SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part III: Working with Assemblies

FIGURE 13.5

Applying a SmartMate

When you drop the face or edge onto the mating face or edge to complete the mate, you must use

the popup Mate toolbar to accept or alter the mate. In the examples in Figure 13.6, a face is being

dragged onto another face. However, you can also drag edges and vertices. Mates are limited to

being either Coincident or Concentric.

The peg-in-hole mate is actually the combination of a Concentric mate and a Coincident mate. This

is the type of mate that is created between a screw and a hole, and is the result of Alt+dragging a

circular edge onto a circular edge. When the circular edges are created by the intersection of a

cylindrical face and a flat face, the Concentric mate goes between the two cylindrical faces, and the

Coincident mate goes between the flat faces. The peg-in-hole mate is illustrated in Figure 13.6. The

top two images show the state of the parts before the SmartMate. The image in the lower left shows

the SmartMate orienting the part in the wrong way so that the two parts interfere. In the image in

the lower right, the part to which the SmartMate is applied has been reoriented by the Tab being

pressed before the SmartMate is accepted by the part being dropped.

Tip
You can press the Tab key to flip the alignment if a SmartMate tries to put parts together in the wrong way. If
you are in the process of Alt+dragging, make sure to release the Alt key before pressing Tab. The Alt+Tab
combination is a Windows shortcut to show a list of open applications. n