Hello there,

I am looking for a solution to the following problem;

I am trying to position 2 greasenipples on a cylindrical tube.

The tube in the drawing is in a fixed position, and the planes are there for mating purposes in another assembly.

The 2 nipples that I want to add are always in the center of the tube, but i want to be able to control the angle that they have on the cylinder.

The holes, and threads for these greasenipples i managed to do. I can control the angle where they have to be placed by editing the angle in the sketch, and this works fine.

However, the problem lies with the nipple position.

The nipples have to be mated to the holes, and have to allign.

I have tries several options, but i get stuck on the following point:

Whenever i move the holes from 0 degrees to 180 degrees(by defining the angle as 180 in the sketch) solidworks moves the grease nipple to the right location, but it is displayed up-side-down. No matter how many mates I insert, it keeps doing this.

I managed a work around, by creating a circle from the center that is tangent to the end of the greasenipple.

However the length of the greasenipples isnt always going to be the same. I am planning to add different kind of greasenipples for some of them.

To put it this way, I want a kind of mate that constrains the nipple in such a way that solidworks does not flip it upside down whenever I rotate it along the tube.

Does anybody have any thoughts?

Files should be in the attachment

I am using SW2013 Sp.04