Constraints

Hi. I'm new to Inventor and teaching myself through the tutorials.

I'm designing a collapsing ladder and am having trouble with the constraints in the assembly.

I've imported several assemblies into the main but I'm having trouble constraining both ends of, say, the staunchion (which rotate).

It will let me constrain one end but when I try the other it says a constraint is inconsistant with another and doesn't tell you how to fix it. If I suppress the first constraint, the joint separates.

Any ideas please would be helpful.

Hope it does not come out like this:

KC

Have you tried to constrain the centre lines for the second mate?

Perhaps one of your components is grounded...

Can you put up a screenshot?

KC

What are the components of your sub assembly? Rotation within sub-assemblies is fixed unless you make the assembly flexible( i believe thats right). Also your dimensions need to be exact, not close. For instance if you pivots had a gap of .001 between them, in real life this would be okay but this gap will cause you trouble if you try to mate the parts in a manner that would leave no gap.

What kind of constraints are you adding?

Thanks guys.

I tried all you suggested and something worked. I don't know what.

I did have some assemblies grounded so I fixed that. And I tried other constrains and everything seemed to come together.

Thanks again.

Now all I've got to do is the simulation. Wish me luck!