on Jan 28, 2019There was some great discussion under the SOLIDWORKS World Top Ten List for "Provide Better Controls to Prevent Tangent and Other Mates from Flipping".
This covers the scenario where a mate may have more than one valid solution, then some design change causes the mate to solve in another valid but unwanted solution. The enhancement request is to provide a better way of controlling the mate, to prevent that unwanted change. An example we've already implemented is the reference entity in angle mates, added in SW2015.
At some point soon the top ten list will get locked down and will be archived, so I'd like to continue the discussion over here and also preserve the discussion we had on the topic, since this link will stop working: Provide Better Controls to Prevent Tangent and Other Mates from Flipping
Here's a snapshot of the discussion as of today, Jan 28th. Click to expand it.
Damir Galic shared one example model : Dropbox - test.zip but I'm really interested to get some more examples from you, please post below if you have examples where:
- A mate flips to another valid but unwanted solution.
AND - You can share the model and workflow, either here or direct message me.
I imagine that the only way to give user more control over tangent mates is to show the vectors on demand.
To simplify, a line will be (maybe already is) a vector. With a click, the user will be able to reveal the vector arrow. Then he/she/they could lock the tangency to the right or left of the line, where the right/left are defined in regard to the direction of the vector.
Pick the yellow or the cyan area as you define the tangency.
This solution is consistent to your implementation of the Reference Angle Mate.