Creating a Part in
an Assembly
You can create a new part in the context of an assembly. That way you
can use the geometry of other assembly components while designing the
part.
You can also create a new sub-assembly in the context of another assembly.
See Inserting
a New Sub-assembly for more information.
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 create a part within an assembly:
Click New Part
(Assembly toolbar) or Insert,
Component, New
Part.
For externally saved parts, type a name for the
new part in the Save As dialog
box and click Save.
Select a plane or planar face (while the pointer
is
).
Editing focus changes to the new part and a sketch opens in the new
part. An Inplace (coincident)
mate is added between the Front
plane of the new part and the selected plane or face. The new part is
fully positioned by the Inplace
mate. No additional mates are required to position it. If you wish to
reposition the component, you need to delete the Inplace
mate first.
The new part appears in the FeatureManager design tree. Externally
saved parts appear with a name in the form Partn. Virtual components
appear with a name in the form [Partn^assembly_name].
For internally saved parts,
instead of selecting a plane, you can click in a blank region of the graphics
area (while the pointer is
). An empty part is added to
the assembly. You can edit or open the empty part file and create geometry.
The origin of the part is coincident with the origin of the assembly,
and the part 's position is fixed.
Construct the part features, using the same techniques
you use to build a part on its own. Reference the geometry of other components
in the assembly as needed.
If you extrude a feature
using the Up To Next option, the
next geometry must be on the
same part. Use Up To Surface to
extrude to a surface on another component in the assembly or a surface
of an assembly feature.
To return editing focus to the assembly, click
to clear Edit Component
(Assembly toolbar), or click
in the Confirmation
Corner.
To save a virtual component
to its own external file, right-click the component and select Save
Part(in External File). Alternatively, when you save the assembly,
you can select to save the part either inside the assembly or to an external
file.
Related Topics
Layout-based
Assembly Design
Editing
a Part in an Assembly
Configurations
and In-context Components