Creating a worksheet for a Bill of Materials

[Bas Vellekoop]

Hi guys,

 

I`m doing allot of designs which need a BOM when they go in production.

My setup of for that now is: all objects are symbols with an attached record. In this way I can count the amounts and get information about the materials and give them a brief description

If I use a plugin object like a set screw from the fasteners palette I put them in a symbol and attach my own record to it with the chosen length and diameter manually.

This is prone to error and double work because al this information is automatically attached to the plugin object by VW.

 

My questions i hope you guys can help with:

 

Is there anyway I can create a worksheets in which there  is column that uses my manually created records and the plugin record without the need of a column for each individual setting in the plugin object?

 

Is it normal that you can not 'read' the hidden records from a plugin object inside a symbol like the length?

 

 

 

Attached a simple file to illustrate what I`m looking for.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

test for bom.vwx

Edited November 26, 2018 by Bas Vellekoop

[Pat Stanford]

Take a look at my edited worksheet. It will answer a number of your questions.

 

1.  Your criteria was Symbols. That means that you will only be able to get data on the symbols, not on the contained objects of the symbols. I changed the criteria to be Parametric objects and with the InSymbol box checked. That gets you a subrow for each PIO. You could also tell it to be Parametric Objects OR Extrusions. Or you could just attach your Material Record to the PIOs and then use that as the criteria.

 

2. You will need to attach your Material record to the PIO or Extrusion, not to the symbol. The subrow can look at either the contained objects OR the containing symbol, but not both. It would be nice to have a function that would allow you to access the Parent, but it does not exist yet.

 

3. Once you have the Material record attached to the correct objects, the rest should be easy.

 

4. Take a look at the =Concat function in column E to see how to combine multiple data into a cell.  You can replace where it says B3 with the formula in B3, C3, D3, etc. to get a single cell with what you need.   Or you can just leave the multiple columns and set the width to zero so they don't display.

test for bom - PIO Criteria.vwx

[Bas Vellekoop]

Hi @PatStanford, thanks for your help!

 

I can't see your edited file, did you upload it?

 

Thanks!

 

[Pat Stanford]

Of course I didn't attach the attachment. What sense would it make to do the right thing the first time when I can get to go back and fix it later?? 😉

 

Attached to above post.

[Bas Vellekoop]

16 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

Of course I didn't attach the attachment. What sense would it make to do the right thing the first time when I can get to go back and fix it later?? 😉

 

Attached to above post.

Thanks! 

[Bas Vellekoop]

Great help Pat! 

The only thing i now have to look out for is that everything has the record attached, otherwise I`m missing parts in the BOM.

 

I`m not finding 'concat' in the edit report dialog box in the section of columns and then searching in the functions? Is this correct?

Edited November 27, 2018 by Bas Vellekoop

[Pat Stanford]

Concat might not be in the pull down menu, but you can definitely type it in and it works.

 

Yes, keeping a BOM correct is always a challenge. Be it that you accidentally duplicated a screw or did not put something in the correct class/layer/record so that the database finds them. Automation is a bitch as it does exactly what you tell it to do, not what you really want it to do.