Indented BOM showing total qty of parts...possible?

[goodtruant]

The indented BOM's work nearly perfect for the way our company runs except....

1. We do not need the line for the assembly.
2. The quantity should show the full qty of the parts needed.

The only way I see an indented BOM to display is with an assembly quantity and the parts laid out for a single assembly.

ie. Assembly X, qty 4
-Part1.1, qty 1
-Part1.2, qty 2
-Part1.3, qty 1

Is there any way to have the BOM not show the assembly, and show the full qty of the parts required?

ie. Part 1.1, qty 4
Part 1.2, qty 8
Part 1.3, qty 4

OR

Is it possible to have a "parts only" BOM with detailed numbering??

Thanks!

 

[Updraft]

goodtruant,

Look at the BOM options. Under BOM Type you can select Parts Only. This sounds like just what you are looking for.

- - -Updraft

 

[goodtruant]

Parts Only BOMs do not show detailed numbering.

We need the detailed numbering because we sort the list by material.

 

[goodtruant]

Where does the info for detailed numbering come from?

Even extracting the assembly order would be helpful. But I don't see this as an option.

 

[Updraft]

With all due respect it seems you want to have your cake and eat it too. With indented, detailed numbering you get all the parts and their relationships to their assemblies. The quantity of a part is per its use in the parent assembly. If you want a summary of the parts and their total quantity then I think you'll need to do some post-processing. This is easily done by exporting your BOM to Excel and doing the math there. We do not do that here because the indented BOM works fine for us since we build the subassemblies and then put them together in the next level assembly. We do not have one big pile of parts and a single master assembly drawing.

If you do not actually build things as subassemblies, but for some reason you have used subassemblies in SWX you can DISSOLVE those subassemblies in your master assembly. This would effectively flatten your BOM, but it would end up providing a total part quantity.

Am I missing something in how you are using your BOM information? Why would sorting it by material be necessary? If you don't mind the post-processing you can send the BOM to a spreadsheet where it is easy to sort by whatever criteria.

- - -Updraft

 

[goodtruant]

Our BOM feeds our NC machines, certain materials go to different machines. The parts are optimized and nested on to sheets. We do build things as subassemblies, but projects are optimized in large batches. This saves both time and material. However, when our pile of parts come off the machine, they need to be sorted (they are labeled by the machine). It's nice to have a list that tells us which sub-assembly a part belongs to. This info also gets printed on the label as an easy reference.

That is fabulous that the BOM's works fine for you. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here. It's pretty obvious that the information is there for Solidworks to use. I was just asking if it was possible to use that information in a BOM. Post processing takes time, and we process thousands of parts per day. Even if it takes 2 minutes to save as a excel file, format the sheet, delete the lines for the sub-assemblies, and do the math....multiply that by 20-60 BOMS's a day. This will also add an element of human error. Processing thousands of BOM's yearly will increase the chances of something going wrong, don't you think?

I take it that solidworks does not have this functionality? If not, I'll try to find another solution. If it does, could you help me with that process?

Thank you.

 

[Updraft]

goodtruant,

Thanks for the information, it helps a lot to better understand what your needs are. I, too, was involved in a business where we had a lot of mixed parts. (I am envious that your machine marks the parts.) However, we processed the orders just fine by using the MRP/ERP system we had. Thus we made only the needed parts that went into their bins and were pulled for assembly into an order. I instituted an autonesting program (we were a sheet metal house). Our scrap went way down, material utilization increased from about 70% to high 80's, and our WIP totally went away. Our throughput on our bottleneck machines went up so much that they were no longer bottlenecks. But this was still managed by the MRP/ERP system. Often times the parts had little or no residence time in the bins, but this solved a multitude of problems, i.e., if a part was bad we could pull another to replace it (we kept minimal safety stock and even that went away as our autonesting technique improved).

From the description of your operation I would hope you have a good MRP/ERP system. It would be better suited to what you are doing than SWX.

That being said, there might still be a way to generate the information you want through SWX, perhaps with a customized BOM and/or a macro, but I am not a macro guy so someone else on this forum would have to chime in with their cleverness.

On a lark I just tried something that might be of some help to you and it worked! I made a simple top level assembly that consists of Subassy-1 (qty 1) and Subassy-2 (qty 2) plus some extra fasteners that are also present in the subassemblies. On the Assy drawing I inserted an indented BOM with detailed item numbering. I then inserted a second BOM with parts only. I did not know if we could have two different BOM tables on a drawing, but we can! Though they are on separate tables, we now have the detailed item number from the first BOM and the total part quantity from the second. It may not be pretty and it may not be the slickest solution, but it just might get you what you're after. By the way, once you have created the BOM associated with a drawing view you can move it to another drawing sheet.

- - -Updraft

 

[goodtruant]

Very nice, I'll play with the double BOM idea. Maybe I can just hide columns to make a single (visually) BOM.

Thanks for the reply!