SolidWorks BOM Tool

That's not uncommon. .

The engineering manager that I had hired to replace me at the company I left. Did it similar. Everything he learned he wanted to apply. And the shop floor was po'ed to say the least.

They had to sift through a number of drawings to get information on just one part. Your draftsman should have more practical experience, and if they're bullheaded, they have to find out for themselves.

If you have some, how should I say, shop people that says what's on their mind, have him work with them, and let him get the feed back.

The engineering drawing is a tool to aid production, not something that dictates your production system. The drawings should produced in the way that best suits your production process. If Solidworks is anything like Inventor, the BoM tool will allow your draughtsman to create a sheet metal assembly that calls up all of the parts on a single drawing.

Garbage in garbage out.

When you make the parts, the BOM will only display what data you put in the actual part/assembly model. Put in the values you want, and choose the attributes you need in your BOM template.

There are many ways to skin a cat. (No offense Del)

-R

Solid Works is the lets say the new kid on the block and everyone wants to be friends. But, with all new friends one must use some caution to get to understand them and each others relation ship. Once you've learned the system then and only then would I incorporated any changes into my system.

We all are aware of the cost of doing business these day's and adding a another item that could cause more labor hours is not needed. Move slowly and as "H.A." suggested, you or the responsible party at your firm, needs to tell the draftsmen how it is to be done.

A quote from a famous southern spokesman and humorist comes to mind:

"That boy was educated far beyond his intelligence"...Jerry Clower

Thanks for the responses. I still wonder if most sheet metal drawings now are done in a manner similar to what I have seen over the years.

As background consider documenting a simple sheet metal box. Depending upon the design you would typically have from 2 to 6 sheet metal parts. You would always have flanged tabs with hardware holes (or captive nuts) on at least some of the parts. Depending upon the design you might also have part(s) that are flat with no bends. In addition to aluminum and captive hardware there would be a chem film iridite finish on some parts and a paint over primer finish on other part(s).

Let's please focus on the document(s) that the customer (me) sends to a sheet metal shop for quote, fabrication and acceptance inspection. For a single part that contains captive hardware would you send a single document or a document for punching and bending and an additional document for inserting the captive hardware to create that "assembly" (still a single part from a procurement point of view).

If you would send a single document then would that document have a single BOM on it listing line items such as aluminum and captive hardware. Or, as SolidWorks is driving us, would that single document contain two BOMs. The first BOM would have a punched and bent part as the first line item and captive hardware as the second line item. The second bom would contain as its only line item the aluminum needed to punch the part. SolidWorks seems to require this but everyone using the single document for the single procured part would have to combine together these two BOMs.

Thanks,

Bruce

Most of our work is pretty simple, but the sheet metal shops we have used have asked for both a folded view and a flat view of the assembly.

We break the individual parts into separate sheets with separate part numbers. If the part has a bend, then that part has two sheets (flat and folded).

Each sheet calles out the material and the material finish (i.e., anodizing, paint, etc.) for that part.

If the assembly is simple, we call out and specify the PEM hardware on the part sheet. If the assembly is more complex we create a separate assembly sheet (with its own part number and revision).

The real challenge is keeping track of revisions so that we know what we are building as well as what we have built.

Our master assembly BOM also keeps a tab on part revisions for a quick-look at the current configuration. We use Excel to manage that manually, but most of our assemblies contain fewer than 40 machined or sheet metal parts.

So, to answer your final question, how we approach or document the parts and assembly is determined by the complexity of the assembly. Simple assemblies are not encumbered by the separate assembly sheet if possible.

In my experience, with several employers, each department organizes information with its own idiosyncrasies. The main driver is usually how the components of an assembly are acquired/made and then assembled. To a stamping supplier, the captive nuts are a distraction. To full service sheet metal house, they inform the process and requirements.

What you are seeing is the result of the introduction of a new "wonder tool" -- the old saw about the carpenter who gets a new toy then starts seeing every problem as easily solved by the new toy. Its the same thing with software -- its a tool and should be treated as such. If the tool is a straight-jacket, then you have the choice of rejecting the tool or accommodating its limitations. If the tool offers new features, then you are short-sighted in not evaluating the usefulness of the features TO YOUR APPLICATION of the tool. One of the benefits of the BOM tools offered in software these days is the ability to easily generate entire families of derivative products by changing a spreadsheet file and having the software automatically generate the variant assembly. If that's useful in you job (and from your description it may very well be) then investigate what the software offers or doesn't. As an engineer, there is always something that needs attention but the mechanic process of generating drawing sets takes time.

