- Mechanical mates are really cool because we
can create functional motion between components.
Let's go ahead up here to the assembly toolbar,
click on mate, and go ahead and twirl up the
standard mates and come down here
to mechanical mates and twirl that one down.
So the very first of the mechanical mates is the cam mate.
So I'm going to choose the cam path, which is
going to be the outside of this piece here.
And I'm going to choose the cam follower
which is this piece right over here.
Those slide together, click on okay.
And now we've created that mate.
If I spin this component around here,
and notice what happens is that little cam
follower just follows this cam path, pretty handy.
The next one is the slot mate slot mate.
I'm going to go ahead and choose a slot.
And then what I'd like to be inside of the slot
which is going to be that little pin, click on Okay.
And now that little pin should slide inside of
the slot and it's constrained inside of that slot.
All right. The hinge mate, click
on the hinge mate, my concentric section.
So I'd like to have the outside of this pin here
and the inside of this little piece here and my
coincident sections. I'd like to have the end
of that and the end of this, those slide together,
click on okay.
And now this is going to rotate around like a hinge.
The gear mate, let's click on that one there.
Spin my model around here.
I've got two different gears.
This one is six inches.
This one is three inches.
And so that's how we want to define it.
Now my mate selections here, I want to choose
the major diameters of each one of these.
So I need to zoom in, and click the major
diameter here, and zoom in down here
and grab the major diameter there.
So notice it automatically selects the size of
those gears. So I have six to three
which is exactly the ratio I'm looking for.
But if you had some other ratio
and you want to modify it here
you could change the ratio right in here.
You could also reverse it if you needed to.
Click on okay, and now if I move one of
these components, the other one should
automatically move as well, pretty handy.
So there is the gear mate.
How about the rack and pinion mate,
click on rack and pinion.
So my pinion pitch diameter, let's go ahead and,
well first let's choose the rack.
I actually want to choose a linear edge on the rack.
So choose this edge down here, which is the bottom.
And then here's my pinion gear.
I'm going to go ahead and choose that major diameter
which it calls out as three, which is
exactly what we want right down there.
Click okay. And now if I move the rack
it should move all the other components.
All right, next one is going to be the screw mate.
Click on the screw mate here.
Now I've got a screw.
I'm going to go ahead and choose this screw right
here at the outside diameter of it.
And I'm going to choose either the inside edge,
which is kind of hard to get to,
or just choose the outside surface here.
That's fine as well.
And you can define the ratio. So right over here it's
going to be a one-to-one ratio, which is just fine.
Click on okay. And now if I were to
move this component here, let's try that again.
Let's rotate this guy around here.
You can see that that little piece will rotate around
in a one-to-one relationship as I move this component here.
So there, there it goes.
So that is the screw mate.
And then the universal joint, click on
the universal joint here. For this one
I'm going to go ahead and choose this rod
and then I'm going to choose this other rod here.
Now the interaction between the two doesn't
really matter. I just have a kind
of a point there to define what it's looking like
but it can be anything that is not in this same
plane and I'm going to choose the two, click on okay.
And then if I rotate this handle around
it should automatically drive that shaft,
which then drives all these other components.
So those are all the different mechanical mates you can do.
You can see, you can add quite a bit
of great realistic motion to your
design by using these mechanical mates.