I'm using SW 2012. I'm trying to use mate references on a library part i'm creating, "Hiem". The issue i'm running into is that i have mate references dictated exactly how the example from SolidWorks shows for 2012. Yet, when the Hiem is placed into the rack gear in an assy, only the first cylindrical face mate is established. The other two mates are ignored. If I change the order of the same mates for both parts, I can get them to work. For example, Putting primary in the tertiary spot and moving the others up, order of Secondary Tertiary then Primary.  I am having allot of difficulty with this because sometimes it works properly, and others like this sample will not. You can imagine the inefficiency of changing the order of mate references every time i'm going to use the part. Can someone take a look and tell me what i'm doing wrong?

I've attached two zip files with samples of my issue. The first following the solidworks example of mate references named, "Reference Mates Assy.zip". The other contains the same files with the mate references reordered and called, "Reference Mates Assy new mate order.zip".

SW 2012

My mates:

On HIEM part:

cylindrical face: Concentric

Mate Plane: Coincident

Plane 3: Parallel

On rack gear:

Cylindrical face: Concentric

Face: Coincident

Front Plane: Parallel

From Solidworks Help 2012:

Example of Mate Reference with Multiple Mated Entities

Components bushing, shaft01, and shaft02 each have a mate reference named shaft, defined as follows:

	Reference Entity
	Primary		Secondary		Tertiary
	Entity	Mate Type	Entity	Mate Type	Entity	Mate Type
bushing	cylindrical face	concentric	planar end face	coincident	face of flat	parallel
shaft01	cylindrical face	concentric	planar end face	coincident	face of flat	parallel
shaft02	cylindrical face	concentric	planar end face	coincident	---	---

If bushing is a component of an assembly, and you insert shaft01 into the assembly, the components mate automatically. However, if you insert shaft02 into the assembly, it does not mate automatically with bushing because their mate references do not contain the same number of entities.