About Flexible Fasteners

By creating a flexible fastener, components are always positioned according to their thicknesses.

This page discusses:

See Also
Creating Flexible Fastener References
Updating Flexible Fasteners

Positioning Components

You can use flexible length fasteners when handling fasteners with more than two components.

The main areas are:

  • EntryPoint: This is the overall fastener datum at the entry location point of the fastener on the pilot part.
  • ExitPoint: This is the geometric point at which the fastener exits the panel stack being fastened.

    There are two sets of components that can be specified as part of the adaptive length fastener assembly: These are referred to as Head components and Tail components.

    Each set of components may include from one to three components. Separate products are required for each of head components and tail components.

A fastener component can be either a head component or a tail component. Therefore, positioning the different components of the flexible length fastener consists of:

  • Positioning each component one related to the other in each group.
  • Positioning head group and tail group related to the thickness to fasten.

Specific Case: Use of LastExitPoint
When the EntryPoint and the ExitPoint have the same coordinates, you need to create LastExitPoint, an additional publication that makes the automatic positioning of the component possible.
LastExitPoint is an ExitPoint that you set on the component at the longest possible distance from EntryPoint.

Flexible Fasteners vs. Pre-R2022x Flexible Fasteners

Mechanical Flexibility

Starting with R2022x, the management of flexible fasteners is based on their mechanical flexibility.

The flexible fastener is set as “flexible at instantiation” and its tail components as “repositionable”.

The flexible fastener template is not duplicated anymore. The thickness is applied to its instances on the fly, according to the fastened parts thickness.

R2022x Flexible Fastener and Some of its Instances

Thanks to the mechanical flexiblity principle, the number of fastener references in the database is greatly reduced. In addition, this offers performance improvements in fastener instantiations, and there are less risks of corrupting the data by losing the mapping between the flexible references and the corresponding fastener template.

Important:

  • The existing flexible fastener templates and references created before R2022x do not benefit from the mechanical flexibility principle.

  • The flexible fastener instance’s thickness is available in authoring experience only. It is not possible to read, write or visualize it in navigation experience.

Properties

The flexible fastener created starting from R2022x, is almost identical to the flexible fastener template, except that:

  • It holds no pitch.
  • It is flexible at instantiation.
  • Its tail components are repositionable.

The other properties are identical, namely:

  • The fastener type
  • The classifications
  • The minimum and maximum ranges of the fastening
  • The list of components, including to ability to order them inside two groups (head and tail).

Modification of Flexible Fastener Instances

You can modify a fastener instance by using Fastener Edition .

You need to choose a reference, define the position and orientation of the instance, and then define the stacking.

Consistency of Flexible Fastener Geometry

Flexible Fastener Length Consistency (FFLC) is the specific rule available for detecting inconsistencies between the geometry of the fastener and the thickness of the stacking. For more information, see Creating a Rules Immersive Report.