making a sub assembly part of the main assembly

i am animating 2 catapults to throw a ball to eachother and the socond catapult catches it and throws it back to the first. Instead of completly rebuilding my original catapult with the original .ipts i saved it under a different file name and inserted it.

The problem im having is that when i try to animate the second catapult it wont let me select parts of the assembly, only the assembly as a whole.

so is there a way to break up the sub assembly so i can animate it properly.

if it helps with the answer im using pos reps for the arm and component for the ball.

I was having this same problem. I placed a subassembly inside my final .iam. I needed to animate the original constraints from the subassembly while in the final .iam. When I clicked on the plus sign next to the subassembly in the project browser, I did not see all of the parts that were in the subassembly. All I saw were the representations and origins folders. Turns out I had set the project browser filter to "Show Children Only." All you need to do to fix this is click on the filter icon just above the project browser, and uncheck Show Children Only. Then all of the individual .ipts should show back up in your project browser.

Right click on sub-assembly and set to Flexible

or

right click on sub-assembly and then select Components-Promote.

I recommend you do it the first way.

To really do this right you will have to use Environment>Dynamic Simulation.