About Submodels

You use a submodel to designate portions of a model for use in other parts of the model.

You can make an individual application component into a submodel. To create a submodel that contains multiple application components, you must include them in a process component’s subflow. When you create a submodel from a process component, all of the application components in the process component’s subflow are included in the submodel. For example, if you create a submodel of a Loop component that contains a Calculator component, changes to either of the components are reflected in all the subflow instances. When you create components that are permanently linked, you are creating referenced components.

The following cannot be made into submodels:

  • any Reference component,

  • a referenced component, because it is already a submodel, and

  • the root (top-level) component. (This action is considered referencing a model. For more information, see Using External Referenced Models.

Alternatively, you can create a reference copy of a single component, which allows you to skip the step of creating a submodel. This is useful if you want to reuse a single instance of a component more than once in your model. For more information, see Adding Reference Copies of a Single Component.