mates delete themselves

[mp3-250]

sw 2022 sp5

One of my users was experiecing this issue from time to time while designing an assembly. It seems difficult to reproduce and SW behave like this after some time spent inside that assembly.

After inserting some components he partially mates them, then he drags a component and when release the mouse button this component become transparent and solidworks "seems" to stop responding, until pressing ESC.
At this point all the mates disappear.

I was able to get an hint from a couple of SPRs 965381, 981438 that are related to the mates disappearing after dragging, and quick mates tookbar popping up a second time for confirmation.
I noticed also that pressing ENTER instead of ESC seems to work around the issue.
My guess is this user was using an unpinned mate panel and when the SPR issue above kicked in, a quickmate popoup appears somewhere off screen (as a sw internal dialog ALT+TAB won't show it) and pressing ENTER would confirm all the mates set up to the moment.

[gupta9665]

Check if the user has the "Use for positioning only" selected under mate property manager. If yes then ask the user to deselect it and try again.

[mp3-250]

no, I checked his mate property manager. And it happens sometimes not always and with different files.
He was working for a while and suddenly the bug comes out.

it seems the mates pile up

[JSculley]

no, I checked his mate property manager. And it happens sometimes not always and with different files.
He was working for a while and suddenly the bug comes out.

it seems the mates pile up

You may be able to use Spy++ to determine if there is a hidden quick mates popup.

[DanPihlaja]

I thought that there used to be a setting that said something like: "Break mates on component move" that you could check. But now I can't find it.

[Glenn Schroeder]

I had the same intermittent problem with SW2022. I never found a cause, but it was very frustrating. I never bothered reaching out to my VAR about it, mostly because it was difficult to repeat.

It hasn't happened again since updating to SW2023.

[AlexLachance]

sw 2022 sp5

One of my users was experiecing this issue from time to time while designing an assembly. It seems difficult to reproduce and SW behave like this after some time spent inside that assembly.

After inserting some components he partially mates them, then he drags a component and when release the mouse button this component become transparent and solidworks "seems" to stop responding, until pressing ESC.
At this point all the mates disappear.

I was able to get an hint from a couple of SPRs 965381, 981438 that are related to the mates disappearing after dragging, and quick mates tookbar popping up a second time for confirmation.
I noticed also that pressing ENTER instead of ESC seems to work around the issue.
My guess is this user was using an unpinned mate panel and when the SPR issue above kicked in, a quickmate popoup appears somewhere off screen (as a sw internal dialog ALT+TAB won't show it) and pressing ENTER would confirm all the mates set up to the moment.

I have 2 collegues who experience a very similar issue on 2019 SP5. It is work flow related, we were never able to reproduce the issue but they were able to remove it from their workflow. It has something to do with the quick mate bar but that's about as far as we've figured out.

[Uncle_Hairball]

After inserting some components he partially mates them, then he drags a component and when release the mouse button this component become transparent and solidworks "seems" to stop responding, until pressing ESC.
At this point all the mates disappear.

Is it possible that the Mate command was still active? If so, pressing Esc would cancel the command, removing all mates that had been added. Just a guess.

[Glenn Schroeder]

Is it possible that the Mate command was still active? If so, pressing Esc would cancel the command, removing all mates that had been added. Just a guess.

When it happened to me I was always just using Quick Mates, without ever opening the Mates property manager, so I don't think that was it.

[mp3-250]

the SPRs I mentioned above hint at the mate command asking for a second confirmation of mates... a behavior that normally isn't supposed to happen.

the main difference from my setup and his was the property manager for mates was showing once instead of twice like when it is pinned.
my impression is that when the bug triggers somehow the mates are bundled together in one dialog and then they are canceled at once.

SW bugs on the UI are nothing new so I am not surprised at all, probably they had some bad programmer that didn't reinitialize the variables in the dialogs after every use, and in some situation they come back.
I had a very similar incident with PDM administration showing me an unrelated content for the operation I opened a dialog for. Thanks god that was reproducible so I didn't looked like a complete idiot to my boss.

[DanPihlaja]

I thought that there used to be a setting that said something like: "Break mates on component move" that you could check. But now I can't find it.

Nevermind. I think that this is the setting that I was thinking about:

Turns out it is for sketches and not assembly components.

[Tapani Sjöman]

Same problem here.
SW2022 SP4.0

[mp3-250]

Same problem here.
SW2022 SP4.0

do you have the mate property pinned or unpinned?
try to pin it to the property manager and confirm each mate with the green check. In this way to exit the mate mode you have to click twice the green check mark in the property manager and the mates seems to remain. still testing...

[RonE]

Please check if the problem does not occur when Tools > Options > Performance > SmartMate sensitivity option is greater than 'Off'.