Other posters above have noted that any change you make has to be applied consistently or confusion and error-rates will inevitably rise. Even with consistent implementation, the transition period will still be challenged by stubborn people or people who do NOT favor changes of any sort; these people may have valid points in their arguments or not. What you need to do is get everyone's input into any proposed changes to help evaluate how a change might affect communications (which is the whole point of engineering drawings). This has several benefits: 1) it gets you viewpoints you may not be familiar with 2) you see consequences not thought of that you might or might not have considered and 3) it lets people know a change is being considered and lets them think about the way things are done now and prepares them for the proposed change. Surprise changes are bad all around, not only practically, but for morale (it tends to present you as a flighty, secretive BOSS who doesn't value the recipient's input). You may want to do a test run of trial parts with several deliberate revisions to see how the proposed process works AND GET FEEDBACK from the people in the chain. This still leaves you with the legacy drawings from the old system to consider - revise or continue with a dual system. That decision will depend on your situation (how many decades/thousands of drawings to handle, their readability, usage frequency, etc).

Whatever you decide to do -- DO NOT -- WHATEVER you do -- waffle back and forth in implementing change after incremental change with retractions and reimplementation. The confusion factor will skyrocket and just ruffle everybody. If a program of changes proves bad, go back to the old system until you have the bugs worked out in theory before trying it real life.

Again, I can only speak as one using Inventor software but it works like Solidworks & they tend to copy each other. In Inventor you can change the way the BoM is structured to show 2 assemblies as you describe or to include everything in 1 list. I would bet that Solidworks can do the same.

I would just add another sheet to the same assembly drawing file for your flat drawing or other detailing you do. You can add as many sheet as you want and this way when a revision comes through on that assembly or part it will show on all the sheets you have in that drawing file. To add another sheet to a .slddrw just look at the bottom left hand corner and you will see Sheet1 and a white sheet to the right of it, click on it and add your sheet format. Hope this is what you were looking for and it helps you out.

Engineering is trying to do that here at my work place. Trust me, its a nice idea, but it doesn't work right. It just creates more work for everybody else. And just when the drawings look right, voila, the item numbers and quanities will change when the next person opens the drawings!

Any ideas you can share about things going right? Unless this gets kicked up the food chain I will remain in an awkward position of having some unofficial command authority but not a good direction to push. Fundamentally it is a great idea to have SolidWorks collect the BOM information, especially as a large and complex assembly is created. But, creating awkward drawings just doesn't seem like a good way to go.

In the aerospace industry we are required to make a drawing for each piece of metal that is used in an assembly. We then make an assembly drawing showing each part with a separate part number. This is mandatory for anything we want to get FAA Production Approval on. I see this as a trend - regardless of it being for a sheet metal assembly or anything else. ISO 9000 dictates very similar processes. We have used SolidWorks for years and the BOM works well for this format. Normally we give an assembly a part number and each part of that assembly will get the same part number with an additional dash number assigned to it. Say an assembly with 4 parts to it has a P/N CR4-001. Each individual part will contain the part number CR4-001-1, CR4-001-2, etc. There isn't much to keep track of for this type of parts numbering format.

I don't think ISO9000 dictates any particular process, only that the process is controlled & traceable. We also have ISO approval & it sounds like we use a similar system to yours but don't link the part number to the assembly number as we have lots of parts that are common to many assemblies.

I work in AutoDesk Inventor and I believe the structure for SolidWorks is similar. The modeling tool requires two different solid models. A model for the sheet metal part and another for the assembly with the PEM fasteners. But this does not necessitate two drawings, I put them on one drawing. I assign a part number to the assembly and the same part number, but with a dash number, to each of the individual sheet metal parts. This way, Inventor is happy and can build the BOM which lists the sheet metal part(s) and the rivets, PEM nuts, stand offs, etc.

For simple parts (single sheet metal sub part), I just insert views of the assembly with the PEM fasteners and label the hole with both the hole dimensions and the item number for the PEM fastener.

For complex parts(two or more sheet metal sub parts), I have an assembly drawing and then on the following sheets I detail each of the sheet metal parts in as many views as it takes to properly describe the sheet metal part. The part number with the dash becomes the title for each sub part. If the material is different for the sub parts, the material is called out with each sub part.

