Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology

Assembly Modeling
 Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology

• What is Assembly Design?

• Introduction
• Assembly Tree
• Types of Assembly Design Approach
– Bottom Up
– Top Down
• Assembly Analysis
 Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology

What is Assembly Design?

• Process of creating designs that consist of two
or more components assembled together at
their respective work positions by applying
suitable parametric assembly constraint.
• Assembly constraint allow you to restrict the
degrees of freedom of the component at their
respective work positions.
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Introduction
In most engineering designs, the product of
interest is a composition of parts, formed into an
assembly. Modeling and representing assemblies as
well as analyzing assemblies are all relevant issues
to geometric modeling and the CAD technology.

Parts and/or subassemblies of a given product

can be modeled separately, on a CAD system.
Instances (copies) of used parts can then be merged
into a base part or a host to generate the assembly
model.
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Figure 16.1 Creating an assembly model

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• Figure 16.1 shows how an assembly model can be created

using a CAD system. Designers will create the individual
parts. They can also analyze the parts separately.
• Once the parts design complete, designers can proceed to
create the assembly and analyze it. Creating the assembly
from its parts requires specifying the spatial and mating
relationships between the parts.
• Assembly analysis may include interference checking,
mass properties, kinematic and dynamic analysis, and finite
element analysis.
• CAD systems establish a link between an assembly and its
individual parts such that designers need only change
individual parts for design modification, and the system
updates the assembly model automatically.
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Assembly Tree
• The most natural way to represent the
hierarchical relationships between the various
parts of an assembly is an assembly tree, as
shown in Figure 16.2.
• An assembly is divided into several
subassemblies at different levels (shown in
Figure 16.2, as the tree depths). Each
subassembly is composed of various parts.
• The leaves of the tree represent individual parts
or subassemblies. The nodes of the tree
represent parts and/or subassemblies, and its
root represents the assembly itself.
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Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology

Types of Assembly Design

Approach
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• The bottom-up approach is most preferred as it is the

traditional and most logical approach.
• In this approach, we create the individual parts
independently, insert them into an assembly, and use
the mating conditions to locate and orient them in the
assembly as required by the assembly design.
• The assembly modeling process itself begins with
creating a blank assembly model (*.CATProduct file)
using the Assembly Design Workbench. We import
(insert) the assembly parts (*.CATPart file) created in
Part Design Workbench into this model, one at a time.
• We use the proper mating conditions (or assembly
constraints) to place and orient each inserted part
correctly in the assembly model.
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Assembly1.CATProduct

Comp1.CATPart Comp2.CATPart Comp3.CATPart

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• When we insert parts into the assembly, we insert copies of

the parts. These copies are known as instances. We can use
multiple instances of any part if the assembly requires it.
• The CAD software maintains a link between each instance
and its original part. If we change the original part, we can
change all its instances in an assembly by simply updating
the assembly.
• These links (call them assembly links) between an assembly
and its individual parts is the most important fundamental
concept behind assembly modeling. As a matter of fact, an
assembly link is bidirectional; we change the part and
update the assembly, or we change the instance in the
assembly and update the part.
• How do we specify assembly constraints among different
parts in the bottom-up approach? We specify them among the
instances of the parts in the assembly model itself.
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Advantages of bottom-up approach.

• It is the preferred technique if the parts have
already been constructed, as in the case of
off-the-shelf parts.
• It also allows designers to focus on the details
of individual parts, while they are designed
individually.
• It also makes it easier and simpler to maintain
the relationships and regeneration behavior of
parts than in the top-down approach.
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 Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology

