Compressing a Bill of Material
Compressing a Bill of Material
(OP)
OK, here is the situation.
Due to our line of work, our assemblies can have hundreds of parts. Most parts have the same exact description. I have been working slowly on a total conversion from AutoCAD to Solidworks. This is an ongoing project, but one of the first things to do was to tackle the BOM.
However, it has been industry accepted standard to show all like description items on the same BOM line.
For example:
Item No. QTY Unit Description
1 – 6 2 Each Panel
7 2 Pcs Cover Plates
8 – 10 2 Each Truss
I have not found an easy way to do this with Solidworks. I have never encountered this need before in my 8+ years of Solidworks experience. I know by nature, Solidworks will give each solid part it finds in an assembly its own line in the BOM.
Right now, my only option is to have the end user remove unwanted lines, and to modify the Item No. line manually.
While this is not a totally unacceptable practice, I would like to try to have it automated as much as possible.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Due to our line of work, our assemblies can have hundreds of parts. Most parts have the same exact description. I have been working slowly on a total conversion from AutoCAD to Solidworks. This is an ongoing project, but one of the first things to do was to tackle the BOM.
However, it has been industry accepted standard to show all like description items on the same BOM line.
For example:
Item No. QTY Unit Description
1 – 6 2 Each Panel
7 2 Pcs Cover Plates
8 – 10 2 Each Truss
I have not found an easy way to do this with Solidworks. I have never encountered this need before in my 8+ years of Solidworks experience. I know by nature, Solidworks will give each solid part it finds in an assembly its own line in the BOM.
Right now, my only option is to have the end user remove unwanted lines, and to modify the Item No. line manually.
While this is not a totally unacceptable practice, I would like to try to have it automated as much as possible.
Does anyone have any suggestions?






RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
Having all like items on the same row sounds confusing to me. I know that doesn't help you out, just my .02 cents.
Flores
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
Yes, every part has a unique ID, that is why the example shows that parts 1 thru 6 are panels.
The Iso-view has balloons that point to each part. eg. item 1, item 2, item 3....item 6
But the BOM only shows a single line for items 1 thru 6.
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
This practice came from the board drafting days when a drafter did not want to spend all day writing out a line for each part. Thus, they combined any like description into one line.
I have tried to convince them that we could just use the BOM as provided by solidworks, sometimes that is producing a BOM that is so long, that it cannot be placed upon the drawing.
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
1. Name of the part (no meaning)
2. Qty of the part.
Part qty can be automatically generated and displayed by the balloon itself, allowing the assembler to skip the step of looking up qty in the BOM.
-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
The first shows what Solidworks currently produces with it's BOM. The second shows what I am trying to get the BOM to look like.
As of right now, the company policy is that since Solidworks cannot produce the BOM how they wish, they will continue to use older Autocad-based blocks and have the drafters manually fill in the data.
Current:
http:/
Needed:
http:
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
...OK I'll stop now.
Joe Hasik, CSWP/SMTL
SW 09 x64, SP 4.0
Dell T3400
Intel Core2 Quad
Q6700 2.66 GHz
3.93 GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
Which industry would that be?
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
To takedownca: I agree, in most cases I have worked for small to medium sized companies that I can sit down one-on-one with the owner if needed and explain things.
Now, I am with a company that is in numerous countries and has been around for almost 200 years. So, getting drastic changes here to go through is almost impossible.
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
Joe Hasik, CSWP/SMTL
SW 09 x64, SP 4.0
Dell T3400
Intel Core2 Quad
Q6700 2.66 GHz
3.93 GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
Even if I could prove a money savings advantage. I would then have a BOM that would be so long that it would require multiple sheet to show it.
Extra paper + extra ink + printer wear and tear = a lot of money also.
I just wish we had a merge function in the BOM that works better than the current one.
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
To me, it sounds like if it were at all possible, it might involve using something like the weldment cutlists to group items. I haven't used SW for about 3 years now, so I can't try to figure out how or if it would work. I doubt it, and even if it did, do you really want to have all your assemblies be weldments? Seems like it's likely to create more problems than it would solve.
Or perhaps an Excel template for the BOM as DekkerDesign said, and then it would have to be manually formatted to the way you want it. However, maybe one of the Excel macro gurus could help with automating that...
-- MechEng2005
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
Eric
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material
The installers work by sheets. So Item 1 on sheet 3, will be marked(stamped into the metal) 03-01. So there is no confusion.
RE: Compressing a Bill of Material