Inventor Assembly Constraint orientation issue

[Anonymous]

Hi there.

I'm currently adding to a simple assembly (initially only five parts). Anyway, I've been trying to usde the assembly's YZ plane to constrain to. I have already had plenty off success contraining to thevarious origins. 

Anyway, with this current part (mrely a mirror of an existing part), I am having no joy with tjhe mate constraint. Basically, the constraint engine is 'looking th ewrong way' - i.e. 180 degree out. I'm sure in an earlier version of inventor there used to be an option to change the orientation of the constraint.

It's incredibly frustrating, as such a toggle would be soooo simple amd obvious. Even if it's there. i don't know what it's called.

Any help appreciated..

Cheers

M.

[mcgyvr]

[Anonymous]

Hi there.

Thanks for taking time to reply to me.

I deleted all existing constraints for this part, and tried to reapply the constraint as per your instructions. Alas, this made no difference.  I had already tried these two options, and gernally understand how they are used. Yet for some reason trying both of these two option don't work, depsite the fact that the same contraint worked on the mirrored part (which is not mirrored frome the plane giving trouble, if that somehow might effect the end result).

As it is, the part design dosen't really work well with the overall design, so isn't needed. Yet that is somehow besides the point: If I apply contratints as per typically applied, I expect them to work, especially if the same constrints have successfully been applied to a near-identical part, in the same manner.

I will play around with constraints to get a better feel for how they work, and see if I can come up with a contingency plan if future attempts also fail.

[mcgyvr]

The best way to solve this is to zip the assembly (and its parts) and post it here..

Or see if you can create a simplified dataset that shows the same problem.

But those constraint options I posted above will "flip" the direction of the constraint so I'm not sure why that isn't working for you.

[JimmyDoe]

Is it the same constraint that keeps failing? Or when you flip one constraint to a mate from align or vise versa does a different constraint fail? Sometimes it takes a little bit of playing to find out which orientation each constraint should be for them to work properly.

And make sure that the two surfaces you are trying to constrain are parallel with each other. Even a very slight angular difference will not allow a mate or align constraint to work.

Or it could have something to do with the fact that it is a mirrored component. Could you bring in the part that you are mirroring and constrain it to the planes you need (the part will be backwards since it isn't mirrored) but just to see if it is possible to use the constraint set that you want.

[Anonymous]

Is it maybe possible that this is happening before the part is fully constrained? Like, if you're using 3 constrainst all of them based off of origin planes, the part will be locked down. Then, if you go in and edit one of the constrainst and change it to flush, you'll get an error. If you accept the error, then go in and flip the constraint that is in error, then it will fix and the part should be flipped.

But I agree with other guy, post the parts and assembly and we'll check it out.