Assembly Design > Top Down Design > Skeleton Models > About Standard Skeleton Models
  
About Standard Skeleton Models
Standard skeletons are parts created to define the design intent of a component in an assembly. A standard skeleton created in one assembly can be used in another assembly when it is assembled using independent references.
Whether you create or insert a standard skeleton before or after creating additional components, the system inserts the newly created skeleton as the first component. It is listed in the Model Tree and regenerated before all other components and assembly features.
Standard skeletons establish 3D physical constraints. The resulting geometric information of size and location can then be incorporated into individual components, establishing common geometric information. You can use a standard skeleton to represent the interface between two components. There are two major reasons to do this:
Sharing information—For instance, the design includes two parts that are attached by bolts. A skeleton part consisting of a hole pattern can be mirrored on both parts, thus ensuring the same pattern on both. Changes made to the skeleton part are automatically propagated to both of the parts. The skeleton part can be reused in another assembly to guarantee a company-wide standard.
Improved design stability—A skeleton can represent the interface between components in the assembly. When a design has multiple configurations, the skeleton can contain all necessary placement definitions for its components. Components are assembled relative to the skeleton to ensure there is no inter-component dependency for placement references.
Skeleton models, like regular components, can be replaced by both family table instances and other skeleton parts. When you replace a skeleton part By Copy, the copied part becomes a skeleton part as well. When a regular part or component is replaced using By Copy, the new copy can be made a skeleton. A skeleton is necessary when the copied component is the first assembly feature and is placed by default.
Because a standard skeleton behaves differently from regular parts, it is not affected by assembly level features. Assembly features such as cuts and holes do not intersect skeleton model geometry. If you want to intersect a skeleton model with a cut, right-click to select the skeleton model in the Model Tree and choose Activate from the shortcut menu. Create the cut or hole local to the skeleton model.
Drawing report tables recognizes skeleton models as a type of assembly member (asm.mbr.type), so they can be filtered accordingly. You can use skeleton models in a report to obtain additional information about the model, as well as to obtain a name of an indexed drawing.
With a skeleton model, you can create references between components in a subassembly as well as create references to the skeleton model itself, with the following restrictions:
A part that references a skeleton model only informs PDMlink that it references the assembly, not the skeleton model.
A skeleton model with an external reference only knows that it refers to an assembly that contains both itself and the referenced model. PDMlink cannot identify the referenced model.
To fully regenerate a component (in a subassembly with a skeleton model) that references another component in the same subassembly, you must retrieve both the components and the subassembly.