i am doing an assembly with mates but the screws are the wrong way round and i need to spin them thru 180 degrees otherwise they go in the hole upside down ,and i just cant figure out how to get it in the right orientation to plop it in the hole .help !
i just need to get the screw the right way round by spinning it.
i followed your instructions but didnt have any luck getting the screw to spin round in the right direction ,so i had to delete them and load some more in a better orientation.
i had some screws that were very skewed and couldnt get them to spin round at all .
i need some more examples of this in action
Joe,
You should do the assembly mates tutorial (Help==>Tutorials). It covers the aligned/anti-aligned condition of mates and should equip you going forward to perform basic assembly operations
i have been going thru the log cabin assembley but still cant get the logs to spin to get them orientated so they slot togrether ,there doesnt seem to be a facilty to spin items to get them orientated to plop into position when doing mates .
they are always out and no way to get them in position to finish the mate without them blending into one in only 1 orientation .
is there a way to spin a part in any plane thru 360 degs ?to roughly move it into the right orientation ?
then the mate would be easy ,otherwise its like doing brain surgery whilst intoxicated .
Joe,
There's always a way to place a component the way you want it. You can reverse the direction of concentric and coincident mates, as I indicated in my earlier post. It's also sometimes helpful to move a component close to where you want it before mating it. While I'm sure you know that you can left-click and drag a component to move it, did you also know that you can right-click and drag to rotate a component? It's a little hard to control, but definitely do-able.
If you could include a screenshot or two of the assembly you're having problems with it might help.
Glenn's post and picture covered it well. Even when the parts mate in the wrong direction a simple click of either the 'two arrows' box or selection of the 'other'' Mate Alignmet icon will flip the part over. As also noted, even when the part is anti-aligned at the concentric mate the other selection of Mate Alignment will flip the part over.
If you finish a set of mates and your part is the wrong way round, you can go to its mates in the feature tree, RMB on them and "flip alignment".
i got it to work better now i just have to make sure i bring the screw in above the model and hole where its going and its ok when the angle is less than 45 degrees ,it goes in the hole ok ,but larger angles it gets harder to complete with an error message 'its over defined'.
when i get a message saying 'its over defined ' not sure what that means.
also when i do a joint of 2 parts using a stud as a fixture at the fulcrum point i can swivel the part about the stud ,but other times i do the same and it wont swivel about the stud. any idea what that is ?is that due to using or not using the anchor ?
thanx
Joe,
You get the message that the assembly is over defined because you have two conflicting mates. Both the Coincident mate and the Concentric mate have a direction to them. The coincident faces can be facing the same or opposite directions. For a screw, you want them facing opposite. The concentric axes also have directions, and they can also be the same or opposite. You get the error because the concentric axes alignment is the opposite of the coincident face alignment. You've got to change on or the other.
Personally, I've never seen much reason for the concentric mate to have a direction, but the folks at SolidWorks disagree. I assume some fairly large number of users also find it useful. I don't.
Jerry S.
Joe, you should read the online help on Assembly modeling or take the SolidWorks essentials class. You're going to want to get your head around the core concepts of Solidworks mates before you tackle complex assemblies.
i know i am on top of it now after doing mates all week non stop
When you do the concentric mate, click on one of the places shown below to reverse the direction. If you've already done the mate, edit it and click.