How to make BOM's awesome?

stevehess

@brucebartlett
Shhhhhh, I've been using early versions of the BoM tool for a while now and, like you, discovered it makes a great replacement for the version "properties" dialog.   

3dcad

@lougallo

Your BOM works as described and I think this might serve most of needs with few tweaks:

- I would need to be able to show certain subassemblies as single part.
For example drawer slide or hinge, we buy and use those ready assembled but I need to model multiple pieces to make them actually work in assembly.

- I would need a way to group parts that are created with pattern/mirror or just extruded/derived same real world part multiple times. Grouping could be done by searching for duplicates in part name and collect them as single part with quantity of copies.
For example dowel, it is not convenient for me to insert those as instances to assembly since we mount them as we drill the holes. So modeling dowels separately would just cause loads of extra grouping when exploding assembly for instructions / documentation. But if I add dowel body to parts they are connected, then I don't see them at all in BOM - not good either.

- Add virtual parts like Glue (minor, easy to add some small bit into assembly)


All this could be done inside googlesheet fairly easily, but for me the main reason for using BOM connected to model is that it actually updates together with model without the need to re-edit after each update.

Currently it digs all the parts inside all subassemblies, this is a lot of parts in one bom. If I wan't to narrow it down I would need to build main assembly so that all parts are inside subassemblies (this might be a good idea in general) and create separate bom from each subassy. BUT I would also need one BOM from main assy with the list of needed 'sub-boms'. Does this make any sense to you?

Do you think these requests as doable with your gsheet link or do I need to wait for built-in Onshape bom?

Or can you think of any (robust) workarounds for the issues I mentioned?

ky_ba

Not a solution, but some food for thought. In some programs BOM generation allows the adding of part numbers, model numbers, serial numbers, catalog numbers, etc. and keeping track of which was which became a nightmare. 

How do you address the fact that off the shelf parts (e.g. from McMaster which adds a catalog number and part number in addition to the OEM data) can have vastly different part identifiers from what a custom part might?

I had a real headache with SolidWorks Electrical trying to get automatic BOM generation to create something that both the buyers and the engineers/assemblers could both use because there were two fields for part numbers.

tom_scarince

Sorry for the bump, but I tried that BOM app briefly and I can see a lot of possibilities.  It would be really neat to get a peak a the source code.   

lougallo

brucebartlett said:

I have enjoyed using @lougallo 's Google sheet BOM. Best thing I find I can do is replicated the the part names and descriptions with the spreadsheet and push these back to the model. Save's typing in multiple places. I can also make the part name a combo of the the part number and description which I find handy ie [10000-01]Main Base Plate. 

A couple thing's I have noticed is suppressed parts still come into the BOM. This was not expected, I'd assume suppressed parts to be excluded.

I'd also love to see the BOM's for sub assemblies come in nested rather than flat.

I will be looking at a number of options to the bom app.  Sort of a skunk works project of mine but am interested to see other options.  Suppressed parts was not added, but easy to exclude as an option... same with hidden.  You can provide feedback from the addon for me to take a look at.  I am also working on ways to added sub-assemblies and indented parts..Very different algorithm for laying that out.  I have a number of ideas for this.

Appreciate you all taking the time to try it out.  ~Lou 

adam_mercier

Hi,
I've started to test the BOM  features with your app, i's interesting already but I would really need a way to select assembly level for exporting parts data.

I have a huge assembly with many subcomponents, and i'm only interested in level 1 BOM, but so far the app seems to detail all parts present no mater the assembly level.

Hope to see some progress on that in the future! that seems like a very intersting feature!

oleg_shilovitsky

adam_mercier said:

Hi,
I've started to test the BOM  features with your app, i's interesting already but I would really need a way to select assembly level for exporting parts data.

I have a huge assembly with many subcomponents, and i'm only interested in level 1 BOM, but so far the app seems to detail all parts present no mater the assembly level.

Hope to see some progress on that in the future! that seems like a very intersting feature!

@adam_mercier

In openBoM you can create a BOM from the assembly (or all assemblies) and it will calculate quantities for a specific level in the assembly. We don't have a way to specific # of levels to be extracted, but we will add it to the list of requirements for future versions. 

Best,Oleg

oleg_shilovitsky

@stevehess This discussion was one hell of inspiration when we started to develop openBoM. thank you! 

All, Thank you so much for comments and sharing thoughts! It was very helpful! 

Best, Oleg @ openbom.com

tomasz_szwarc457

@pete_yodis
Hi,
do you use automatic part numbering feature in OS?
If so - how you setup the PN template / rules to get such format I see on your exploded view?

We used to use

For Parts (P)
PPP.Pxxxx.RR

For Assys (A)

PPP - project code
xxxx - continious numbering 0001..... and so on
RR - revision number 01.... and so on.