As far as i know you can not. I just went thru this where I have 7 assemblies that have all the same parts except one main frame part is replaces and that moves all the other components to their new locations. I created a bunch of animation sequences for this and then wanted to duplicate those on the other assemblies, i could not find a supported way to do it.
Here is what i ended up doing:
- Create the first illustration from a linked .pvz export from Creo of the assembly, we'll call it asm1.pvz. Make all the animations you need in here etc. Save this as a .cdi Illustrator file, lets call the test1.cdi for now
- In the file system you create a copy of that test1.cdi, call it test2.cdi
- Move the test1.cdi and the asm1.pvz into a new folder
- Export out you second variant assembly from Creo, rename it to asm1.pvz and put in the in the same directory with test2.cdi
- Open test2.cdi in Illustrator, it will tell you that test1.pvz has changed and ask if you want to update, say yes, replace and missing components from the eBOM.
- Check that all your animations carried over and publish out a new .pvz to use in studio.
The key step above is always doing this in the same folder location. Illustrate apparently uses absolute file paths to locate the linked source file. So you need to rename your new file and have it in the location Illustrate is expecting or it to update.
