Just a reminder, i'm not an experienced Catia user, and the biggest project i've done in assambly was an arbor bar back when i was taking the class.

From what i remember "components" are like internal assamblys. I didn't feel like having an assambly file saved in the folder just for the shims and a longeron, so i did it that way to minimise the ammount of subassamblys and sub-sub-sub assamblys that i'll have saved in the folder. I planed on having internal subassamblys of components that have shims attached to them, unless shims arn't the only commponent attached to them.

for example;
#1 longerons have the shims constraind to them in an internal assambly, and there is no other major component attached to the longeron (longeron being the main component - main focus if you will)

#2 station formers (arches that go on top of the frame) have shims, but they also have the frame and brackets constraind to them, so i have an external sub assambly for each station.

So to answer your question,

-yes it was planed,
-is there any advantage to it other then not having twice as many subassamblys? - not that i know off.
-will it bite me in the ass later? Maybe, I haven't planed that far yat


I'm not very comforatable with the way catia names things in the assamblys, lot of times i have to look up or "try out" to see what a "component", "part" or any other part of the assambly really means.

What are the pros and cons of doing it thisway?