SOLIDWORKS Mate

How to Group SOLIDWORKS Assembly Mates and Fasteners into Folders

In SOLIDWORKS 2019, you can group SOLIDWORKS Assembly mates by status and separate fasteners into folders. You can group the mates by their status, such as Solved mates, mates with Errors, Over defined mates, Suppressed mates, Suppressed mates that reference missing components, and Inactive (fixed) components (mates that reference fixed components). Group mates and…

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SOLIDWORKS Toolbox Lock Rotation of new Concentric Mates to Components

In SOLIDWORKS 2019, any new Toolbox components can have their concentric mates rotation locked automatically. In order to activate the SOLIDWORKS Toolbox Lock Rotation for concentric mates option, you need to go to: Tools > Options > System Options > Hole Wizard/Toolbox and under Toolbox Mates, check the Lock…

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Redundancies in SOLIDWORKS Motion Analysis

We know that each unconstrained body in space has six degrees of freedom (DOF): three translations and three rotations about X, Y and Z axes. Each mate removes a certain number of DOFs from the system. The table below shows some of the mates in…

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SOLIDWORKS Smart Components are a Big Time Saver for Repetitive Assemblies

If you have to assemble many clamps to your base plate, or if you have some custom parts to be bolted or riveted into place in your SOLIDWORKS assembly, then this SOLIDWORKS Smart Components article is for you. In SOLIDWORKS you can make your part…

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SOLIDWORKS Mate References are a Huge Time Saver when building an assembly

Imagine you are creating an assembly with many components in it. Each component you insert into the assembly requires three mates. It will be a tedious job making these kinds of assemblies over and over again. Repeating mating process many times in a row. Now,…

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Support for Misaligned Concentric Mates in SOLIDWORKS 2018

Working with downloaded or imported models can create a situation where multiple pairs of holes cannot be mated concentric although there is no problem fitting manufactured components.  SOLIDWORKS 2018 misaligned concentric mates option can account for this small difference in hole distances. When the option…

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Expanded use of the Perpendicular Mate in SOLIDWORKS 2018

SOLIDWORKS Perpendicular Mate

Like many enhancements that come along during any SOLIDWORKS release cycle, it seems like the ability to add a SOLIDWORKS perpendicular mate between a complex (Non-analytic) surface and a linear entity, may get overlooked rather easily. UNLESS this is the exact feature you have been…

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Mate a Component of a Rigid Sub-assembly to a Component of the Top-level assembly

SOLIDWORKS Rigid Sub-assembly

A question came in recently about constraining a moving component of a SOLIDWORKS rigid sub-assembly to a component of the top-level assembly.  The sub-assembly was fully constrained in the top-level assembly, so a mate between sub-assembly component and another component in the top-level assembly would…

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SOLIDWORKS 2018 Temporarily Hiding Faces when Selecting Mates

SOLIDWORKS 2018 Mates using Alt Key to Hide Faces

SOLIDWORKS 2018 now allows you to hide faces temporarily when adding mates.  This helps to make selections of faces and edges that are not visible.  Previously we would need to rotate components or use Select Other for the non-visible selections. When in the Mate tool,…

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