CATIA rigid product behaving like flexible product

[howdyitssam]

I have an assembly which contains a few instances of a subassembly. When I open the subassembly in a new window to change the orientation of the parts within, those changes to not propagate to the parent assembly, even though its rigid. When I go to analyze - mechanical structure, the children of the subassembly are listed as a child of the parent assembly, which shouldnt be the case. This is driving me nuts. I know I can delete and replace the subassembly, but I need to know why this is happening.

 

[Little Cthulhu]

Because in CATIA parts hosted by subassemblies are actually stored in a parent assembly as well. It's called a "context".

This makes possible changing color (and some other properties) of a part inside a parent assembly "in place" without modifying the subassembly that contains it. Imagine placing two doors inside a house and painting their knobs differently. Single door subassembly, but two knob part instances in house assembly context.