Flexible Subassemblies

You can make subassemblies flexible. This flexibility allows movement of the individual components of a subassembly within the parent assembly.

An example of the benefit of this function is when you want to move the components of a piston subassembly in a motor assembly. You can move the individual components of the piston while still grouping the components as a subassembly.

Note the following regarding flexible subassemblies:

Mates The mates in a flexible subassembly are solved simultaneously with the mates of the parent assembly. Therefore, moving or rotating a subassembly component does not violate the mates in the subassembly or its parent. A component moves only within its degrees of freedom according to its mates.
Multiple Instances You can insert more than one instance of the subassembly in the same configuration of the parent assembly. You can make some instances rigid and others flexible, and the different instances can have different positions of the subassembly components.
From the Select flyout, you can click Select Flexible Subassembly to select flexible subassemblies and highlight them in the FeatureManager design tree.

Making a Subassembly Flexible

To make a subassembly flexible:

  1. Click a subassembly in the FeatureManager design tree and select Component Properties .
  2. In the dialog box, under Solve as, select Flexible, then click OK.
    Flexible is not available for lightweight subassemblies.
    The Component Properties dialog box lets you change other subassembly properties. If you only want to make the subassembly flexible, you can simply click Make Subassembly Flexible on the context toolbar.
    In the FeatureManager design tree, the icon changes to to indicate that the subassembly is flexible.

Toggling Between Flexible and Rigid States

You can toggle between the flexible and rigid states for subassemblies from the subassembly shortcut bar.

To make a rigid subassembly flexible:

  1. Open an assembly containing a rigid subassembly.
  2. In the FeatureManager design tree, click the rigid subassembly, and click Make Subassembly Flexible .
    To make a flexible subassembly rigid, click the subassembly and click Make Subassembly Rigid .

    You can also click Flexible or Rigid (Assembly toolbar).

    For models with multiple configurations, following this method affects only the active configuration.