You use the Assembly module to create and modify the assembly. A model contains one main assembly, which is composed of instances of parts from the model as well as instances of other models. The tutorial in Appendix C, “Using Additional Techniques to Create and Analyze a Model in Abaqus/CAE,” of Getting Started with Abaqus/CAE contains examples of how you use the Assembly module to create part instances and position them relative to each other in a global coordinate system. This chapter explains how you use the tools within the Assembly module to create the assembly. The following topics are covered:

• “Understanding the role of the Assembly module,” Section 13.1

• “Entering and exiting the Assembly module,” Section 13.2

• “Working with part instances,” Section 13.3

• “Working with model instances,” Section 13.4

• “Creating the assembly,” Section 13.5

• “Creating patterns of part instances,” Section 13.6

• “Performing Boolean operations on part instances,” Section 13.7

• “Understanding toolsets in the Assembly module,” Section 13.8

• “Using the Assembly module toolbox,” Section 13.9

• “Creating and manipulating part and model instances,” Section 13.10

• “Applying constraints to part and model instances,” Section 13.11

• “Using the Query toolset to query the assembly,” Section 13.12