Assembly constraints default to zero

[bengee5454]

I'm guessing that a setting must've changed......but i cant find it

When I used to apply constraints, say mate face A to face B, face A and B would immediately come together i.e. the default setting would be 0. Now however, I apply the above constraint and A and B momentarily come together, but then offset to a non-zero constraint value. I have no idea where this value comes from!

I want to set the default constraint value back to zero, but cant find out how. I was thinking it must be under Tools/Application Options/Assembly but....... I realise that i might be missing something ridicously obvious

[SBix26 · Accepted solution]

Not in the App Options, but in the Constraint dialog box:

This setting persists, so it comes up the next time the way it was last used.

Sam B

Inventor Professional 2016 R3 SP1 Update 1
Vault Basic 2016 SP1
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, SP1

[peter.kapitola]

Thanks @SBix26 for this info!

I've come from SolidWorks and there are two separate constraint commands - "Coincident" and "Offset". Really "Coincident" is just "Offset" with an offset of zero, but it's more intutive in what you want to do - either mate two things together or offset them a certain distance. When you use the Offset command, the default offset would be where the piece was at the time. I was getting annoyed at Inventor because I'd position a component roughly where I wanted it, go into the Mate command and it would always throw my component back to a zero offset. So I actually had the opposite request to @bengee5454 - I wanted to make it leave the offset as shown until I modified it. 

So thanks again for your comment and solution, as I would have taken quite a while to guess that "Predict Offset and Orientation" was the way of fixing this.