About Creating an Assembly or a Configurable Product

When you create a configurable product, as when you create any assembly, you must first create datum features or a base component. You can then create or assemble additional components and configurable modules to the existing one or more component and datum features. When you use a default or custom template to create the configurable product, the datum features are included in the template.

You can add components and configurable modules to a configurable product and an assembly in the following ways:

• Assemble a component parametrically by specifying its position relative to the base component or other components or datum features in the assembly.

• Assemble components manually or automatically using predefined component interfaces. Refer to About Automatic Placement of Components for more information.

• Assemble a component nonparametrically using the Package command in the Assemble commands. Use packaging as a temporary means to include the component in the assembly; then finalize its location with assembly instructions.

• You can include a component as a member of an assembly without actually placing it in the assembly window. With this technique you can list the component as a member of the assembly even if the component is not ready to be assembled (for example, it does not have geometry). The system lists included components in the Model Tree and BOM, but it does not display them on the screen or include them in mass property calculations. To add constraints later, you can redefine the placement of the component.

When you assemble a configurable module, you assemble the representative component in the configurable module. When the component is first assembled it becomes the current module variant. You can choose any component in the configurable module and make it the current module variant.

You can remove a component from an assembly by deleting it or replacing it with another component. In addition, you can also redefine the placement constraints for assembled components.

To place a base component or feature when you are not using a template that contains datum features, you must either create three orthogonal datum planes as the first feature, assemble an existing component (part, subassembly, or skeleton model), or create a base component.

When you create three orthogonal datum planes as the first feature in an assembly, you can assemble a component with respect to these planes, or you can create a part in Assembly as the first component. Using datum planes as the first feature has the following advantages:

• You can reorder subsequent components to come before the first one, if the components are not children of the first component.

Using the Component Placement tab, you can assemble components parametrically by establishing constraints that define the component's position in the assembly. The component's position changes according to changes in components or assembly features to which it is constrained.

If you do not create three orthogonal datum planes, the base component is the first part, subassembly, or skeleton model placed into an assembly. In many ways it is like the base feature of a part. The initial assembly units are the same as the units of the base component. When a base component is the first object in an assembly (before any assembly features), no placement constraints are defined. You place the component with the Default constraint. If you replace a base component with interchangeable components, the replacing components is always placed by default as well.

When you create the first component of an assembly, you can either create an empty component or copy from an existing component. As with an assembled base component, the initial assembly units are the same as the base component, and interchange components that replace the created base component will always be in the default orientation.