Getting Started with SOLIDWORKS Assemblies: A Beginner’s Guide Part 3

Whether you're designing simple mechanical systems or more complex mechanisms with motion constraints, understanding these mate tools is essential for creating realistic and functional assemblies.

Let’s start with the complete list of standard mates and how each one works.

Understanding Standard Mate Types in SOLIDWORKS

In the previous post, we introduced a couple of common mate types, but SOLIDWORKS offers several more that you’ll use regularly when positioning components. Each standard mate type serves a specific purpose, helping you define how parts should align, touch, or move.

The coincident mate is used to place two surfaces in the same plane. It’s the perfect choice when you want one face to sit flush against another. Concentric mates are used to align the centers of cylindrical faces. These are especially useful for positioning shafts inside holes or aligning fasteners like bolts and washers.

Parallel and perpendicular mates control orientation. The parallel mate ensures that two faces or edges stay aligned in the same direction, while the perpendicular mate locks two surfaces at a right angle.

The tangent mate allows a curved face to stay in contact with a flat or another curved surface. This comes in handy for things like rollers or cams. Then we have the distance mate, which sets a fixed gap between two selections. Finally, the angle mate allows you to maintain a specific angle between two faces or planes, giving you full control over how components relate to one another in space.

These mate types are easy to apply and cover most of the positioning needs in everyday assembly design.

Using Standard Mates in Practice

Let’s see how some of these mates can be combined in a real example. Continuing with the same cylinder and plate assembly from the last two videos, we already have two coincident mates and one concentric mate applied. These position the cylinder correctly in relation to the base plate.

Now we're going to add a gusset to brace the cylinder. The first step is to add a coincident mate between the underside of the gusset and the top face of the plate. This ensures that the gusset sits flat on the plate. Next, we want the gusset’s back face to touch the cylinder. Since these surfaces are curved and flat, we use a tangent mate to maintain contact.

To lock the orientation of the gusset, we’ll apply one more mate between its front plane and the assembly’s right plane. A perpendicular mate works perfectly here, maintaining a 90-degree angle between the gusset and the rest of the assembly. These three mates fully define the position of the gusset while ensuring everything remains aligned and properly supported.

Exploring Advanced Mate Types

Beyond standard mates, SOLIDWORKS provides several advanced mate types that are especially useful when you need precise control over motion, centering, or limiting the behaviour of components.

The symmetric mate ensures that two components remain evenly spaced on either side of a central plane. This is helpful for keeping parts balanced in designs like symmetrical linkages or brackets. The width mate is another valuable tool. It centres a part between two faces, which is ideal when you want something like a slider to always stay positioned in the middle of a track.

Path mates are more specialised and allow you to constrain a point on a component to follow a path or curve. This is perfect for cams, slots, or guide rails where parts need to follow a specific motion path. The linear and linear coupler mates link the motion of two components together. For example, you might use this to make one component move forward while another moves backward at a defined ratio.

Limit mates provide boundaries. A limit distance mate allows movement between two entities, but only within a specific range. You might use this to prevent a drawer from being pulled too far. Similarly, a limit angle mate can control rotation, like restricting a hinge to open only between zero and ninety degrees.

These advanced mates are incredibly powerful and open the door to more realistic simulation and dynamic mechanical behaviour.

A Practical Example with Advanced Mates

Let’s walk through how to use one of the most helpful advanced mates in a practical scenario. In this example, we’ll bring in a ring that needs to sit over the cylinder from our earlier assembly.

To begin, we’ll apply a concentric mate to align the ring’s axis with that of the cylinder. At this point, the ring can freely move up and down along the cylinder. But we want the ring to be centrally positioned between the top and bottom of the cylinder.

This is a great use case for the width mate. Within the mate tool, we select the top face and the underside face of the ring, and then in the second selection box, we choose the top face of the cylinder and the top face of the plate. Since the top face of the plate is in the same location as the underside of the cylinder, it’s easier to select and works just as well.

Once the width mate is applied, the ring becomes perfectly centred along the cylinder. What makes this approach so powerful is that it remains accurate even if the length of the cylinder or depth of the ring changes. The width mate automatically adapts, ensuring your assembly stays aligned without the need to recalculate distances manually.

Tips for Combining Mates

As your assemblies become more complex, it’s important to remember one key rule. Try to use the fewest mates necessary to achieve the behaviour you want. Over-mating can lead to conflicts, errors, or unnecessary complications.

Before applying a mate, think about how the component should behave. Should it be fixed, should it rotate, or should it slide along a specific axis? Let those goals guide your choice of mate type.

Wrapping Up

By now, you’ve seen how both standard and advanced mates can be used to define precise, functional relationships between components in your SOLIDWORKS assemblies. Whether you're aligning parts flush, restricting movement to a defined range, or simulating rotation, these tools give you full control over how your assembly behaves.

In the next part of this series, we’ll take a break from mates and move on to other powerful features available at the assembly level. This includes tools like component patterns, mirror features, and evaluation tools that help you check motion, mass properties, and interferences. Stay tuned to keep improving your SOLIDWORKS skills.