About Assembly Symmetry

Assembly Symmetry is a tool that lets you symmetrize product structure references according to symmetry types.

The following methods can generate an assembly symmetry:

• By selecting a product in the tree (out of the root product), this product is considered as the original product reference and the associated symmetric product is created under the parent product of the original product.
• By selecting the root product in the tree, a symmetric product is created and displayed in:
  • A new tab when Create widget in a new tab is selected.
  • A new widget of the current tab when Create widget in in new tab is cleared.
  See Widget Creation.

You can run the assembly symmetry calculation in default mode or customize mode, and specify a type of assembly symmetry including New reference, Same reference, Existing reference and No symmetry types.

Whatever the selected mode, you can then symmetrically position the resulting product structure reference with respect to the original product structure reference through a shortcut to the Symmetry Constraint Definition function that allows you to quickly create a symmetry engineering connection.

Assembly symmetry lets you keep associativity in shape, product structure and positioning.

Geometry

• Any change made to a 3D shape representation that undergoes a symmetry process is automatically reflected in the symmetric representation.
• You can disconnect a symmetric 3D shape from its original counterpart by isolating the assembly symmetry links. For more information, see Isolating Links or Relations.

Structure

The Track add/remove changes in assembly option allows you to check any change made to the original product structure.

If a difference is detected between the original product structure and the symmetric product structure, modify the symmetric product to reflect the change accordingly.

Position

• By default, an assembly symmetry is generated without positioning associativity with the original assembly.
• A Fix Symmetrically engineering connection can be created to manage positioning associativity; such an engineering connection cannot be edited and requires a generating plane.

Customizing the symmetry process helps to determine which products to include in the symmetric product structure and how they are generated and instantiated.

• New reference: creates a new product, symmetric of the original product.
  • Available for the symmetry of the root product,
  • Available for the original product (out of root product) and individually for its sub-products.

  Important: When a weight is declared in a product node, it is applied to the new symmetric product, and there is no associativity between the declared weight of the original and symmetric products. A computed weight is not applied to the new symmetric product.

• Same reference: creates a new instance of the original product/sub-product; it is instantiated in the symmetric structure and positioned as if it was a new symmetric product. Therefore, selecting the plane plays a prominent role for the final position of the same reference in the symmetric product structure.

  Available for the original product (out of root product) and individually for its sub-products.

  Note: For more information about orientation discrepancies of the symmetric product reference that might occur, see the dedicated article A best practice to use the same reference type in Assembly Symmetry available in the knowledge base.
• Existing reference: creates a new instance of a an existing product by selecting a product out of the original product or by searching for a product in the database; it is instantiated in the symmetric structure and positioned as if it was a new symmetric product.

  Available for the sub-products of the original product only.

• No symmetry: Specifies that product/sub-product does not have symmetric products. When this specification is applied in an existing assembly symmetry, this deletes the symmetric products and links.

  Available for the sub-products of the original product only.

  Important: To delete a symmetric product, select a sub-product, and click No symmetry. The symmetric product, the corresponding positioning as well as the symmetry constraints are deleted.

• Auto-detect reusable original references: Detects all original product/sub-products that can be reused as self-symmetric by applying Same reference to them.

Flexible products can be involved in an Assembly Symmetry.

Flexible references, repositionable instances, and overloaded positions are taken into account in symmetric products.

This panel is dedicated to the creation and edition of assembly symmetry.

This panel contains the following sections: