Bill of Materials Wont Rebuild

[wes616]

using 2005 SP4

I have an assembly, that has 80 items. It's a mix of sub assy's and parts. I have it set up so I can use the parts only bom list. Some of the sub assy's are "real" sub assy's and have the box selected that says "don't show child componets when used as sub assembly".

When I made the bom I overlooked one of these had not been turned on. So I turned it on, but I can't get the model to reflect the changes on the dwg. They are still listed as individual parts. The bom will not rebuild.

(note: this is an ongoing issue that i have with sw. I can never seem to get the bom to behave w/o jumping though massive hoops... and have searched the site to no avail... plus my VAR is useless. They always tell me to just delete and re insert the bom, but I have just spend the last 2 hours customizing it, and REFUSE!)

Any help will be appriciated.!

Wes C.

 

[wes616]

Well I don't know what I did. But I highlighted the BOM symbol in the tree, and hit the rebuild button. After the 17 time I didn this, the BOM finally rebuilt itself....

huray... I just wish I knew what happened.

Wes C.

 

[StefanHamminga]

using large assembly mode?
A full resolve might be needed before all changes will show up in your BOM. on another note, if rebuild doensn't work, ctrl-q(reload) is a step more powerfull.


Stefan Hamminga
Mesken BV
2005 Certified SolidWorks Professional
Mechanical designer/AI student

 

[wes616]

Yes, I had it fully resolved, in both the model, and drawing. Plus I had the drawing on high quality mode...


Anyone else have trouble getting bom's to rebuild after making model changes?

Wes C.

 

[StefanHamminga]

How is your BOM build up? do you use (for instance) calculated dimensions in a column? I had problems like that when I used dimensions that needed a extra part rebuild before updating. Seems to be working better every release though...

Stefan Hamminga
Mesken BV
2005 Certified SolidWorks Professional
Mechanical designer/AI student

 

[MadMango]

Was this a SW BOM or an Excel BOM? If Excel, there might have been some weird Microsoft update that was installed on your computer that might have been the cause.

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[wes616]

It is a simple, SW BOM.

There is nothing unusual in in.

5 Colums
1. Qty / Assy
2. Part No.
3. Desc.
4. MFR/Material (which is unlinked)
5. Find No.



Wes C.

 

[Regg]

Do what we do, when in doubt, rehang the BOM. It is not worth the frustrating especially if you just started making the drawing.

 

[wes616]

The issue is, I spent a good deal of time grouping my parts, approx 2 hours, and I add in, by hand certain things in the mfr/material col, so I have a lot of time into a particular bom when I get these issues. I just wish there was a button that could be pressed that would ACTUALLY REBUILD the BOM to a current condition.



Wes C.

 

[Regg]

Management has forbid us from making those kinds of manual updates to the BOM table so we do not run into those kinds of problems. Unfortunately I cannot offer any addtional advice without actually looking over your BOM.

Good luck!

Regg

 

[wes616]

Yes, I'd like to make the ordering changes to my model, but some I can't seem to get. And we don't have a good system in place to add information regarding mfr, or material callout into the bom table. It's a real pain.



Wes C.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Manual entries in the BOM are to be avoided.

Why don't you use the Custom or Configuration Specific part properties to populate the BOMs?


Helpful SW websites every user should be aware of faq559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions faq559-1091

 

[Regg]

I agree with CBL. Can you use custom properties? Our Description, Material and Part number columns are all derived from custom properties. We also add columns for other custom properties as needed. Works well for us.

Regards,

Regg

 

[wes616]

This issue is more with the re-ordering of the find no.'s. It seem that because of the the size of the files (75,000 parts +) our VAR suggested that we create a number of "fake" assy's and use them in the part only bom option. Well this does not conform to the way our config mgmt wants us to order the bom's so I have to re-order the bom.

Using "custom properties" is similar to the way we handle our CATIA models, but havn't set it up yet for SWx.

I'll give it a shot.

Wes C.

 

[SBaugh]

If you have customized does that mean you entered the BOM manually and updated it with your information? If so that's why it will not update. ALso if you have cutomized it to have specific properties I would hope you have saved it off as a Template?

IF you have saved it as a template, that's why it is suggested that you delete it and re-add it. The only problem has been that sometimes the BOM doesn't update (when no manual changes are made) and the only workaround at this time is to to delete it. That doesn't make your VAR useless, he is just telling you the proper workaround. Because you don't like, doesn't mean they are wrong... They are helping you out by telling the proper procedure.

It may not work right, but that what happens when there is a bug. That's why you must save your BOM template off and when you re-add it, it will have the updated Column information.

However if you double clicked a cell your BOM has lost it's associativety. - You even get a message telling you this when you double click the cell. If you read the message it will tell you what is going to happen from this point foward.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[wes616]

Hi Scott,

Yes the template is saved off.

The only information that "changes" in the BOM is, on some rows, a "blank" cell, gets one line of information added. I know that I should do this through custom properties, but havn't set it up to do so yet.

Secondly, I am more conserned at this point about moving rows around, because technically, at this point, I have not added anything to the BOM, but I have re-orderd it (to the advice of my VAR).

I would like to know why, however it randomly chose to update after "rebuilding" the BOM a dozen times, in a row.



Wes C.
------------------------------
There are no engineers in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a 'hottest part' implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent engineer would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible.

 

[GunT]

Hi all,

Wes- check out the automatic BOM updatec heckbox in your Tool/Options/ Document Properties.

If Manual entry is prohibited , how do you address the fastner issue?

I have my entire BOM linked to the Custom Properties of the model. But I don't like putting all my fasteners in my model.I symbolically put 1 unique fastener so that is shows up in my BOM and manually edit the quantity.

So is there workaround to this issue.Thanks in advance.

 

[wes616]

Unfortunately our current policy is to have all the fasteners in the model. Which honestly, is a hell of alot better than counting them... Somthing like 507 of one configuration, 303 of another config.



Wes C.
------------------------------
There are no engineers in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a 'hottest part' implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent engineer would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible.

 

[GunT]

But having all the fasteners really decreases the system performance and stability!!

 

[GunT]

Sorry to be a drag. Is there no way to count the number of holes in SW probably using Hole Wizard and not have to use all the fasteners?!