Using a complex assembly as a sub-assembly in another document?

james_kingdon

Hi,

What's the best way of using a complex assembly as a sub-assembly in another document? I've searched the forum and found mention of copy/pasting tabs between documents, but this only appears to apply to part studios. For a complex assembly there is a lot of work in the assembly itself, and it will be frustrating to have to re-do this work in every document where we want to re-use an assembly. I tried exporting the assembly in parasolid format, and this looked promising, but when imported the individual parts of the sub-assembly had lost their mates and so did not remain connected when I tried to use them in the new larger assembly.

Do any of the export formats export an assembly as a single connected entity? I'm not worried about retaining the animation of the sub-assembly, I just want it to act as a single 'thing' so that I can see how it fits in the new larger structure.

Thanks for any pointers!

James

_Ðave_

after importing the parasolid into a tab/part studio in a new document you'll need to insert all the parts into an assembly. Then you can box select all the parts and select the group tool. Now all the parts will retain there relative position to each other.

james_kingdon

Excellent! Many thanks Dave, that worked well.

luigi_d_amico

what if I wanted to keep the animation behind it when doing this process 

luigi_d_amico

Neverminded I've found a solution, if you make a copy of the assembly and then move it to a different workspace you can keep all of its movement intact. So go to file like if your exporting but instead click move to and the select the document you want to transfer it to.