I am trying to mate some parts to allow a gimbal style component to rotate around both axes. After mating the stick to both movable parts seen in the attachement, Solidworks only allows me to move one of them (and thus the stick can only rotate in one plane). If I reorder the mates or mate another side of the same parts, I end up being able to move the stick in the other plane, but I can never move it freely in both directions - it always gives the error "The selected component is fully defined - it cannot move), even though it moves freely when I supress the mate in the other plane.
Is there something that is stopping me from moving them both at the same time? I assume this is a limitation in the mate solver to save resources or make it easier to solve. Is there an option I can enable that allows Solidworks to solve the mates in a different way and actually realize that one mate does not fully define the position in the other if both can be moved freely at the same time?
what are you applying the parallel mates to? seems to me you would want to use concentric with the end points of your two axis mounts, or use coincident on the axis, or use a angle/path mate with limits.. it seems like you are just trying to use the wrong mate types. if you have two parallel mates perpendicular to one another you are locking that feature from having any sort of movement..