CAD Forum

All,

Several years ago SW added the reference entity to the angle mate dialog to help with the flipping issue. Along with that they added the "dimension selector" to give the user to ability select the quadrant they want to reference for the angle dimension itself. For some reason, this dimension selector is no longer showing up. I checked with a colleague and it also is not working on their machine. That feature is still included in the SW2021 help documentation. Anyone know of a setting that changes the visibility of the dimension selector? When editing the angle mate the dimension doesn't show either. I feel like it used to as well. The only way to get the actual dimension to appear is to double click the mate in the feature tree (not editing the mate directly).

In order for that to work, you have to fill in a reference entity and I believe that it needs to be the proper type (pivot line):

In the second shot included in my message you will note that the reference entity has been selected, yet no dimension selector visible. I tried selecting multiple different reference faces with no success. This is something that I have used extensively in the past without issue. I don't know when it stopped working.

I should have also included in my original post Windoze 10, Solidworks premium 2021 SP3.0

aaronh wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 12:17 pm In the second shot included in my message you will note that the reference entity has been selected, yet no dimension selector visible. I tried selecting multiple different reference faces with no success. This is something that I have used extensively in the past without issue. I don't know when it stopped working.

I should have also included in my original post Windoze 10, Solidworks premium 2021 SP3.0

I believe that you need to have an edge selected for it to show, not a face.

Hmmm.... I've picked faces before without issue. You got me thinking, however. I messed around with the same assembly from my earlier screenshot. I was stumped for quite a bit, but eventually I figured it out. If you pick mating faces that are either 0 degrees or 180 degrees it will not give you the dimension selector. You have two choices, either change the angle dimension in the mate dialog to something other than 0/180 or select faces that are not either of those angles. 90 and 270 are fine for whatever reason. Attached are screenshots with the same faces selected, but one at 180 and one at 90.

aaronh wrote: ↑Mon May 01, 2023 10:14 am Hmmm.... I've picked faces before without issue. You got me thinking, however. I messed around with the same assembly from my earlier screenshot. I was stumped for quite a bit, but eventually I figured it out. If you pick mating faces that are either 0 degrees or 180 degrees it will not give you the dimension selector. You have two choices, either change the angle dimension in the mate dialog to something other than 0/180 or select faces that are not either of those angles. 90 and 270 are fine for whatever reason. Attached are screenshots with the same faces selected, but one at 180 and one at 90.


image.png

OK.. Cool. Glad you got it figure out!

It was a struggle for a bit. I don't remember this being a thing. Maybe a bug in 2021 SP3.0? At any rate, thanks for the inspiration to dig into it further.