This approach keeps the number of drawings down, makes Inventor happy, and has worked with several sheet metal suppliers.

In general, to the greatest extent possible, I do not let the software tools dictate, I like to make the software tools work for me.

It would appear that we have found a limitation in SolidWorks that forces everyone to agree upon a single solution. On the simple sheet metal parts the captive nuts are brought in as an item that was draw in another file as a SolidWorks part. They will appear on the automatically generated BOM. The sheet metal is created by a sketch. SolidWorks can attach weight, surface area and volume properties to it but there does not appear to be any way to tie it to our internal number for ordering aluminum sheets of that thickness. The BOM for these low level parts must include the aluminum part number so therefore the low level BOMs must be done by hand.

The automatic BOM tool can be used on higher level assemblies to collect the parts but it doesn't seem to be capable of working automatically on low level parts. Therefore we do the drawings the way we used to do them and we collect up all the parts and raw materials using an external database that I wrote. Double entry labor is bad but good drawings and good database reports are very important.

Double data entry is bad. Not so much that it takes twice as long to enter, but because the second entry is easily missed later on when a revision is made.

What you say sounds very limiting. With Inventor, I want the BOM tool to automatically include all parts whether I model them or not. To accomplish this I create a solid part model that has all of the BOM attributes, but with without a 3D model. I then insert this part into the assembly so that it shows up on the BOM.

Inventor has a feature which allows for a virtual parts (BOM data but w/o a 3D model), but I prefer my method as it is easier to add the model if I choose to do so later.

Double entry is bad. I agree. It consumes time and leads to errors.

I'll agree with the first two sentences of your second paragraph. I'm not quite following you with your third sentence. In my example the punched aluminum sheet is drawn in SolidWorks and can have aluminum properties assigned to it. But, so far my draftsman can not have it put internal part number XYZ on the BOM.

In a different but related example the captive nuts would be drawn as a steel item but we would want the internal part number ZYX to show up on the BOM. Since he drew the captive nuts in a separate included part file the correct number does show up on the BOM but I feel like this is a little bit of an accidental victory. The BOM is ignoring the steel in the captive nut but this is good since we treat it as a purchased part. The aluminum sheet is a purchased raw material and we do not want it treated the same way.

The same part number for aluminum sheet gets used in many parts so therefore we can't just make a part with the aluminum part number and force it into our BOM.

In Inventor the file name does not have to be the number that appears in the BoM, the number & description can be edited in the part properties. You can also edit the BoM in the drawing sheet which gives a lot of options over what is displayed in the final drawing.

Have you been here?

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/training-support-cad.htm

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/communities/get-support.htm

I understand this is an older thread but hopefully its still being looked at. In reading through the prior posts I don't see a discussion on Config management. I have a similar dilema on setting a standard and coming out of the areospace world where having a part number and drawing for the sheet metal part and then a separate p/n and dwg for the assembly.

Now working in an industrial products group, we have a consultant saying the "industry standard" is to have the assy and sheet metal part on one dwg with one part number. This rubs against my prior training on config management - you could have two completed parts with the same part number the sheet metal part and the sheet metal part with inserts, which is not acceptable. THere are ways around this on the mfgr floor but it feels like that's adding work to them.....so I'm looking for some more perspectives on how others do it. The one constraint I didn't mention isthe part numbering scheme this company has. The drawing number is the part number and it contains the dash number, this is then the file name for the cad model. So you end up with a cad model with XXX.YYYY-01.part for the sheet metal part and a XXX.YYYY-01.assy for the assembly and on the BOM you have the assy p/n listed on the bom as the sheet metal part. I know the root of this issue is their p/n scheme.

It has been my experience that "industry standard" or "company standard practice" are just words that are commonly thrown around for someone to get their way. Ask the consultant for documentation on the standard.

With the small company that I work for, I do the following:

If the parts are to be purchased/fabricated and inventoried separately, I give each their own part number and drawing.

If the parts are to be purchased/fabricated assembled (typically welded or riveted) from the fabricator, I assign one part number to the assembly and -99, -98, -97 and on down for the parts that go into the assembly. All parts are documented on the same (usually multi-sheet) drawing. This eases configuration management and inventory control for me.

I apologise that I didn't follow your explanation on the part numbering for the assembly and the fabricated part. In your example, you have a one for one relationship for the assembly and part(s). Typically an assembly has more than one part.