complicated process in turning solid parts to weldment assemblies

[duk748]

hello - the company i work for has a process in place to convert solid parts into weldments to create bom parts to export to excel spread sheets to generate part lists for purchasing, etc. - already this is getting complicated - our "inventor" expert has us take the solid, make parts from the model, change those part names to start a new weldment assembly, suppress the machined features, make a new assembly, create the bom on the drawing - now we have 2 distinct models (not sure why) that have no relationship between each other - somehow this procedure is way too complicated to me - is there a better way to take a solid part and convert it to a weldment and generate a bom that still maintains it as 1 part w/ 1 drawing w/ a bom? and a drawing for machining? - after we convert the solid part to multiple pieces sometimes we have to go back a re-mate features to create the weldment assembly - this seems like redundant work - any info or help would be greatly appreciated -

 

[looslib]

Instead of building the assembly as a single solid, build it as multiple components, then break out the individual details to their own drawings. Take the assemblied part and use that as a component in a new assembly used for the machining operations. This is how we have done it with both NX(UG2) and Creo(Wildfire/ProE).

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli