- Magnetic mates are a really quick and
easy way to mate together individual components.
Now you do need to establish the magnetic mates
in the part you're working on
but once you have those magnetic mates created,
then you can easily connect components together.
Let me show you how it works.
If you grab a component that already has a magnetic mate
that's active. If you click on it, notice all
these little pink or purple dots that show
up and any one of these components that you get close to.
You see that little line that pops up there?
It's saying, "hey I'm going to try to
connect these guys together."
If you let go, those components will slide together
with that magnetic mate.
Same thing with this component over here
I can just quickly grab a component,
bring it over to next one.
Again, I just keep moving and connecting things as I go.
Now, if you click on a component and that's not
the component you want, if you have multiple configurations
like I do here, notice this is 90 degrees right here.
If I choose a different configuration
which is like a zero, click okay.
Oh, they'll spin that thing around.
Or if I click on that and I say, instead of that
I want 120 degrees, click okay.
And notice my entire design has changed
because I'm choosing a different configuration
but these little magnetic mates are still there.
Let's go ahead and grab a couple more components here.
This guy over here, let's snap them right over here.
Do the same thing over here.
Grab this guy over here, slide him over.
And notice as we get close, We get that little
line that connects those components together.
So just that easily I can combine as many
of these little pieces together very quickly.
Now, if you don't like one of those mates,
grab that component and start dragging it around.
Of course I can move things around here.
Or if you click on the component here,
I can also look at the mates right over here.
And here are my coincident mates ahead of time.
And here's all my magnetic mates.
And if you don't like one of those, just click
on it, hit delete and that goes away.
Now I can grab that component, slide it around.
And of course I can mate it to somewhere else.
So that's my first example for magnetic mates.
Now I'm going to switch over to my second example
which is right over here.
This is some PVC pipe components that I've created.
I've just got a basic pipe section here as well
as a 90 degree segment.
And if you wanted to continue on with this design
you can just Control-drag out another copy
of a component. Notice that one there.
And then just go ahead and grab this component.
Put it up here to the top.
Let go.
If I need another pipe,
click on that pipe, drag out another component.
Oh, not that one. Hold on.
Hold on. Control-Grab a component out.
There it is.
And then as we get close here, it'll snap together.
Now sometimes it can get a little wily,
If you start dragging things it starts connecting
and trying to connect everywhere
it can see another connection point.
So you do have to keep that in mind
but let's try it one more time.
Control-drag out a component, bring it over here.
And then as we get close, it's going to snap together.
And just that quickly
we're able to connect components together.
So these magnetic mates work really
really well for things like this, like piping, right?
If you're using the same component over and over again
you can spend the time to create those magnetic
mates that are associated with that one part.
And then anytime you're using it
with other components that have magnetic mates
those things are going to snap together.
And it's a really quick way to attach your components
without using traditional mates inside of SolidWorks.