Drag components to test their available degrees
of freedom.
Use limit mates sparingly because they take longer
to solve.
Fix mate errors as soon as they occur. Adding
mates never fixes earlier mate problems.
Drag components into the approximate correct location
and orientation before adding mates because this gives the mate solver
application a better chance of snapping components into the right location.
If a component is causing problems, it is often
easier to delete all its mates and re-create them instead of diagnosing
each one. This is especially true with aligned/anti-aligned and dimension
direction conflicts (you can flip the direction that a dimension is measuring).
Use View
Mates or expand the component in the FeatureManager design
tree using Tree Display, View Mates and Dependencies to see the
mates for components.
Whenever possible, fully define the position of
each part in the assembly, unless you need that part to move to visualize
the assembly motion. Assemblies with many available degrees of freedom
take longer to solve, have less predictable behavior when you drag parts,
and are prone to "nuisance" errors (errors that fix themselves
when you drag). Drag components to check their remaining degrees of freedom.
Dragging a component occasionally snaps it into
place and fixes mate errors.
Suppressing and unsuppressing mates with errors
sometimes fixes mate errors.
When you create mates to parts with in-context
features (features whose geometry references other components in the assembly),
avoid
creating circular references.