• Flat—Exports all of the geometry of the assembly to a single IGES file as if it were a part. When retrieved into another system, the assembly acts as one part. You should place each part on a layer to differentiate between parts in the receiving system.

• One Level—Exports an assembly IGES file with external references pointing to the IGES files of its components. This file contains only top-level geometry (for example, assembly features).

• All Levels—Exports an assembly file with external references to all components as well as all the component IGES files. It creates component parts and subassemblies with their respective geometry and external references. This option supports all levels of hierarchy.

• All Parts—Exports an assembly to IGES as multiple files containing geometry information of its components and assembly features, if any. These parts use the same reference coordinate system to ease reassembly in the receiving system. Specifically, the system creates the following IGES files:

◦ An assembly IGES file with the name <modelname>_asm.igs, where <modelname> is the name of the assembly containing any assembly feature geometry.

◦ A subassembly IGES file for each subassembly (if any) with the name <modelname>_cpy_#.igs, where <modelname> is the name of the subassembly, and # identifies the occurrence of the same subassembly in the assembly containing any assembly feature geometry.

◦ Part files of all component parts. If a component appears more than once in the assembly, for each occurrence of the component there is a corresponding IGES part file. The naming convention for part files is <partname>_cpy_#.igs, where <partname> is the name of the part, and # identifies the occurrence of the same part in the assembly. The system creates multiple part files, since each instance is in a different position relative to the reference coordinate system.