Do you love Onshape’s high-level mating capabilities, but want to be able to assemble mechanisms even faster?
With a few quick tips, such as the ability to freeze mate connection points and keyboard shortcuts, Snap Mating can be a seriously cool tool in your CAD arsenal.
The video walks you through each step in detail, but here is the summary:
Snap Mating is invoked from the Assembly toolbar either by clicking the icon or using the keyboard shortcut ‘S’ key.
Select the first of your two mate connection points and click-hold-drag towards your target mate connection points.
When you offer your dragged part to a potential mate connection point, Onshape will show you a graphical preview of the mate alignment. If you don't like the location, simply drag to a new location.
Use the ‘A’ and ‘Q’ keyboard shortcuts to flip and rotate the alignments in the preview.
When in Snap Mating mode or while dragging a component, holding the ‘SHIFT’ key down will either suppress the generation of potential mate connection points, or freeze the current selection – so that you can pick a specific point without the potential of another set being generated as you move your mouse toward the one you want.
As always, watch the video, practice, comment in the Onshape Forums and please make public any cool documents that may help others. You can also read more about Snap Mating in Onshape or using Mate Connectors in Onshape Assemblies in our help documentation.
Thanks for using Onshape!