The SolidWorks Geek

Earlier this month for Standards Tuesday, I spent a couple of weeks describing BOMs per ASME Y14.34-1996. If you missed them I highly recommend you go back and read those post since they cover a lot of information that would be helpful in creating your own BOM template, see Standards Tuesday – Bill of Materials and Standards Tuesday – Bill of Materials Pt2. Today we will be covering creating a BOM template per your own company standards. The settings and BOM configuration I will be illustrating here by no means is the only or best way to set-up a BOM they are merely my own personal preferences.

Creating a BOM from an Existing Template

SolidWorks comes preloaded with some BOM templates that may or may not be sufficient for you company needs.If they works for you, great! That means less work for you  but for the rest who are not as fortunate we will begin with one of these templates. First open an existing assembly drawing or create a new one from an existing assembly.

Next, select Bill of Materials from either the Annotation toolbar or the Shortcut bar.

As you may know you cannot insert a BOM into a drawing without having it associated with an assembly or part. This is why we are using an existing drawing that has an assembly inserted. When prompted select the assembly view in your drawing.

Bill of Materials PropertyManager

When you insert a BOM into a SolidWorks drawing you are presented with a few options that you set in the PropertyManager. Below is an explanation of each:

Table Template

In the Table Template section of the PropertyManager click the Open table template for Bill of Materials button to select the desire BOM template. We will be using this BOM template to build our own BOM.

Table Position

With the Attach to anchor point enabled the table will be attached by the nearest Stationary corner of the table to the anchor point defined in the sheet format.

BOM Type

In the BOM Type section of the PropertyManager select how the BOM will display the components and sub-assemblies of the assembly.

• Top Level Only – Displays only the top level components and sub-assemblies in the BOM. This will most likely be the option you  use the most.
• Parts Only – Displays only components in the BOM. Sub-assemblies will not be displayed but the components of the sub-assemblies will be displayed. This option could be used when you have sub-assemblies used solely to break up the assembly into easily handled sub-assemblies but should not be displayed in the BOM.
• Indented assemblies – Shows the Components and Sub-assemblies of the assembly as well as the components that make up the sub-assemblies. The components will be listed below the appropriate sub-assemblies minus the item number. If it is desired to have an item number listed with the indented components select Show numbering and numbers will be shown based on the parent sub-assembly Item number.

Configurations

Select which configurations will be used to populate the BOM.

Part Configuration Grouping

This section controls the display of part configurations and is not related to the previous Configurations section.

• Display as on item number – When enabled each part configuration in each top-level assembly configuration shares the same item number.
• Display configurations of the same part as separate items – When a component has multiple configurations each configuration is listed separately in the BOM with its own item number.
• Display all configurations of the same part as one item – When a component has multiple configurations the component is only listed once in the BOM.
• Display configurations with the same name as one item – When more then one component has configurations of the same same name they are listed once in the BOM.

Item Numbers

Allows you to set the numbering options of the BOM.

• Start at – Sets the starting item number of the BOM. In most cases this will be set to ’1′
• Increment – when set to one the item numbers increment by one, e.g. 1,2,3,4,5. Set to 5 and the items numbers increment by five, e.g. 1, 5, 10, 15. In my career I have never seen BOMs increment other then by 1 but who’s to say that there aren’t companies that insist on it.
• Do not change item numbers – When enabled even when you reorder your BOM rows the item numbers will not be reordered.

Inserting Default Template into Drawing

After making the desired selections in the PropertyManager, click the green check mark to insert the BOM template into your drawing.

On inserting the BOM into your drawing, you may notice that the configuration name is in the column header along with the QTY.  Depending on your company standards, you may find it necessary to remove the Configuration name from the header. Before 2008 you had to rename the column header, sometimes just removing the period(.) after QTY. In 2008 it so so much easier. In the Document Properties in the Tables menu, select Restrict top level only BOMs to one configuration before inseting the BOM.

Stationary Corner and Anchor Point

Two elements affect the position of the BOM on your drawing, the stationary corner and the anchor point. First, the stationary corner is the corner of the BOM that will be attached to the anchor point. When inserting a BOM into a drawing the corner closest to the anchor point will automatically be selected. If the stationary corner needs to be updated, select the appropriate corner in the Table Position section of the PropertyManager.

The second element is the anchor point. The anchor point is the point on the drawing that the stationary corner of the table will be attached. You can define the anchor point in your drawing templates to ensure that all of the BOMs will be attached. The best way to define the anchor in a drawing is to right-click Bill of Materials Anchor1 in the Sheet Format section of the drawing FeatureManager and select Set Anchor.

Next click the point on your drawing that will be the Anchor Point.

Adjusting the BOM Header

Depending on the location of your BOM, you may find it necessary to adjust the BOM header to either be at the top or bottom of the BOM. In the Bill of Materials Format Toolbar, you can toggle the column header position from top to bottom using the Table Header button. Click the button and header goes to the bottom of the table, click it again and it returns to the top.

Next, adding the BOM Title. At the Top or Bottom of the BOM, depending on what you did in the previous step, you will see two really really small arrows. In the BOM, these little arrows means a section is hidden in the BOM. Clicking these arrows will expand the hidden row displaying the BOM title. Clicking again will hide the title row again.

Updating Custom Properties for Columns

If you are using a particular custom property in your parts and assemblies that you need your BOM to reference, you can update a column to point to that property. First select the entire column by click the lettered column header at the top of the table then click the Equation button.

In the Equation toolbar, select the desired custom property in the Custom fly-out and click the green check mark. The column reference will now be updated.

Adding a New Column

The one thing our new BOM is missing is the Unit of Measurement column. Right-click on a column and select Column Right or Column Left from the Insert fly-out. If the column is not in the right location you can drag in into place.

When the column is inserted, you will be prompted to select the column you wish to insert. Here will will select UNIT OF MEASURE.

Saving the BOM as a Template

Now that we have created our masterpiece we want to save it as one of our templates to be used later. Right-click the cross in the upper-left corner of the BOM and select Save As.

Next, select the location for your BOM template and click Save. You should make sure that the location you choose is also listed in the Folder Locations section of the System Properties.

Well, that concludes our coverage on creating a BOM template. I know it was a long post but there was a lot of information to cover. I will be covering using BOMs next week, so have a great weekend and as always keep those great questions coming.