Hi all,
I have an assembly that has many mates that are gray - not suppressed and not failed or over constrained. I am pretty sure all of these are external (could not check them all) - meaning that components get assembled to these features in higher level assemblies.
What are these mates called? (External mates?)
They severely clutter the tree and while working ion the sub-assy, they are completely irrelevant - right? I would never want to address them if I am not in the upper assy. At least I cannot think of a case where I would want access to them. Can their display be shut off? Dealing with mates in SWX has gotten better over the last four releases since I migrated over from Pro/Easy land... ("Easy" has the <sarcasm> tag for clarification) - but managing mates in SWX still pretty much sucks in comparison - in my opinion. Functionally, they
are superior, but trouble shooting and managing... not so much.
Sorry for the rant - any tips on wrangling mates in a big assy?
Thanks!
-Nate
Another strategy for you - Folders
If your assembly has many components with loads of mates and you want to organize your tree, select groups of mates, and right click to create a folder. This can be done with mates, with components in your assembly, or with features in your parts. You can then name your folders to keep them orderly, a folder of hardware or fasteners for example.
Also in case you hadn't seen before, if you are concerned with the mates for a particular component they are default ordered under that component's Mates subfolder.