Mates Question

I'm learning SolidWorks, sooo....

I create a table. Let's start with a top and
a leg. I mate the top surface of the leg to the
bottom surface of the table. I check and this
leaves two degrees of freedom. So far so good.

Now I try to mate the edges of the leg to be one
inch from the front and side edges of the top.
I get an error message saying the mating relationships
between the leg and top are overdefined. That doesn't
make sense to me, since each edge mate would seem to
remove one of the degrees of freedom, thus fully
defining the mate relationship???

What am I missing here?

 

Try using parallel or angle relationship first to orient the leg, then
use distance relationship to a point or vertex on the leg.

Sounds like something is slightly out-of-square.

 

A surface mate eliminates 3 dofs: 2 axial and 1 linear, leaving 2 linear one axial
dof. The edge mates you mention still leave one linear dof, unless edge mates also
constrain length. But, no, you shouldn't be over constrained. Something else is
going on. Why don't you just try mating surfaces instead of edges. Offsets are
still possible.

 

If he is using a distance mate from one of the edge faces then he may
be trying to remove one linear and one rotational degree of freedom.
Since that rotational dof was already removed with the surface mate he
is over constraining which may not become apparent until the second
edge distance mate it attempted.

Try edge distance mates to a point on the end of the leg.