ToolBox is wonderful, ESPECIALLY when you customize it. Read up on the TB Help, it does a pretty good job.
We have mostly metric, but a few inch fasteners. We followed the instructions to make a copy of the ANSI metric and inch standards for our company (Company, and Company-inch respectively). We then went into these company standards and DEselected the sizes, lengths, head types, etc. that we did not use. Here was the beautiful part; we then exported this list to a spreadsheet then added our part numbers and descriptions from an existing spreadsheet generated from our ERP system. Then we imported this spreadsheet back into TB and shazam!! we have now loaded TB with a selection of ONLY our existing fasteners AND they carry our part numbers and ERP descriptions! VERY NICE AND EASY. Now when we insert a fastener we are only selecting from the company standard, which is much smaller than the whole of the industry standard. This is much faster since we have a smaller pile to choose from, but the real benefits are that we don't have to match up the generic fastener with the one in our ERP, plus the engineers are not tempted to use something we don't carry. When we do need to add a new size/length that is very easy to do a well.
It really does not matter whether you select to have each fastener of a specific type be generated as a separate file or as a configuration. There are pros/cons to either method, but they both work as they should.
I wish I had set up TB like this at the previous companies I worked for. The benefits have been dramatic.
- - -Updraft