SolidWorks 2011 Assemblies Bible - Matt Lombard [107]
Mates can fail, or have warning markers, like other features inside parts. A red circle with an X in it means that the mate does not meet the geometric conditions. A yellow triangle with an exclamation point means that the mate is in conflict with another mate. Figure 13.2 shows examples of these errors.
FIGURE 13.2
Know the difference between a warning and an error.
You can see from the last two mates in the list that one is an error, and the other is a warning. If you look at the assembly, you notice that the seat is not where it belongs. The mate Concentric14 is between the frame and the seat post. This is the mate that is not satisfied and is currently broken. The mate Concentric16 is shown to be in conflict with another mate, and you can see that the other mate has to be Concentric14.
Other mates are also in conflict, and this is one of the biggest difficulties when troubleshooting mates in an assembly. While several mates are in conflict, there may be only one mate that is actually causing a problem. Unfortunately, there is no automated way to determine which mate is the troublemaker, but a good rule of thumb is to troubleshoot the list of mates from the bottom to the top. This is based on the expectation that more recently added mates are the ones causing trouble.
In this case, simply deleting the Concentric16 mate fixes all of the problems in the list of mates, and the part goes back to where it belongs.
Listing mates under the component
Mates are also listed under the component in the FeatureManager. These are the same mates as are listed in the Mates folder at the bottom, but under the component, only the mates relating to that particular component are listed. Figure 13.3 shows mates listed in this way.
FIGURE 13.3
Mates are also listed in a folder under the component.
This is a very convenient way to list the mates, making them easy to find, and nicely organized. One of the drawbacks of listing them this way is that when there is a mate with an error, the error not only shows up in the Mates folder at the bottom of the FeatureManager, but an error flag also appears on each of the parts containing the bad mate.
Replacing features with mates
Another method of displaying mates under the components enables you to see the mates of more parts at once. In the previous method shown in Figure 13.3, the mates were shown along with the features of the part.
To show the mates associated with each part without the features, right-click the top-level assembly, select Tree Display, and then select View Mates and Dependencies. This option is shown in Figure 13.4.
Notice that you can still access the features if you want to. They are in a collapsed folder at the bottom of the list of mates. This is a more convenient option for looking at the mates of several parts at one time.
FIGURE 13.4
Displaying the mates without part features
Working with the View Mates tool
As its name implies, View Mates is a special tool just for viewing mates. You can access it from the RMB menu when you select a single assembly component (part or subassembly), or multiple assembly components. Figure 13.5 shows the View Mates window when the frame and stem-fork subassembly are selected in the bike assembly located on the DVD.
On the DVD
To view this example, open the file bike.sldasm, located in the Chapter 13 folder.
FIGURE 13.5
The View Mates window shows mates for selected components.
The icon shown to the left of Coincident14 in Figure 13.5 indicates that mate is in the “path to ground,” which means that it is part of the link from the part that is either fixed or mated to assembly planes to outlying parts which depend on other parts for their location. The Path to Ground parts are always listed at the top of the View Mates window. The rest of the mates in the window are all from the parts that are selected.
The parts displayed in blue in the graphics window