Assembly Constraints

Assembly constraints establish the orientation of the components in the assembly and simulate mechanical relationships between components. For example, you can:

• Mate two planes.
• Specify that cylindrical features on two parts remain concentric.
• Constrain a spherical face on one component to remain tangent to a planar face on another component.

Each time you update the assembly, the assembly constraints are enforced.

Degrees of freedom

Each unconstrained component in an assembly has six degrees of freedom (DOF). It can move along or rotate about each of the X, Y, and Z axes. The ability to move along X, Y, and Z axes is called translational freedom. The ability to rotate around the axes is called rotational freedom.

Whenever you apply a constraint to a component in an assembly, you remove one or more degrees of freedom. A component is fully constrained when all degrees of freedom (DOF) are removed. You are not required to constrain completely any component in an assembly in Autodesk Inventor.

To verify the DOF of components in an assembly:

• Select Degrees of Freedom from the Visibility panel of the View tab.
• Drag a component in the graphics window. Other components in the assembly move, based on existing constraints.