Hello all,
First of all, let me explain the two concepts of Flexibility and Deformability:
- Flexibility - here, what can change is the position &/or orientation of geometry. This means you can have 2 instances of the same sub-assembly in a parent assembly, but the position/orientation of one or several components can be different across these instances.
- Deformability - here, what can change is the actual shape of the geometry. This means we can create a link between representations that have different geometrical features so the system knows they are the same item. We get the same Enterprise Item Number (EIN) & roll-up in BOM tables
In CATIA, we are able to manage not only deformable parts (e.g. springs, hoses) but also deformable assemblies, such as a deformable cable component with rigid cable-end components.
The best practice for instantiating deformable assemblies with minimal user input is to set up a deformable assembly as an Engineering Template.
Please watch the attached video for an example. After creating the Engineering Template, the end user selects the positions of the cable ports and the rigid cable ends in these ports, with the deformable cable component geometrically repositioned (as a deformed variant) between them.
