Hi all, I have been lurking in the backround for ages reading up on the advice people are suggesting so I thought I get started & post an item I'm having difficulty with and hopfully get some advice.

I have modeled up a pretty basic model of a roller shutter from one or our suppliers and was hoping to Pack & Go it each time we manufacture a different size cabinet and adjust the aperture size to suit. I have set up some equations for door height and width (aperture size) and these adjust the slat/lower locking mechanism, storage tube and flag plate/guide channel dimensions and these appear to be working well.

My questions are as follows:

1. I am new to using the path mate but I have have created a path in the assembly using a surface (found that suggestion on the forums, works great!) and have put a sketch in the slats to use a path mate so the slats actually roll up. Now this does work with 1 -3 slats but after 3 are mated in it will not follow the path, they also flip inside out (which may because its mated using sketch points?) and if I apply a secont path mate to each slat it errors out and becomes overdefined. Is there a setting that I can change in the mates section or a different way of doing this to achieve the desired affect?

2.  The second question, I would like to have the assembly so you only have to change the apertue size dimensions and the rest updates automatically. The equations I put in work fine but how can I get it to update the number of slats and have them mated with the above path mate. I have looked and read a bit on feature patterns but not sure if this can be applied here. Mating each slat is okay but we do create some large cabinets with more than one size door so this could be rather time consuming. I may be asking too much here or it could be very simple.

Please see attached assembly.

Your help and suggestions would be much appreciated.

Scott Manktelow