I couldn't find a discussion here or a blog covering this, so thought I would start one. Has anyone out there tried setting up a configured part using imported geometry without recognizing features?  Many of our"standard parts" are set up as configured parts with a design table. But, we have many more that were configured in Autodesk Inventor and I really don't want to take the time to configure again now that we have moved to SW. So, my thought is to import them from our vendor websites as STEP files, then build configured parts using the imported geometry. I know I can do this by suppressing and unsupressing bodies for the different configurations. Here's the rub though, how well does that setup work with mate references and smart features?

So far I can't seem to get mate references to behave properly. The first mate reference I assign works well enough, but any additional ones that I assign to additional part configurations won't stay snapped in place when inserted into an assembly. I know I've got the mate references suppressed/unsuppresssed properly. It seems SW recognizes the mate reference because the preview when placing the part in the assembly is right; it's just that when I let go of the mouse button the part falls out of position.

Has anyone tried setting up a configured part like this and has a few pointers? It seems like with all of the vendor provided 3D files out there, someone else must have tried putting like ones together into a configured part. Thanks in advance!