Component systems enable you to launch and use familiar stand-alone editors to build a project, but represent only a subset of a complete analysis. They usually do not include all components and steps necessary to achieve an analysis system; however, if you are familiar with a particular application, you can use your product knowledge to complete an analysis.

For example, you can use a geometry component system to define your geometry and then connect the component system to several downstream systems, so component system can then be connected to several downstream systems, so that the downstream systems share the same geometry source.

Component systems also include applications that open outside of Workbench (rather than as a tab), allowing you to use Workbench to manage your analysis data and files. This can be useful for products such as Mechanical APDL, which uses numerous files during an analysis.