• The top-down approach, while good for any size assembly, is

ideal for large assemblies consisting of tens of thousands of
components. It provides an effective tool and a well-organized
approach to managing the design of large assemblies.
• The top-down assembly approach fosters a systems
engineering approach to product design, in which the assembly
layout communicates design criteria to subsystem
developers, including suppliers.
• This tight control allows distributed design teams to work
concurrently within a common product framework. It also
allows detailed design to begin while the assembly layout is
being finalized.
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• The top-down approach lends itself well to the

conceptual design phase. It captures the design intent
of a product in the early design stages at a high level of
abstraction.
• After all, assembly design does not always require
detailed design of constituent parts and subassemblies.
This allows designers to validate different design
concepts before implementing them.
• The top-down approach also allows designers to practice
the what-if design scenarios with ease.
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• The top-down assembly approach begins with an assembly

layout sketch .The layout serves as the behind-the-scenes
backbone of the assembly. The layout defines components in
the context of an assembly. These components are "empty"
as they do not have any external references to actual parts
and subassemblies files yet. The assembly layout sketch
defines skeletons, space claim, and other physical properties
that may be used to define the geometry of and the
relationships between components (parts or subassemblies).
• The space claim is the most important property of an
assembly layout because the layout shows where each
assembly component belongs. When a designer lays down
the skeletons of all the assembly components in the layout,
the designer can clearly see any interferences, clearances, or
overlapping between them. The designer can change the
locations of the components, relative to each other, in the
layout to better meet product design requirements.
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Advantages of the top-down approach:

• The construction and assembly can take place
simultaneously.
• Using geometry of one component to define the
geometry of the other component.
• The major advantage is that if we change the layout
sketch, the assembly and its parts are automatically
updated upon exiting the sketch. We make all the
changes quickly in one place, the assembly layout
sketch.
• The assembly layout sketch does not have to be the
master plan for the design. For example, if we had a model of
an engine with some fixed pulley locations, we could make the
circles that represent the pulleys in the layout sketch coincident with
the known locations of the pulleys in the model. If we change the
locations of the pulleys in the engine model, the assembly model will
update automatically.
Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology
Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology

Assembly Analysis
Generate Assembly Drawings

Generate Part List

Generate Exploded View

Generate Sectional View

Perform Interference Checking

Perform collision detection

Perform mass property calculation

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Assembly Analysis
CAD systems provide various tools to analyze assemblies
once they are created. Here is a list of assembly analysis
activities:

1. Generate assembly drawings.

• An assembly drawing is no different from a part drawing.
This drawing may include the standard four views or just an
isometric view. The procedure for creating an assembly
drawing is the same as a part drawing; here we obviously
use the assembly model.
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2. Generate a parts list.

The parts list is also known as Bill of Materials (BOM).
This list is a table that shows the part names and how
many instances of each part are used in the assembly.
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Bill of material
(B.O.M)
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3. Generate an exploded view.

• This is an isometric (ISO) view that shows the parts of an
assembly displayed apart from each other. We may create an
exploded view by specifying the direction and distance to which
each pan will move while exploding.
• Parts can be exploded in the directions of their permissible
degrees of freedom after applying the mating conditions. An
exploded view may consist of one or more explode steps. Each
step shows the assembly component(s) displaced into a new
location. All the steps of the exploded view are stored in the
view itself.
• Upon displaying the view, the steps are displayed sequentially
to give the illusion of animation, or assembly sequence. The
explode steps may be edited after they are created, or new
steps may be added. Finally, an exploded view may be
collapsed to return it to its assembled state.
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3D Exploded view 2D Exploded view

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4. Generate sectional views.

• This is similar to generating sectional or other types of
views of individual parts
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5. Perform interference checking.

• Allows you to check if any parts of an assembly pierce each
other or not. If an interference is detected between two parts,
the CAD system displays the interference volume to allow
users to examine and rectify/eliminate it.
• The user may also request the CAD system to report
overlapping or tangent edges/faces as interference if needed.
•
6. Perform collision detection.
• We detect the collision of a component with other components
of an assembly, by moving or rotating it along its degrees
of freedom.
• Collision implies that the component cannot be assembled
correctly into the assembly, or it cannot move or rotate
freely in its final position in the assembly.
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 Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology

7. Perform mass property calculations.

• We can calculate the mass properties of an entire
assembly as we do for a single part.
• The centroid or the inertia properties of an entire
assembly or subassembly may be important in some
applications.