Can I turn off "Psychic" Mating in 2004

I have to say, I really hate this feature. I dont always want to make
2 faces coincident, and SolidWorks takes forever trying to guess what
mate I want to do.

Is there a way to automatically turn this off? Also, is there a way to
close the mate box after adding 1 mate?

 

Interesting that you can see a time consumption based on the system trying
to determine the proper mate. I don't think I can see it, and I do not know
of a way to turn it off. Sorry, no help there.

Mates in 2005, as you know, are now "deferred" by default, so what I usually
do is select the mate items, click the checkmark, and then hit the Enter
key. That works better than checking the second check mark because the
mouse click for the check will not go into a buffer, but the keystroke on
the Enter key will. This means that you can stuff the Enter key into the
buffer and the system will execute it when it finishes the previous action,
rather than you having to wait and then click the mouse.

WT

 

Can't you turn off the "Show preview" checkbox at the bottom of the
mate tool to do this?

Jim

 

Ok, I didnt relize "Show Preview" was the deferr option. That is off
now, and its quicker.

BUT,
Is there a way to not have to hit enter or the checkbox after clicking
the checkbox after making a mate? Sometimes I only need to add 1 mate.

 

Use a macro. I don't mess with the mates dialog unless I have to do a
distance, angle or some advanced mate. I select two faces or axes or
whatever and hit a hotkey for a macro, bang, the parts go together. If
there's a question about which direction it will align, I pre-position it
before doing the mate within 90 deg of where I want it to go.

Mate macros are on my website in the macro library

http://mysite.verizon.net/mjlombard/

 

Thanks for the link on the macros. Question: The distance macro, it
doesnt prompt you to choose a distance, and its set as a "limit
distance". Is there a way to prompt it for a distance? How does Limit
Distance differ from a std distance? Ive never used it before.

 

Oh, yeah, I forgot that was in there. I made that, but I never use it. It
has some default distance. Same with the angle mate macro. I think I was
going to try to make it prompt for a distance/angle, but I never did.
Anyone else is welcome to try it out, it shouldn't be too difficult.

I think this macro was written before "limit" mates existed in SW.
Distance limit mates will allow one mate entity to get up to X far away
from the other mate entity, so it limits how far the part can move. A
regular distance mate keeps the two mate entities at X distance.

The ones I hook up to hotkeys are the coincident, concentric, parallel,
perpendicular and tangent.