Working With Misaligned Mates in SOLIDWORKS

If you have components that don’t quite line up right, don’t sweat it. You can add misaligned mates in SOLIDWORKS in a breeze. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, we show you how.

How Misaligned Mates Work

Misaligned mates work when you have a pair of concentric mates that define the location of your components. The first concentric mate is added as usual. Just select two cylindrical faces and it will line up. The misaligned mate functionality will kick in when you add the second mate, and only if they don’t line up exactly. If this is the case, you’ll be presented with some options for how you can add the misaligned mate. You have three choices for how to add the mate:

1. Align this mate
2. Align linked mate
3. Symmetric

The first two options define which mate will be lined up perfectly and which one will be misaligned. As mentioned above, it is intelligently identifying which existing mate is causing the misalignment- that’s the mate it’s referring to as a linked mate. In this syntax, the linked mate is the other mate, and this mate is the one you’re editing. Symmetric is self-explanatory, it’s going to split the difference and add the mate with equal misalignment between both mates. And it’s that easy. With the power of misaligned mates, you can account for the imperfections of your real-world model in your “perfect” 3D CAD model in SOLIDWORKS. 

Want to learn more tips and tricks with SOLIDWORKS? Browse SOLIDWORKS trainings.