Creating Mirrored Instances of Assembly Components

In assemblies, when you mirror a component, you add the mirror as another instance of the component, positioned symmetrically about a plane.

Creating a mirrored instance is most useful for symmetrical components.

Before mirror
After mirror

To create a mirrored instance and specify its orientation:

  1. In an open assembly document, click Mirror Components (Assembly toolbar) or Insert > Mirror Components.
  2. In the PropertyManager, under Selections:
    1. For Mirror plane, select a plane or planar face as the entity to mirror about.
    2. For Components to Mirror, select one or more components to mirror.
  3. Click Next .
  4. On the Step2: Set Orientation page of the PropertyManager, under Orient components, select a component for which you want to add a mirrored instance.
  5. Under Mirror type, click Center of mass or Bounding box center.
    Locating the mirrored components by the bounding box center is typically more desirable for asymmetric components because the bounding box is unaffected by the components' features.
  6. Click Reorient and to cycle through the four possible orientations.
  7. Click .
    The PropertyManager closes and new instances of the components are added to the assembly, mirrored about the plane you selected. A MirrorComponent feature is added to the FeatureManager design tree.

Mirroring Asymmetric Components

In assemblies, when you mirror an asymmetric component, using the bounding box to position the mirrored component with respect to the mirror plane provides better results than using the center of mass.

When you create a mirrored instance of an asymmetric component, none of the orientations is a true mirror; all are flipped orientations. If you want a true mirror, create an opposite-hand version.
Mirrored instance of asymmetric component
Opposite-hand version of asymmetric component

To create a mirrored instance of an asymmetric component in an assembly:

  1. Click Mirror Components (Assembly toolbar) or Insert > Mirror Components.
  2. In the PropertyManager, for Selections, select the Mirror plane and the Components to Mirror and click Next .
  3. For Mirror type, select an option:
    Option Description
    Bounding box center Positions the mirror so that the center of the bounding box for the selected component is mirrored about the mirror plane.
    Center of mass Positions the mirror so that the center of mass of the selected component is mirrored about the mirror plane.
  4. Click Reorient and to cycle through the four possible orientations.
  5. Click .
    A new instance of the asymmetric component is added to the assembly, mirrored about the plane you selected.