BOM Configurations

[GamEng]

I have a situation I hoping to get some idea's on. I have an assembly of approx 500 parts, a great deal of it is sheet metal, some hardware, machined parts, electronics etc etc. We currently get this product manufactured at 4 different places, in 4 different countries. Some of the manufacturers will just produce to what we call a "sheet metal only build", which actually consist's of much more than just sheet metal. Some of the manufacturers will producer the machine to what we call a "full build".
I am trying to maintain 2 BOM's and it is getting tougher to do as we continue to develop this product. I was looking for a way to possibly categorize the assemblies so that I could distinguish between the two builds and have the BOM's update automatically as opposed to me going in and excluding things from the BOM manually. It leaves too much room for error. I have tried to do this using the "category" field in the part properties but have had no success because some parts are used in both builds and some are not. Is there a way to tell SE to only put out parts in a certain category when you are making a BOM? Or is there a better way to approach this issue. Thanks for your time....

 

[beachcomber]

Hi GamEng,
One option is to convert the assembly to a 'Family of Assemblies'.
I can't give details of how it works exactly, but you can delete and add parts to each or all family members to give you the required configuration.
You should then be able to detail and BOM each family member.
I must admit I've always found the Family of Assemblies fairly difficult to use - up to V15 at least.
Maybe things are better in V16/17.
Remember that you can't just put your assembly back to a normal assembly once it's converted - you would have to save the full assembly as a new file then rename it to overwrite the original assembly.
This being the case, keep the full assembly as the first family member, then create the other members from it. If you then need to add any parts you can add them in the full assembly using the 'apply edits to all members' option and delete them from the members that don't require them with this option off.
Whatever you do, try it on a copy of a small assembly first !!
V16 & v17 may have different options.

bc

 

[fwc]

I'm not sure this will help, but please check out Display Configurations in Assembly. You can hide the parts in the assembly then save the configuration. You will then able to make BOM in draft, base on the configuration.

Note: It is possible to save multiple configurations in an assembly.

fwc