Let your mates do the work!

Recently I spoke with a customer who has created a substantial library of custom part files.

He described to me what a great time savings it was to have a standard libraries that users can simply drag and drop from. In addition to the ability to quickly re-use files, the customer was also taking advantage of an often overlooked feature called ‘mate references’.

Significant time savings can be achieved by creating and naming mate references on standard parts. The benefit is that when a part with a pre-defined mate reference is dragged into an assembly, it will automatically ‘snap’ to a logical position.

Additionally, if the mate reference is named, and the part it is being mated to has the same mate reference name, the parts will snap together like Lego® blocks. Taken one step further, if similar part have the same mate reference name, file replacement becomes a one step operation.

The benefit is not only time saved, but better understanding of the relationships between files.

If you are not already doing so, I would encourage you to take advantage of this simple but valuable capability. To learn more about this capability simply review the SolidWorks on-line help topic ‘Mate References’ under the ‘Assemblies > Mates > Types of Mates’ section.