Mate controller was introduced in 2016 version of SOLIDWORKS. It lets you edit specific mates that control degrees of freedom of your assembly. Instead of using configurations, we can use this to save different positions within our assembly and recall them when required. We can make use of various positions and create animation from them to indicate our assembly motions.
Import Mate Controller Positions as motors in SOLIDWORKS Motion
We can also import these positions to run a motion analysis study to identify the different motors required to move from one position to another. We can run the study and extract various motor characteristics.
Let’s see how we can do this:
I have considered different positions setup in the Mate controller feature, also the time taken to translate from one position to another is also defined:
Mate Controller Positions
time for transition between positions
Seeing up motion study
Create a new motion study, and change the type to motion Analysis
select animation wizard
and select mate controller
Make sure Import type is selected as motors
Click Next and Finish.
Now you can see the different motors defined. Click on Calculate to run the study
Make sure Import type is selected as motors
Click Next and Finish.
Now you can see the different motors defined. Click on Calculate to run the study
Plotting the Results: Click on Results and Plots
To Plot Motor Torque Select the following in Drop
Down menu
Motor Torque vs Time
Similarly we can extract other motor characteristics. Using this helps us by reducing time required to setup the motion analysis study if the mate controller positions are already defined to indicate the different positions of the assembly. Watch a quick video on How to Import Mate Controller Positions as motors in SOLIDWORKS Motion.
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