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sliding mate

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Fabioedl

Electrical
Sep 17, 2003
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Hi all,

I need to create an assembly where a pin slides trhu a slot. My question is: How do I create a mate between the pin and the slot? The movement will be a linear movement across the slot (a 0.5 inch slot)

Thanks all
 
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You can do so by creating a couple of configurations where pin would be in two extreme points of the slot.
Or use a line between two pionts of the slot and one of the planes of the pin. This will give you sliding direction. Set two limit distances(in advenced mates). Also you need a third mate so your pin doesn't move in and out of the slot.
Now pin should be moving within the lomits of the slot freely.

Hope it helps.
 
JahnEng is correct, but there may be other requirements. There are a number of ways to do this. Depending on your use of this assembly model, you might want to allow the pin to side and limit it by using physical dynamics and/or just plain move with collision detection/stop on contact.

You might want to do it both ways with additional configurations.

One point that you need to be careful of. When using mates that specify values (distance. angle, etc.) you need to keep on top of things if you edit the parts. Your parts will be manually constrained, not constrained by the part and assembly file goemetry. You need to ensure that some time from now, you or someone else will remember the structure of the data and remember to make any maunal changes to the mate values correctly.

Sometimes skeleton (sketch) parts and mates can help with this, if all changes are driven from one sketch.

There is rarely only one "correct" way to do things for all circumstances. The trick is to try to understand how the system works (in this case mates in general) and apply the best method for any give circumstance. For example, you could distance mate the end of the pin to the face containing the slot (gives both parallel and distance). Tangent mate the pin cylindrical surface to the side of the slot. At this point you have trapped all but two degrees of freedom. The pin can slide in the direction of the slot and ROTATE on its own axis. The rotation probably does not matter (except for that annoying little (-) in the feature tree!!). Using move/collision detection you can constrain its movement by the actual ends of the slots. This may be fine but may not be what you need - JahnEng's method or some other way might be better THIS TIME.

So I definitely encourage you to think about what the various mates between different types of geometry actually do in terms of constraining the 6 degrees of freedom of objects in conjunction with what you needs are in model functionality.

John Richards Sr. Mech. Engr.
Rockwell Collins Flight Dynamics

A hobbit's lifestyle sounds rather pleasant...... it's the hairy feet that turn me off.
 
I personally use would planes for this type control.

See faq559-871

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP [borg2]
CSWP.jpg

faq731-376
 
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