5.1 Importing an assembly

Product: ABAQUS/CAE

Benefits: You can import an assembly created by a third-party CAD system into ABAQUS/CAE. The part instances in the original assembly appear as part instances in the ABAQUS/CAE assembly.

Description: ABAQUS/CAE now enables you to import an assembly from files created by any of the following CAD systems:

CATIA V5
CATIA V4
I-DEAS
Parasolid
Pro/ENGINEER

You can import either the entire assembly or selected part instances. ABAQUS/CAE appends your selection to the existing assembly and retains the original positioning of the instances.

The main advantage that assembly import offers is that, for large assemblies, a single part is created for multiple instances in the assembly. This approach conserves memory by creating fewer parts in the model.

Importing an assembly also offers the following advantages:

In most cases ABAQUS/CAE retains the names of the parts and the part instances from the original file.
If the parts and part instances in the original file were colored by the third-party CAD system, ABAQUS/CAE retains those colors during the import procedure. For information about modifying the color coding, see Chapter 51, “Color coding geometry and mesh elements,” in the ABAQUS/CAE User's Manual

ABAQUS/CAE Usage:

All modules:
   FileImportAssembly

Reference:

ABAQUS/CAE User's Manual

“Importing an assembly,” Section 10.1.2