Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to establish an adaptive assembly, to realize the adaptive changing of the models and to improve the flexibility and reliability of assembly change. For a three-dimensional (3D) computer-aided design (CAD) assembly in a changing process, there are two practical problems. One is delivering parameters' information not smoothly. The other one is to easily destroy an assembly structure. Design/methodology/approach - The paper establishes associated parameters design structure matrix of related parts, and predicts possible propagation paths of the parameters. Based on the predicted path, structured storage is made for the affected parameters, tolerance range and the calculation relations. The study combines structured path information and all constrained assemblies to build the adaptive assembly, proposes an adaptive change algorithm for assembly changing and discusses the extendibility of the adaptive assembly. Findings - The approach would improve the flexibility and reliability of assembly change and be applied to different CAD platform. Practical implications - The examples illustrate the construction and adaptive behavior of the assembly and verify the feasibility and reasonability of the adaptive assembly in practical application. Originality/value - The adaptive assembly model proposed in the paper is an original method to assembly change. And compared with other methods, good results have been obtained.