mirror fails when using an angle mate

Not a question but an observation.

We all know that mirroring doesn't seem to mean to SW programmers as what it means to the rest of the world.

Proof for that is that one actually has to invoke 'opposite hand version' manually instead of it being the default option.

I know that mirroring of piping (routing) is not supported. It's not that it doesn't work at all but if you really want to have a mirrored version you'll spend about as much time as trying to get each and every component to behave as it would take to just model the mirrored version, unless you get lucky.

Another solution is to make a PRT of the routing ASM and then mirror that. I know, I know, it's quick and dirty. And if anything changes it doesn't automatically translate to the mirrored version but in a crunch it's the quickest way to get a decent result on paper.

What I didn't know was that if you use anything more exotic then concentric or coincident that mates don't seem to be work when mirroring.

I guess I missed the memo about that.

See below, where the top one is supposed to be an mirror of the bottom.

No matter what mode or possiblity I tried I couldn't get that top Safety cage with ladder to actually mirror the bottom one.

In the end I figured out that it has to do with me foolishly using an angle mate to determine the angle of the element.

By the way, going in the sub ASM and flipping the 45° angle mate manually didn't help either, it just rotated turned it in a 225° mate.

So after spending way to much time on it trying to figure out what I was doing wrong I had to come to the conclusion that the solution was to surpress the mirrored angle mate and add mates to get it where I needed it to be.

Yep, sure nice we don't have to waste time with how to get something mirrored but can just concentrate on design intent, isn't it?(yes sarcasm)

I'm not saying that they should concentrate on making this work but is it really too much to ask for having a disclaimer popping up warning us what mirroring can or can't handle? It would save us a whole deal of time instead of having to come to the conclusion that software being developed for 25 years can't do something.

SolidworksRouting