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How are people dealing with things that are measured by length on a BOM?
eric_pesty
Member Posts: 1,947 PRO
A concrete example I am dealing with is gaskets: we often use adhesive gaskets that come on a roll and may have several different cut bits to make door seal.
We do want the CAD model for the gasket but we end up with several parts that should all have the part number of the gasket. However in ERP we have the part number is for "1 foot" of gasket so even if we make it a configured part with the length being "excluded from properties", we will end with say qty 4 if we have 4 pieces (regardless of their length).
Currently these quantities are over-ridden outside of CAD but it means we have to manually set the quantity (and manually update it we change the design…)
Best Answer
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Caden_Armstrong
Member Posts: 195 PRO
Do you have a ERP integration or do you manually enter the BOM? An ERP integration should be able to handle situations like these (albeit with some customization).
I've done around ~50 CAD-ERP integrations, and based on your description of how the ERP is setup (part number is per foot of material), Simon's suggestion makes the most sense. In Onshape, have a column with total length and the ERP integration should be able to recognize this and replace the quantity with the number of feet as it goes into the ERP.
Creating new part numbers for each possible length will become a headache in the future. I've spent a lot of time helping with data cleanup during migrations with companies who have done this.www.smartbenchsoftware.com --- fs.place --- Renaissance
Custom FeatureScript and Onshape Integrated Applications1
Answers
Hi Eric,
We have the same issue, for now we deal with it outside of Onshape but it's people dependent and prone to mistakes. The best workaround from time to time is to use virtual components. They can be setup to show length instead of quantity of an item. But even with this, we don't have a proper way to automate the process up to the order. We still have to treat it manually.
For a gasket material, I would think that a special custom feature could be created which would take edges and/or curves and model sweeps which are all separate parts, but somehow it tallies up the overall length.
Computing the total length from the CAD model is the "easy" part. What to do with BOM and part numbers is the tricky bit…
The BOM would need the ability to support overriding the "quantity" with a custom property…
@eric_pesty Now that configurations can be rolled into a single part number, I was assuming there would be a config that would be a single part with the total length. That would be what would show up on the BOM. Definitely a bunch of overhead to make it happen, but it seems like we're closer.
Right so you would have QTY1 of "Gasket, 7.3ft", or whatever. You'd still need a manual edit somewhere to get the correct qty of gasket in ERP but that would help… You could probably create a new column with the length property and maybe have some rule in the ERP input to convert that to a correct "quantity"…
I guess you wouldn't even need the "exclude from properties" as you would just have the one part with the rolled up qty included in the BOM (and set the other ones to exclude from BOM). Otherwise you would end up with QTY 4 of "Gasket, 7.3ft" which would be misleading. Creating a composite might be another way but it's a different approach (i.e. not inserting different lengths of the same part in the assembly), at least you could use FS to compute that length property (with different level of automation depending how much effort you put into it)…
Thanks for the input, I definitely have some things to think about!
@Pat_Couture , the "items" way doesn't seem to provide a lot of benefit if you still have to input the value manually, I guess it does remove the need from manual editing downstream so that's something…
I've been putting the length in the PN. For example: 20-2353-23in for a 23" length of gasket. Our ERP system is manually entered, not tied into OS.
Interesting, so if there are four separate "pieces" of gasket modeled (for example if the 4 sides of a door each use a separate piece rather than trying to bend one long piece all the way around) you would have 4 separate BOM lines, each qty 1 and having the corresponding length in the PN?
Or would you combine them in a single composite part with the length in the PN.
The risk I see with adding it to the PN field is that purchasing might be a bit confused if they have to parse the part number to understand what to buy AND how much to get.
For use we need to get the correct information in the QTY. column in ERP. We may have to continue doing it manually for now. We'll have to decide if we are going to use an item and enter it manually there or look at way to get a property filled in automatically with the length and use that outside of CAD (either by having the length part of the description or using a separate "length" column…
Do you have a ERP integration or do you manually enter the BOM? An ERP integration should be able to handle situations like these (albeit with some customization).
I've done around ~50 CAD-ERP integrations, and based on your description of how the ERP is setup (part number is per foot of material), Simon's suggestion makes the most sense. In Onshape, have a column with total length and the ERP integration should be able to recognize this and replace the quantity with the number of feet as it goes into the ERP.
Creating new part numbers for each possible length will become a headache in the future. I've spent a lot of time helping with data cleanup during migrations with companies who have done this.
Custom FeatureScript and Onshape Integrated Applications
@Caden_Armstrong (and everyone else), thanks for your input.
Our CAD to ERP process is… let's just say sub-optimal… and basically completely manual at this point. It's also not really feasible to integrate CAD directly with ERP for reasons I'm not going to go into here….
However we are looking at the possibility at adding a layer in between (i.e. PLM) to make the part of the process we have control over more automated, I'm asking here as it would require some significant adjustments to our CAD practices and I was interested in seeing what's worked for others.
The takeaway seems to be that there is no real helpful "out of the box" functionality that would handle this automatically, but if we store the information in a custom property (which sounds like something even I could handle in FS, we'll just have to figure out what makes the most sense to our users here), we should be able to use it down the road.
Yes it's less than perfect and I would prefer a better way but for now at least we can insert the information somewhere to be reused if we order again from the CAD model. In the past we would just deal with it at the order process but we would need to start all over the next time..
I'm using measure to variable
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/cc0e00cacc4401e125d7b538/v/64654998d1fc0bdab81da256/e/664be2af6a89989fb5e02bc5
I'm doing a lot of plumbing requiring me to understand flow rates, velocities and how much does something weight? Would you put 700 litres of water inside a computer rack on the top shelf? What's the flow velocity through a weir? Measure to variable is working for me.
The thing I'm struggling with is the length of a beam appearing in the BOM. I know it can be done, I just haven't figured it out yet.
@nick_papageorge073 can you please elaborate? Are you changing it's name or setting a length property?
I'm changing the PN and the description (by hand, not linked to anything).
@billy2 , @nick_papageorge073 ,
You can use the "set property" feature to build a name/description that incorporates any variables automatically, then you wouldn't have to change it manually after the fact (and having it be wrong if things change…)
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/861d68af1cee67efb9e4843d/w/53981180c0515118622d7818/e/65b0c9acba56e6a4786405ec?renderMode=0&tangentEdgeStyle=1&uiState=672fcac9aeed32419b1d5aa1
there's a bunch of other good FS used within that doc.
I downloaded "set property", looks perfect. Thanks guys.
Here's another one that's driving be crazy, cleaning up downloaded part files from vendors. I down 100's of files from mcmaster carr and then do the same thing to each to make them compatible with my project. Anyone crack that nut yet?
Just parsing the name and creating name, part number, vender, description & lib properties could save so much time.
Vote for this improvement request, and contact McMaster Carr and request that they develop their plug in for Onshape.