Assembly Modeling Exercises (Week 2)
Written by Ryan Olson   
Tuesday, 05 February 2008

Ex5Ex5Ex5
Ex5  
These modeling exercises will focus on simple assemblies. For each, create the individual parts according to the drawings. Then create an assembly starting with one of the parts in a fixed position, add the remaining parts, and create mates so that the additional parts can't be moved. For these assemblies, you should only need to use coincident mates between pairs of faces.

A few things to keep in mind:

  • The easiest way to start an assembly is to open the first part file and use the "Make Assembly from Part" command under the File menu. This will start a new assembly. To accept the default, fixed position for the first part, just click the green check mark at the top of the Insert Component property manager that comes up.
  • To add coincident mates between pairs of faces:
    • Enter Mate mode with Insert | Mate or the Mate (paperclip) icon on the toolbar
    • Make sure that the Mate Selections input area is active (pink), and click on the two faces to be mated
    • The model pieces should move together to show the mate. If they're mated the wrong way (the wrong side of one face is touching the other), change the mate alignment using the icons at the bottom of the Standard Mates section of the Mate property manager
  • Make sure that each part has enough mates to keep it in place. You shouldn't be able to move the parts with the mouse once they're fully mated.
  • Typically you will need three mates per part to keep it in place.
  • When you're done, make sure no parts are intersecting one another using the Interference Detection tool:
    • Go to Tools | Interference Detection
    • Make sure your assembly is selected under Selected Components
    • Click the Calculate button
    • The Results should indicate No Interferences
    • If interferences are detected, check your mates to ensure that parts aren't overlapping

Here are the exercises:

Note that the PDFs have more than one page each. Also, the eDrawings file for Exercise 5.2 contains an animation that shows how the pieces fit together. To play it, make sure that you're in "Complete" UI mode (View | UI Mode), then click the Animations tab on the left, and click Play in the Animations side panel.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 February 2008 )