topic Re: Unknown constraint symbol in Inventor Forum

Unknown constraint symbol

Halleffect24 — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 17:27:22 GMT

I'm doing some work for a client. They gave me a base assembly to work from and there were some constraints that were broken so I had to fix them. Some of them were on some countersunk screws but the broken mate constraint symbol had a circle around the usual mate icon which I haven't seen before. It looks like the constraint was between the angled face of the screw and the angled face of the countersunk hole. I edited the constraint by selecting the face of the hole and it constrained the screw in one action. I didn't know you could do that, it's always taken me two steps to constrain a countersunk screw to a hole.

So has anyone got any ideas how to achieve this shortcut? I thought it was an imate but when I tried to replicate it with a countersunk screw from content centre it just placed a tangent constraint between the same faces.

Re: Unknown constraint symbol

Gabriel_Watson — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 18:34:07 GMT

It is from an iMate, but you need to left-click and press ALT to drag it into place:

More on the icons:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/Inventor-Fundamentals/files/GUID-269C2541-F3B1-4F73-B650-7C286FB40EAC-htm.html

Re: Unknown constraint symbol

Halleffect24 — Sun, 13 Feb 2022 22:14:33 GMT

Thanks for confirming. I had tried to use imates with the left click and ALT button but I wasn't getting an imate being placed, it would default to a tangent non-imate constraint. I've been playing around now and it seemed a bit glitchy at first but I realised I wasn't selecting the correct imate, fixed that and it now consistently gives me a countersunk face to face imate. A good time saver.