I am building a Hot Rod and I need to design a chassis. I haven't used Solidworks much and I am having trouble aligning the wheels. Please see attached.
I would like to align them so that they are sitting on the same theoretical ground. I have tried to do this with Mates but it's just not working. I'm sure I am just doing some basic error here.
Thanks, Daniel.
Try to repackage the assembly, the part files are missing from the zip at the moment.
What mates have you used to align the wheels? I would suggest using whatever chassis you have as the way of aligning the wheels. Just make the center of the wheel concentric with the axle and you should be all fine and level.
Hope this attachment works OK. I only have the wheels in place. I only know the wheelbase and width I am using and I will design a chassis around that as I will have fixed axle and prop shaft.
Thanks, Daniel.
I thought that a tangent mate would work but that aligned the wheels left to right rather than top to bottom.
Daniel,
The way I did it was to float the only fixed wheel (right click on the feature and float should be there) and then just click on the outer surface of the wheel (the one that's gonna be on the ground) and mate that as tangent to the top plane. This would work equally well with another reference point, but the top plane is a handy one that's automatically included in the assembly.
Until you have the chassis in place, you're probably going to want to use a distance mate between the front plane and one wheel in each pair to completely fix them in space. Otherwise they'll be slightly off center. Another option for this is to use a width mate between the pairs of wheels, but that depends on how exactly you want them to be aligned.
Thanks, that worked.
Daniel,
The way I did it was to float the only fixed wheel (right click on the feature and float should be there) and then just click on the outer surface of the wheel (the one that's gonna be on the ground) and mate that as tangent to the top plane. This would work equally well with another reference point, but the top plane is a handy one that's automatically included in the assembly.