travel allowing some freedom of movement
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 Limit mates take longer to solve

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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Hinge Mate

 Creates a concentric and coincident mate at the same time

 Can also limit the angular movement
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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Multi Mate

 Use one common reference to mate multiple parts with the same
type of mates
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 Condense mates into a folder

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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Cam Mate

 Cam profile must be a series of tangent faces that form a closed

loop
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 Mate a plane, cylinder, or point

 Can profile can be:
 Lines
 Arcs
 Splines

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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Rack & Pinion Mate

 Linear translation of one component (the rack) causes circular

rotation in another component (the pinion)
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 You can mate any two components to have this type of movement
relative to each other. The components do not need to have gear
teeth.

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 SolidWorks Advanced Mates
Screw Mate

 Constrains two components to be concentric

 Translation of one component along the axis causes rotation of
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the other according to pitch relationship

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