CAD Forum

I need some help making the BOM's in solidworks do what I want them to, if possible. I will preface this by saying I've done very little research trying to sort this out on my own. Feel free to tell me to RTFM, but only if you point me to the right spot in the FM.

Here is my problem. I have some sub assemblies in my BOM that are a collection of parts that need to be manufactured. The sub assembly is just for modeling purposes, and does not need to be reported in the BOM. In this case, I want the BOM to list all of the components in the sub assembly, but not the sub assembly itself. In other cases, the sub assembly is a part I purchase from a supplier, so I don't need all of the sub components listed in the BOM, but I do need the sub-assembly to show in the BOM.

Have you tried setting this option (in the subassembly) to "Promote"?

Edited for brain fart.

Never mind. I see where you are now. I will do some reading on how "Promote" works.

If it's a blanket "don't show subassemblies" for a given design, I think when creating the BOM, you can choose "Parts only" to show no subassemblies but all the parts (can't recall off hand if that requires promotion or not). Then for instances where subassemblies are needed, you can just keep the "Top level" BOM option selected.

So it looks like I set the BOM to "Top level only" and then "promote" all of the sub assemblies that aren't vendor parts. I have a big assembly I will try and update over the next few days. It will be interesting to see how this percolates up through all of the layers of sub assemblies.

I never cease to be amazed at SE's BOM capabilities. You can get just about anything you want in a few clicks.

We typically approach it from the other direction. The BOM is Parts Only (which by default shows every part), but then for bought-in subassemblies that don't' need to show individual components, we set the option that Mike specified above to "Hide".

Some really good or bad things about this are the following:

• Those parts from the sub assembly are always in order in your BOM (i.e. subassy A has parts A,B,C; the parts A,B,C will show up in that order at that position in the assembly BOM) - which can be really good or bad depending on if you want to order your assembly in a special way and you want it to follow the assembly order.
• It does create another instance which can be super incredibly annoying because with PDM you might change states SO much more often...

josh wrote: ↑Thu May 19, 2022 1:41 pm We typically approach it from the other direction. The BOM is Parts Only (which by default shows every part), but then for bought-in subassemblies that don't' need to show individual components, we set the option that Mike specified above to "Hide".

This is similar to what I've been doing. For Vendor assemblies, I would pick one part in the assembly and apply the assembly information, and then exclude the rest of the parts from the assembly. This is a little clunky, and will probably be confusing to anyone who comes along behind me.

I had some vendor assemblies that weren't behaving as expected. They did what I was asking for in my op, they showed the Assembly in the BOM, even though the BOM was set to "parts only."

It took a while to locate it, but I found this in the configuration of the vendor assembly. This will make it much easier to manage my vendor sub assemblies, while still allowing the BOM to show all of the parts in my manufactured sub assemblies.

Sooo... You finally found the option that I mentioned above, which you even quoted?

Yep.

Mike's response involved changing every assembly I have, which wasn't ideal. For whatever reason, I didn't fully grok your response and it's relation to Mike's post. You did point me in that direction last year, I was just too dense to pick up on it.

Just as an alternative, here at my shop we would save what you are calling vendor supplied sub-assemblies as a part file and and replace the assembly with the part file. This gives just one line item in the BOM and no juggling properties of an assembly. Also simplifies file structure.

That's a good point too, @ellundo . There are definite performance benefits to this as well both in file I/O and rebuild. I do that any time I'm not looking for the vendor assembly to be capable of movement in my assembly.

Josh, for things like cylinders or linear slides that need to show for example extended and retracted states we use configurations and move/copy bodies to show the working positions.

Yep... Biggest drawback of that is currently (well, for me with 2022) Move/Copy Body is a bodgy feature that doesn't actually have live dimensions that can be configured. You have to edit the feature to change the stroke, and suppress/unsuppress different ones for different stroke amounts, etc. If I remember correctly, 2023 adds real dimensions to Move/Copy Body, so that'll be nice once we finally upgrade.

josh wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 10:33 am Yep... Biggest drawback of that is currently (well, for me with 2022) Move/Copy Body is a bodgy feature that doesn't actually have live dimensions that can be configured. You have to edit the feature to change the stroke, and suppress/unsuppress different ones for different stroke amounts, etc. If I remember correctly, 2023 adds real dimensions to Move/Copy Body, so that'll be nice once we finally upgrade.

Create a sketch, with a dimensioned construction line, to drive the Move Body feature. That way you can use the sketch dimensions to configure the feature.

As many times as I’ve picked a sketch or edge to define the direction of the Move/Copy, I never realized you could pick two vertices or sketchpoints to define both the direction and magnitude! Thanks Glenn!

josh wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 11:14 am As many times as I’ve picked a sketch or edge to define the direction of the Move/Copy, I never realized you could pick two vertices or sketchpoints to define both the direction and magnitude! Thanks Glenn!

I'm glad I could help. It's not often I get to show you something new. It's usually the other way around.