Explore the steps to construct the walls of a playground model using advanced mates technique. Learn the process of using width mates to ensure proper alignment and positioning of the individual pieces.
Key Insights
- The tutorial explains how to use the 'width mate' function to position planks in the center of the model's beams. This function aids in maintaining the center position regardless of any changes to the parts' sizing.
- Creating footers for the wall panels involves using advanced mate techniques. This involves selecting two surfaces that will represent the outside barriers and corresponding surfaces on the piece that needs to be moved, ensuring perfect alignment.
- The tutorial emphasizes the importance of saving work frequently, especially after making significant changes or additions to the model, to prevent loss of work.
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In this video we are going to continue constructing the walls for our playground. Now you may recall from our videos of creating our master model that our walls are going to have narrow boards as the footers underneath each set of planks, both on the bottom floor and the top floor. So let's go ahead and add those now.
First we need to grab the part itself that's going to be the footer and in this case we can reuse this plank which is deck 007. So let's go ahead and hold CTRL, click and drag that in to our model and let's begin the mating process. We'll mate this surface with this surface holding shift, select mate.
It's a coincident mate and the boards are facing the right direction against each other. Great. Let's make this surface with this surface and let's click the green check mark twice and close it out.
Now we want this board to be in the exact center between either face of these beams. Now how can we ensure that? Well we could use say a distance mate and just calculate how much space needs to be between this surface and this surface for instance, but no matter how we update the sizing of these parts I want this board to always be in the center not necessarily driven by distance specifically. Lucky for us there is a particular type of mate that does that exact thing and I'll show you right now.
If we go to mate, so far we've been working in the top tab this standards mate tab where we have basic mates shown here. If we click over to advanced we have some other types of mate that have a lot more features embedded within them. The one we're going to use today is width.
So select width and the first part of width mate is establishing two surfaces that our new piece is going to live between. So let's grab something that does not involve our piece right now. Let's grab say this surface on this beam and this surface on this beam.
In the pink box with selection two we establish the corresponding surfaces in the piece we do want to move so that it fits perfectly between those two blue surfaces. So the piece we want to move is this plank so let's go ahead and select this corresponding surface and this corresponding surface. Now for constraint make sure it's set to centered and let's go ahead and click the green check mark.
All right now if I were to grab a measurement between these two surfaces 1 and 1 16th, 1 and 1 16th, perfect. All right let's go ahead and repeat that process for the footers below each of these wall panels that we have set up right now. All right next let's move on to this one.
We need the right board to fit between these two planks. Let's reuse this support piece here that's deck 009. I'm going to click it and drag it from the feature manager and let's begin the easy mates.
We'll do a coincident mate between those two surfaces making sure they're facing each other and not facing the same direction. Let's start a mate that meets that surface with this surface. Great and let's click to advanced and let's select width mate and for a width selection one we'll do the same thing we did before.
Just grab two surfaces that are going to represent the outside barriers and then for width selection two grab the corresponding surfaces on the piece that we want to move. There it goes. It snapped perfectly in the center between those two blue surfaces.
Make sure the constraint is set to centered. Close it out with a green check mark and close that again. Let's save our work and then let's continue.
We'll move on to this wall next. Let's see is there a plank that fits that dimension? Yes it is this one here deck 010. I'm going to drag that from the feature manager into our assembly.
Let's begin the easy mates. There we go. All right that's an appropriate coincident mate.
Let's mate this surface to this surface. Great and we'll switch to advanced mate and make sure we're set to width. Set the outer parameters of that width mate and then set the corresponding surfaces of the piece we wish to move and watch it move into place.
Perfect. All right now we can actually keep this open for right now but let's close it and let's find any other panels that we need to go ahead and create footers for. We have this upper panel which is going to use this exact same footer piece and that is deck 010.
Let's bring another one in here and for this we can go ahead and just mate this bottom surface to the floor of our deck. There we go. There it is sitting where it needs to sit.
It's a coincident mate. Good. Let's set this surface against this inside surface of this beam.
All right then we move to advanced mates width. Set our outside surface parameters and then set the inside corresponding surface parameters of the piece we wish to move. All right there it goes zapping into place.
Perfect. Let's do the same thing for this slide piece here. We'll close that out.
Now what's the appropriate board to set in this location? I believe we have a support board that should work just fine. All right that'll do it. Let's use deck 011.
We'll grab that from our feature manager just like before. We'll just go ahead and set that surface against the top of our deck. Here we go.
All right. Green check mark confirms that mate. We'll mate this surface to this surface.
Green check mark confirms the mate. Then we'll switch to advanced. Go to width.
Grab our outer perimeter surfaces and then our inner perimeter surfaces. Watch our piece move into place. Perfect.
Close that out. Oh it looks like that wasn't quite the piece that we wanted to use. All right let's go ahead and right click and hit delete.
We're going to remove that piece from our assembly altogether. Let's save our work. We're forgetting that there's actually this board here which limits the width of this particular plank.
Let's use this support plank here. Let's grab deck 009 and do the same thing. Coincident mate to the top of that deck piece.
Meet that surface too. Oh that line works perfect. All right it's a coincident relationship.
Let's go for it. We'll switch to advanced mates. Set the outside surface perimeters and then the inside surface perimeters.
All right that works great. Let's close that out and we have one more panel to go and it's down here. Is there a plank that we can use? Yes there is.
This one we will use deck 0104. All right let's go ahead and highlight that. Hold shift.
Highlight that surface. Create a coincident mate between the two. Let's grab this surface and say this surface.
Switch to advanced mates. Go to width. Select the outside perimeter surfaces and then the inside perimeter surfaces of the piece we wish to move.
There we go and see it fall into place. All right perfect. We'll close that out and let's go ahead and save our work.
All right that does it for this video. In the next video we're going to start adding some of the patterned planks that make up the support structure within these walls.
