Recently a customer asked if they could create multiple mate references on a part, so that it would position itself as desired when dropped into an assembly. That is to say that a mate would be created for not only the primary mate reference, but the secondary and tertiary as well.  The answer is yes – and here’s how you do it.

The trick is that you have to (also) have a Mate Reference in the part you are mating to and it has to be the same name. That’s the secret sauce here. The rest is just making sure you have your desired mate types and the aligned/anti-aligned settings specified so that the new mates position the inserted component properly.

Inserting and positioning standard parts in an assembly just got a whole lot faster.

Ever want to move, flip, rotate, or scale an entire sketch? If so, you will want to check out the Modify Sketch command.

Found under Tools > Sketch Tools > Modify… , you can use the command while editing a sketch or not. If editing a sketch, you have the full functionality of the command -

• Translate (move) using a typed-in value or just click and drag in the graphics window
• Flip (move) by hovering your cursor over one of the axes on the black origin and right-click
• Rotate also allows you do type in a specific angle or you can click and drag with your mouse
• Scale allows you to apply a uniform scale about the origin of the sketch or scale the sketch about a moveable origin

If you are not editing a sketch, you need to pre-select the sketch you want to modify and then you can either rotate or flip the sketch.

The only watchout when using this command is that you cannot translate or scale a sketch with external references. You can rotate the sketch, however.

This command is particularly useful if you want to Copy a sketch to another plane or face, or if you are creating a Derived Sketch – which is useful for duplicating sketches for use in lofting.