- [Instructor] The Mate Controller
is a relatively new function in SOLIDWORKS.
It was added in SOLIDWORKS 2016
to help manipulate specific mates
that control degrees of freedom,
and to save and recall these specific positions.
So to generate my Mate Controller,
I can just navigate to insert dropdown,
and choose Mate Controller,
and that opens up my side panel, my property panel here
for the Mate Controller command.
So what I can do from here is
I can just select whatever mates I'd like to control.
So this would be any angle mates or distance mates.
Or I can click this icon right here
to collect all supported mates within this assembly.
Just click that button here
and notice what it's done in this case
it's grabbed all six of my angle mates
within my robotic arm assembly.
And now you can see you have control
over all six of those angle mates
and you can change and edit these
to make as many positions as you'd like.
So let's take a look.
By default I have one position
and I can add any numbers of positions I'd like.
I can update positions, I can reset, delete, and so on.
So let's say my Position 1,
we'll call it a default position.
Just be all zero degrees across the board.
And then let's say I want to make more positions.
I'm just gonna click this icon here to add another position.
I'm gonna leave the position name just Position 2
but you can rename it whatever you'd like.
I'm gonna say Position 2 and say okay.
And then make whatever change I would like.
So let's say I want to change my Angle 1 to be 180 degrees
so that's just rotated this bottom link 180 degrees there.
Once I'm happy with that, I want to kind of save this out
or I can just say this icon here to update my Position 2.
So I'll click update here.
Now I should have Position 1, which is just straight up.
And I have Position 2, also straight up,
but as rotated about Angle 1, 180 degrees.
And I can just continue on doing the same process
for any number of positions I'd like.
So let's add in one more position here, add position,
call it Position 3, say okay.
And now maybe I'm gonna keep that 180 degree rotation
and also add an Angle 2, maybe 45 degrees.
So now I can see that I've rotated that Angle 2
45 degrees or so there.
If I'm happy with that, again,
I might want to update my position.
And then change whatever other positions I may want.
So maybe I wanna add one more position here,
add position, call this Position 4, say okay.
And then for Position 4,
and let's change this maybe 45 degrees, take a look.
And I've just rotated this last link 45 degrees or so.
If you wanna change that to be 90 degrees,
whatever you may want.
Just create whatever positions,
any positions you may want within these angles.
And then once more I'll update
or save out that last position.
So now I've just created four positions,
I can run through them real quick.
I've Position 1 here, should be straight up.
I have Position 2, should be again straight up
but rotated 180 degrees about my first link.
I have Position 3, changes my Angle 2 or my second link
to angle down 45 degrees.
And Position 4, rotates a fifth link 90 degrees there.
And if I'm happy with all that
I can just hit the green check.
And notice what this does
if I scroll all the way down in my assembly tree,
it's created this new Mate Controller,
and I can click on that again
and just it makes it nice and easy for me to jump
through a whole bunch of different positions here.
So there's my first position I created
my third position, and so on.
And so what's nice about this now
I can use all those positions since they've been saved out
very easily within an animation.
So I can jump down into my Motion Study here.
Okay, and I can just manually set times
and change my Mate Controller positions
with the Autokeys, so that would automatically
make any location changes within that specific time.
Or maybe even easier than that
I can actually now use my Animation Wizard again.
So I click on the Animation Wizard,
I have this last option to use a Mate Controller.
So I'll just click on Mate Controller here,
click next, and really quite simple.
It's just gonna use that Mate Controller,
whatever positions I've set up there, just jump through
Position 1, Position 2, Position 3,
Position 4, whatever it may be.
And I can just really set a start time and a duration.
So in this case I'm gonna set a start time
of just zero seconds here and say finish.
And so we should see, now, it's just automatically
set all of my changes within my angle positions there.
And of course I've can play through this or calculate,
and I should see those changes being applied.