This has been rolling around in my head for so long that I can't remember if I've already asked it. Sorry if so. At least I didn't find it in a brief search. Pardon the run-on grammar. Over twenty minutes to properly ask a question to save a few clicks and occasional lengthy rebuilds seems silly now. Ref. SW 2016 SP3.
I have three items in a row, concentric for a piping assembly.
First item Top Plane is parallel to second item Top Plane.
Second item Top Plane is parallel to third item Top Plane.
I want to be able to flip the second item upside down, by flipping both parallel mates.
I can flip one, then flip the other as a separate step, but sometimes this causes broad errors in the rest of the assembly until both are completed, which can slow me down a lot more than it sounds at first. Whenever two or more mates are selected, Flip Mate Alignment does not appear in RMB.
Is there a way to flip multiple (related and/or similar) mates with one command that I'm missing?
I know there's ways to workaround this:
* Suppress both mates (in one step), Edit mate Feature to flip one, Edit mate Feature to flip other, Unsuppress both mates (in one step).
* Destroy and redefine the mates
* Temporarily Fix something, which usually causes more problems than not. BTW, Fix is an awful word choice when it can cause breakage, in my over-opinionated opinion.
Or, avoid it entirely by mating things parallel to assembly Top Plane instead of each other. However my designs are revised from client returns much easier with localized mates and a few isolated mates to assembly primary reference planes where appropriate (in major components or This-End-Up items that really needs to be upright to function correctly, be mounted to horizontal supports, sit directly on the ground, etc.).
Singular mate flipping sometimes has its own automatic consequential mate flipping anyway, as in coincident + concentric --> flip one --> result in anticoincident + anticoncentric, after confirmation dialog box. Maybe I should count my blessings that it usually gets this right. Maybe it used to be worse.
I can also imagine the total chaos and/or difficulty in programming if this were possible because users would want to flip multiple mates of far more complex definition than just a couple of parallels. This alone would be a good reason to avoid implementing it, in that it could cause more serious problems than it solves.
Also, I'm unfamiliar with Mate Controller because it sounded like nothing I needed. Maybe it does just what I'm after.
SolidworksAssemblies