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Defining the mate

The mate is usually defined by an AutoCAD block. The block provides the ability to define a marker with a unique name, with the laying point and angle of rotation and with the possibility to insert extra attributes. The geometry included in the mate is not particularly important, as it is not used by the software. It can however be helpful to use geometries that indicate the type of mate, the laying point and the angle of insertion of the block. A simple solution is to insert a colored dash of small dimensions on the laying point and oriented at zero degrees in order to highlight the angle of the mate once positioned.

It's useful to create entities to be included in the mate on the layer 100 (default) so you can hide all mates turning off the layer

Each mate must belong to the part to which it refers. It's very important to aggregate mates properly to the parts. A common mistake is to forget to aggregate mates to the parts. This causes the malfunction of the component.