Bill of Materials Editor

The Bill of Materials Editor is for maintaining assembly bill of materials. It is used to:

• Edit and create new iProperties and bill of materials properties.
• Edit bill of materials Structure for components.
• Set quantity overrides for components.
• Create a consistent Item numbers or detail IDs for components for the generation of Parts Lists and other associative lists from the bill of materials.

Every property edit that takes place in the Bill of Materials dialog box is immediately saved in the Parts List. You can edit Item values, iProperties, or custom iProperties for all available components. Multiple components can be edited at the same time.

Each bill of materials column represents a property of the component. The bill of materials Structure override is not viewed and cannot be edited in the bill of materials Editor.

When you edit a part number field and the edit results in a component equivalence, the component rolls up with the equivalent components.

When a component is promoted, an arrow icon is added to its node icon to represent that it was promoted.

Note on item numbers: The Item Column displays item numbers in the Bill of Materials. Every item is automatically assigned an item number. The item number can be edited as needed. Changes to item numbers are automatically applied in the Parts List and Balloons, except for values in the Parts List that are set as Static values.

You can modify values on the bill of materials by changing the design properties in the Properties dialog box or in the Bill of Materials dialog box.

Editing in the BOM Editor

• You can copy and paste data between the Bill of Materials dialog box and Microsoft Excel. Non-contiguous selection sets in the BOM table are supported.
• Copy BOM cells within the BOM table, to another BOM view, or to an external editor.
• You can drag and drop rows in the BOM table. The functionality is available also for non-contiguous selection sets.
• Commands are available in the context menu (Open, Copy, Paste, Capitalize, Find, and Replace).
• If a non-contiguous selection set exists and you click a column heading, the previously selected BOM items are highlighted in the selected column. Other selections are canceled.
• Selection sets are saved for particular BOM views and for collapsed subassemblies. Only the visible selection is taken into account in BOM operations.
• If you sort rows in BOM and a selection set exists, the selection set is kept after you apply the sort.

Bill of material views

A bill of materials can be displayed as a structured list of items with parent/child relationships between components, or as a flat list where all components are seen at once with no parent/child relationship.

Note: iAssemblies support only the First-Level Structured view. The All-Levels Structured view or the Parts-Only view is not available.

Structured View

In a structured list, assemblies and subassemblies can be expanded to see their constituent children from the top of the assembly structure down. A structured list reports the structure of the assembly, which does not always correspond with the real design. This is reflected in the bill of materials Structure display, where bill of materials Structure properties are applied. Phantom and Reference components are hidden from the list, and child components are promoted from Phantom assemblies.

Parts Only View

A parts-only view presents bill of materials data where structure is ignored. Components in the design are displayed as single lines regardless of parent/child relationship. The only influence that structure has on this list is in quantity calculations and display of Phantom/Reference components. If a component is a phantom or a reference it is not displayed in the flat list. The quantity of child components is multiplied by the quantity of the phantom parents. For example, a parent with a quantity of 2 owns a child component with a quantity of 10. Therefore, its total quantity is 20 in the flat list view.

In a Parts-only list, components that are assemblies are not presented in the list unless they are considered Inseparable or purchased. For parts-only views, purchased or inseparable subassemblies are treated as parts, and are promoted through Phantom parents.

If the display filter is set to Display bill of materials Structure, inseparable and purchased assemblies do not display their children in parts-only view. The only exceptions are all direct child components that have a bill of materials Structure of purchased are promoted outside inseparable assemblies in the parts-only view. The inseparable assembly remains displayed as a single item. All other child components are hidden in the view (for example, the assembly cannot be expanded).

iAssemblies and the bill of materials

Multiple assemblies exist within a configuration iAssembly. You can manage this data within the iAssembly drop-list. Each member within an iAssembly can have its own QTY and item QTY value. Therefore, separate QTY and Item QTY columns exist in the Bill of Materials.

Note: You can create a parts list of selected members or a traditional single assembly parts list. You can also create an aggregate parts list of specified members. However, only one bill of materials view is provided containing the aggregate list of items and item numbers.

Read-only components in the bill of materials

The Bill of Materials Editor considers a component to be read-only if:

• It is read-only due to file property settings.
• It is saved on a library path.
• It is controlled by Autodesk Vault Basic and is not checked out.

If a component is read-only, all properties except the quantity and the item order are read only in the Bill of Materials Editor. If an assembly is read-only, the quantity and the item order of its direct child components cannot be edited or changed.

Highlight or open a component from BOM Editor

Selected components are highlighted in the assembly browser, graphic window, and in the Bill of Materials dialog box. Use the Open command to open a part or assembly file from the Bill of Materials dialog box. The Open command is available in the context menu for a selected (highlighted) component in the BOM table. The Open and Highlight functionality is available only in the assembly environment.

Tip: The Bill of Materials dialog box is modeless in the assembly environment. You can use pan and zoom commands to move or resize the model in the graphic window while editing the BOM.

Mass calculation in the bill of materials

Mass and volume are not automatically updated in the BOM. If the mass (or volume) has not been calculated for an item in the BOM, the mass (or volume) cell displays N/A.

You can update the mass and volume properties in the BOM editor manually. Click Update mass properties of all rows to calculate the mass and volume for all items in the BOM.

Note:

• The function of Update mass properties of all rows is identical to the Manage tab Update panel Update Mass command.
• If you work in the LOD representation with suppressed assembly components, the Update mass properties of all rows command is disabled. Use Manage tab Update panel Update Mass to update mass and volume in the BOM.
• Manual control of mass and volume calculation improves the BOM editor performance.

BOM column customization

BOM column customization is saved in the assembly file. Each assembly can display different columns in each view of the Bill of Materials dialog box. If you customize BOM columns in an assembly template, all files created from this template respect the same BOM customization. A BOM customization file contains information about customized BOM columns and part number row merge settings.

Note:

Export and import the BOM customization to:

• Apply a BOM customization existing in an assembly to another assembly.
• Define and save several BOM customizations and then apply them to assemblies.
• Share BOM customizations between users.

Add thumbnail preview images to BOM

• The Thumbnail column is by default included in the BOM in all new assembly templates. To display thumbnails in BOMs in legacy assemblies, you must add the Thumbnail column to the BOMs manually. Or, you can create a BOM customization that includes the Thumbnail column and import the BOM customization to BOMs in legacy assemblies.
• The Thumbnail column displays all available thumbnail images for components listed in the BOM. If the thumbnail image does not exist, Preview not Available is displayed in the Thumbnail column.
• The preview image is not available for a component if:

  The component is not saved.

  The Save Preview Picture option is not selected in the Properties dialog box of the component.