The Mating Structure area can be hidden by clearing the Matings box in the Model Structure tab of the Options
First of all, see further information on the Document Explorer. They are necessary for the full understanding of the following paragraphs.
History in a think3 application means a sequence of events linked together by means of chronology.
In the model environment, the left pane in the client area is composed of five tabs:
When handling models, the Model Structure collects the events that make up the single steps to create the model, from the first one up to the final one, the root. Those events are the building-bricks of your models, that is entities, features, mating constraints and so on. This allows you to easily modify your model whenever needed, following your design intention.
Starting from the root of the Model Structure, that is the model, you get a graphical representation of history events. The latest events are at the top of the history. They are linked to the previous ones. Of course, you can edit, reorder, redefine all these items, according to some basic rules. Each object is marked by an icon, corresponding to the entity type followed by the entity type description, and a univocal numeric identifier. It is also possible to assign a persistent user defined name to each Model Structure item.
When changes in the model occur, all involved entities that are in the history will be rebuilt, according to their position in the History.
There are entities that are always in the history because of their nature, and others that are not.
The Model Structure may show entities with history, but other static entities will appear as well. It's not always the literal History Representation.
If any Mating operation has been performed on the model, the lower part of the Model Structure panel will show all the constrainsts, that is, the mating events in a separate area, called the Mating structure.
The separate panel mating contains all constraints belonging to the current hierarchal level: if a component is set as current, the contained constraints will be shown in the panel. All the constraints appear as children of the root node.
This type of representation enables you to to understand information about constraints and positioned parts in a very smart and friendly way.
The Mating Structure area can be hidden by clearing the Matings box in the Model Structure tab of the Options
Right-clicking on single items or in blank areas in the left pane displays the specific context menus including all the main commands that you can perform.
Pre-selection, post-selection, multiple selection and multiple selection in pre and post selection are enabled on events and geometric entities in the Model Structure.
Refer to Selection on the Model Structure for more information on selection on Model Structure items.