What are assembly Items?

alan_baljeu

It always shows > Items (0) in every example I've seen.    What is this for?

jakeramsley

Hi @alan_baljeu,

Items are additional items that get included in the Bill of Material and can be applied to instances.  This could be things like glue, epoxy, paint, etc.  Items are defined and associated with a single company and documents owned by those companies are able to add items through the BOM.

https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/bill_of_material.htm

jakeramsley

Hi @alan_baljeu,

Items are additional items that get included in the Bill of Material and can be applied to instances.  This could be things like glue, epoxy, paint, etc.  Items are defined and associated with a single company and documents owned by those companies are able to add items through the BOM.

https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/bill_of_material.htm

tim_hess427

@jakeramsley - what does "applied to instances" do exactly? It sounds like you're referring to the "reference" input option when adding an item. I've seen this option when adding items to an assembly, but can't figure out what it does or why I would want to do it. Does it change something in the BOM? Drawings? Properties? 

john_mcclary

I think reference is for future use. I think I heard something about allowing ballooning or something. Doesn't seem to do much now

tim_hess427

@john_mcclary - That's what I expected, but I've seen it come up a couple times here with no explanation, so I've been left wondering if everybody else knows something that I don't know. 

TimRice

tim_hess427 said:

@john_mcclary - That's what I expected, but I've seen it come up a couple times here with no explanation, so I've been left wondering if everybody else knows something that I don't know. 

Items allow you to reference a specific face on a part and currently we do not support any note/callout/balloon references to faces in drawings. If you do apply the reference now then you will be well setup to take advantage in the future when/if we release tagging on faces in drawings

john_mcclary

That's what I thought I remembered. But I don't feel comfortable applying settings until I 've seen them in action. So I'll continue ignoring this option for now