What’s the fastest way to show mates between two components in SolidWorks? This was a question posed to the tech team here at CAPINC at our internal Beat the Geek challenge last week. Let’s uncover some of the possible solutions:
One method is to use the Show Mates function that is part of context menu in assemblies when selecting a part. A very nice tool as it allows the use to see only the part (or parts) selected and the mates attached to that part. The View Mates window will appear and display a list of mates for the selected component(s). A nice feature is that it displays an icon that indicates mates that are in the path to ground. These mates hold the part in position relative to the origin of the assembly. They are shown first on the list, with a horizontal bar separating them from other mates. Mates can also be edited from this head’s up user interface. To view the mates for more than one component, simply hold the CTRL key down, and click the components, and invoke the context “view Mates” item by either left-clicking or right clicking.
Another way is to view the mates in the “Mates” folder for each component. This was added several years ago and is quite handy. Simply drill into a part the FeatureManager Design tree in the assembly, and one of the first folders under the part level is the “Mates in XXXX”. Here you will see all the mates belonging to that part. Note this only appears at the assembly level when viewing a part and not in the Part interface. A similar method for viewing mates is to change your tree display to “View Mates and Dependencies” Right Click at the top of the FeatureManager Design tree and choose Tree Display -> “View Mates and Dependencies”. Not the tree show mates under the parts instead of features, and the features can be accessed in a folder below the mates, eseentially reversing the default look and feel of SolidWorks. To reverse this behavior, go back to the Tree Display options and set it back to “View Features”
While there are a number of ways of showing the mates that belong to one component the winner is: Drumroll please… CTRL click two components and show the Property Manager. All mates for both components are listed, with the common mates in boldface at the top of the list. This just noses out the competitors inside of SolidWorks for the fastest method.
You can decide on what your favorite method is here: [poll id="4"] If you have a better way, please send us a comment!
Here is a video on the various methods hosted in our CAPUniverity YouTube site.
