Inserting a New Sub-assembly
You can insert a new, empty sub-assembly at any level of the assembly hierarchy. Then you can add components to it in a number of ways.
Before creating new components in the context of an assembly, you can specify the default behavior for saving the new components either as separate external part files or as virtual components within the assembly file. See Saving New In-Context Components.
To insert a new sub-assembly:
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In the FeatureManager design tree, right-click either the top-level assembly icon or the icon for an existing sub-assembly, and select Insert New Sub-assembly.
- or -
Click New Assembly 
(Assembly toolbar) or Insert, Component, New Assembly.
In the FeatureManager design tree, an empty subassembly is inserted as the last component of the selected assembly. Virtual subassemblies appear with a name in the form [Assem
n
^
assembly_name
]. Externally saved subassemblies appear with a name in the form Assem
n.
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Add components to the sub-assembly:
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To move a component that is already in the assembly into the sub-assembly, see Dragging Components to Edit the Assembly Structure or Assembly Structure Editing.
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To add an existing, saved component to the sub-assembly, right-click the sub-assembly icon in the FeatureManager design tree, and select Edit Sub-assembly. Then insert components using any of the methods in Adding Components to an Assembly.
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To insert a new component into a sub-assembly, you must edit the sub-assembly in its own window. You cannot insert a new component into a sub-assembly while you are editing the top-level assembly. Also, you cannot insert a new component while you are editing the sub-assembly in the context of a higher level assembly. Right-click the sub-assembly icon in the FeatureManager design tree, and select Open Assembly to open the sub-assembly in its own window. Then add a new component.
To save a virtual component to its own external file, right-click the component and select Save Assembly(in External File). Alternatively, when you save the assembly, you can select to save the sub-assembly either inside the assembly or to an external file.