Need help with Solidworks mating.

I’ve been trying to make our robot on solidworks and the process is long and difficult. I was wondering if anyone had tips or tricks that would help ease and speed up the process of mating the odd shaped vex parts. Such as C-Channel with a stand-off and a screw.

Any help is appreciated!

Most teams use inventor because the screw holes are all set up as imates and can be mated very simply.

Does solidworks have a similar feature that requires prep work but makes building far easier?

This feature does look very useful when putting together tedious objects, unfortunately I was not able to find such a feature in Solidworks. I may have to try using inventor because of this. If I come across anything in Solidworks I will be sure to post it.

Thanks for the suggestion!

I have a question on this, how do you use mates in inventor or is there a place where I can learn about them? I have been trying to CAD some prototypes and it is extremely slow and tedious

-thanks

I guess the CAD forum has gone. Here are some posts I made about iMates back in 2012.

Part1
part2
Part3
Part4

If you use this inventor library all the imates are created on all the parts.
http://botsnstuff.com/wiki/24CAD2013

Thanks, I hadn’t come across these! Very helpful!

Thanks this will help a lot :slight_smile:

Also you can try this tutorials from the Vex Curriculum. Very helpful!!!http://curriculum.vexrobotics.com/curriculum/intro-to-autodesk-inventor/building-the-clawbot