The advantages of using subassemblies to organize a Project Model is explained in the Model Construction section in Chapter 1. In SansGUI, a subassembly is contained in a part derived from the Assembly_Generic object. You can find this object in the Tree View under the Component tab in the left pane. There is always a TOP part derived from it for each Project Model. The TOP part contains the top level assembly for you to work with.
Use the following procedures to create a subassembly:
Click on the TOP assembly tab in the right pane to reveal the Canvas View of the TOP assembly. Subsequently, you can select any assembly to create parts that may contain subassemblies and then create more parts in them.
Click on the Assembly_Generic object to select it into the Object Toolbox. Notice that the <Component>Assembly_Generic object should be displayed in the Current Selection area.
Click on the New Part button in the Build toolbar, if it is not selected (depressed).
Move the mouse pointer to the desired location of the new subassembly in the Canvas View and click on the location to create a new part, containing the new subassembly.
Once the new part with a subassembly is created, you can select the Open Subassembly from the context menu to obtain a Canvas View for the subassembly. Right click on the newly created part to access the context menu.
The Assembly Tree View in the left pane displays the entire assembly hierarchy in the Project Model. Except for the TOP assembly, when you single click on any part in the Tree View, a Canvas View is created in the right pane to show the contents of the assembly that contains the part. If the part is outside of the view window, it will be scrolled to the center. To reveal the subassembly in a part derived from the Assembly_Generic object, right click on the part in either the Tree View or the Canvas View and select Open Subassembly from the context menu. Once the menu item is selected, a new Canvas View with the contents of the subassembly is created in the right pane with a tab indicating the part that contains the subassembly.
To go up to the parent assembly level, you can right click an empty spot on the Canvas View and select Move Up Assembly Level from the context menu. There is also a corresponding Move Up button in the Build toolbar.
SansGUI Modeling and Simulation Environment Version 1.2
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