Cannot change contents of callout to match part data: Safari Issue

brian_brady

EDIT: I found the issue to the following problem. I use Safari and the cursor de-selects when you pick an item from the menu. Switched to Chrome (against my better judgement) and it worked. I will use Chrome for ballooning, but still do the rest of my work in Safari (its faster and safer).

Try as I might, I have never been able to use part or BOM data in callouts. I end up manually typing the item number I want and using Excel to create BOMs. Can anybody point me in the right direction? Doing it this way takes longer and is error prone.


Rant mode on: This is an area (BOMs and item numbers) where Onshape needs to do a lot of work. I want control of which part is item 1 and item 42 and item 99 in the BOM not Onshape. If detail is obsoleted, another should not take its space in the BOM. Item numbers should not be reused without user permission.

mthiesmeyer

Hi @brian_brady,

With regards to

Item numbers should not be reused without user permission.

Would you expect your Item Numbers to be unique across Assemblies or just within a given Assembly?

and regarding

If detail is obsoleted, another should not take its space in the BOM. 

by detail do you mean a part/subassembly? Or what is 'detail' referring to here?

Best,

Mike

brian_brady

mthiesmeyer said:

Hi @brian_brady,

With regards to

Item numbers should not be reused without user permission.

Would you expect your Item Numbers to be unique across Assemblies or just within a given Assembly?

and regarding

If detail is obsoleted, another should not take its space in the BOM. 

by detail do you mean a part/subassembly? Or what is 'detail' referring to here?

Best,

Mike

A little background: I worked at GM/Delphi for close to 10 years in a mechanical/manufacturing engineering department. I then worked for 10 years at a machine tool design/build company. When we created machine and tooling drawings at both locations it was a "rule" that item numbers were never re-used when changes happened after initial release. For any specific tool number (assembly and associated sub-assemblies that were specific to that tool number), manufactured (in-house designed) details (parts) started with item 1. Purchased and standard content was added after the details were all in the BOM. After initial release changes to the BOM was first come, first served. We used specific, but different numbering schemes at both locations for sub-assemblies. At the GM facility, 951 was the main assembly and 952 was the first sub-assembly for instance. Detail numbers (for parts and purchased/standard components) continued from the main assembly to the subs. Each tool number had a single BOM for the entire drawing package, regardless of how many sub-assemblies. The BOM included one or more columns for which assembly each item in the BOM was used with. After release, if an item was no longer used it was struck out in the BOM with an accompanying change symbol and note and the item number was not used again.

What I discovered yesterday and the day before with Onshape is that item numbers for an assembly are based on the order parts and standard content is listed in the assembly. I also found out that items in sub-assemblies are "unknown" if they are ballooned in the main assembly. This created a problem for me because I create subs to make assembly easier and more modular, but don't necessarily make a drawing of any of the specific subs. I wanted to just include the subs as part of the main assembly. I would like to have an override option for item numbering, maybe a right-click on an instance in an assembly and force an item number. Onshape could check if that item number has already been "forced" to make sure I don't accidentally duplicate an item. An assembly wide setting for not reusing or reusing item numbers would also be handy.

Every company handles numbering differently. Onshape needs to be flexible enough in this matter for that to happen without having to resort to manually created tables or spreadsheets that have to be manually checked against the assembly (which is prone to human errors).

Onshape has done a lot of good so far and I'm confident that they will continue doing so. Drawings and BOMs and assembly management are the three areas that I perceive as the weakest at this time for machine design. 

ilya_baran

I am wondering if you're looking for part numbers rather than item numbers?  Those behave I think more closely to what you describe.

brian_brady

ilya_baran said:

I am wondering if you're looking for part numbers rather than item numbers?  Those behave I think more closely to what you describe.

I used detail numbers (what I think of as item numbers) as part numbers, i.e. for detail 5 I assigned part number 5. That works but I want my BOM to be sorted by detail (part) numbers not item numbers and not show item numbers (they are meaningless to me). Can that be done?

mthiesmeyer

A few things:

1.) As Ilya mentioned, part numbers seem to fill the space you are looking for much better than our item numbers. It is in the plan to allow you to sort a BOM by the contents of a specific column, but as usual you can speed that up by creating an improvement request to the right (I could not find an existing one).
2.) Please create a separate improvement request for the ability to remove the Item No. column.
3.) When you say:

 I also found out that items in sub-assemblies are "unknown" if they are ballooned in the main assembly.

Were you trying to access the `Item No.` from the part properties or the table properties? If you insert a multi-level BOM table into the drawing of your top-level assembly you will be able to add balloons to parts that are nested inside assemblies with the correct item numbers.

brian_brady

mthiesmeyer said:

A few things:

Were you trying to access the `Item No.` from the part properties or the table properties? If you insert a multi-level BOM table into the drawing of your top-level assembly you will be able to add balloons to parts that are nested inside assemblies with the correct item numbers.

Does this only work if you created a BOM? What if I don't create a BOM? I was using the part properties. Parts that were put into sub-assemblies that were inserted into the main assembly did not recognize the part numbers that I assigned to the these parts in part studios. All I got was ---- instead of a number.

mthiesmeyer

@brian_brady

If you were using part properties and trying to access the `Part number` property, that will work without a BOM table (and if it did not please file a support request). If you were trying to access the `Item No.` of the part, that will not work unless you have a BOM table and are using table properties. (The availability of `Item No.` and `Quantity` in the part properties dropdown is a bug and will be removed soon, sorry for the confusion).

brian_brady

I was using the 'Part Number' property and parts specific to a sub-assembly were not auto-populating in balloons for a main assembly drawing. Does the part number property of an assembly actually do anything in drawings?

brian_brady

ilya_baran said:

I am wondering if you're looking for part numbers rather than item numbers?  Those behave I think more closely to what you describe.

@ilya_baran

For the sake of an example, say tool/part number of a fixture I'm designing is 8675309. For me, that is the tool number of the entire drawing package. Each detail (part) in the package would use that base number with the detail number (item number as it were) added to the end, i.e. 8675309-005 would be detail 5 (we use leading zeros). Assemblies are also assigned "dash" numbers in our system (at both companies). For one company assemblies started with -951 and the other they started with -501. Therefore, this hypothetical tool might have two assemblies, 8675039-951 and 8675309-951. To us item numbers in a BOM are the actual detail numbers, they were not separate. The lowest numbered items on a BOM are manufactured details (parts). After that purchased and standard components were added. A designed bracket might be -042 and the screws might be -085. The part number column on our BOMs was for reference part numbers that were either part of another design, standard part numbers for things like drills, taps, and inserts, or model/order numbers for purchased parts.

Some companies we designed for use specific item numbers for different types of purchased or standard components, i.e. -6xx was screws/nuts/pins/etc, -7xx electrical parts like switches/sensors, -8xx for pneumatic components, etc. The part number property could be used for these, but the item number could column would be confusing to those used to the system. Also, their would need to be another part number property to handle how these systems used part numbers in the BOM.

The answer might be custom part properties and BOM columns and the ability to determine what columns you want in a BOM when it is added to a drawing. Also, I have seen BOMs long enough to need three or more C-sized sheets where there were three BOM columns per sheet with each BOM column having item, part number, qty, and description columns. Currently a long BOM cannot be split to fit into multiple columns on a page or across multiple pages.