Part III: Working with Assemblies
l (^) Remember to use subassemblies to break up the number of mates that are solved in the
top-level assembly.
l (^) Limit the use of flexible subassemblies.
l Do not mate to entities that may be removed later by suppressing or unsuppressing features,
especially edges or faces that are created by features such as fillets. For this reason, it is
usually best to wait until parts are complete before you use them to create an assembly,
although this is rarely practical.
l Use a degree-of-freedom analysis to prevent mates from becoming over-defined.
Tutorial: Mating for Success
In this tutorial, you will put together a model of a robotic arm to better understand some of the
mate issues discussed in this chapter. Follow these steps to mate for success:
- Open the part named Chapter 13 Robot Base.sldprt from the CD-ROM.
- In the part document window, click the Make Assembly From Part icon, and click
the cursor on the Origin of the assembly to place the part Origin at the assembly
Origin. The part is automatically fixed in place. - Choose Insert ➪ Component ➪ Existing Part/Assembly. Click the Browse button in the
PropertyManager and find the part called Chapter 13 Robot Tower.sldprt. This
part contains a Mate reference to help you mount it to the base. If you bring the cursor
near the big circular hole in the base, you can see the preview of the tower snap into
place. Click to accept this placement. Figure 13.24 shows this placement in progress.
Notice that the cursor appears as a SmartMate cursor for the peg-in-hole mate. When the
part is dropped, check the mate list to confirm that a Concentric and a Coincident mate
have been applied by the Mate reference. - Open the part with the filename Chapter 13 Arm.sldprt, the Default configuration,
in its own window, and choose Window ➪ Tile Vertically. The part and the assembly
should be open in adjacent windows. - Click the face inside the hole without the chamfer around it in the Arm part, as
shown in Figure 13.25. Then drag it into the assembly to the cylindrical face inside the
hole at the top of the Robot Tower part. The concentric SmartMate symbol should appear
on the cursor.