Bill of materials help

[jefsmk]

What are you folks here using to create Bill of Materials for assemblies? I for years have created bom's in AutoCad which was, put lightly, a pain. Recently, I have been designing a database to accomplish this along with much more (help with purchasing and selling of the parts on the bom's). I hoped to just buy some software to accomplish this, but I could not find anything that suited my needs.

So, am I going about this the right way, is there a better method? What are you folks doing?

 

[twlincoln]

AutoCAD Mechanical, Mechanical Desktop and Inventor all have automated BOM functionality and features built in. If you are using AutoCAD you might want to look into dbConnect (to hook into your database) or using AutoCAD 2002 or 2004's EATTEXT along with Atrributes to dump directly to an Excel XLS or Access MDB file.

Also there are a few third party applications that you can get information on from Autodesk's eStore (see Partner's Product Index):

http://estore.autodesk.com

- Tracy