Bills of Materials

Every time a file is assigned an item, a bill of materials (BOM) is generated for that item. A BOM summarizes the information needed for manufacturing a specific revision of a part or product. The summary of items includes the item numbers, quantities, part descriptions, lifecycle state, and other properties that are required throughout the design release and manufacturing processes. An item representing a single part typically contains BOM information related only to that part. An item representing an assembly typically contains BOM information for all the parts in the assembly. Likewise, an item representing an assembly comprised of subassemblies and parts typically contains BOM information for all the subassemblies.

BOMs are a powerful tool for tracking a product.

• Update them when items are added and removed from the design.
• Add custom items that are outside the design process, such as grease or adhesives.
• Compare one BOM revision with another to see what has changed between revisions. For example, you can pinpoint exactly which parts changed between revisions of an assembly.
• Manually create a BOM by creating an item from scratch, and then adding items to the new item's BOM.
• Export BOM as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a comma-separated values file (.csv) so it can be analyzed or formatted in other applications for custom reports and printouts.

Rules

• Items that have never been released are displayed in their current state.
• If an item has been released, then the released revision is listed, regardless if it has been changed back to work-in-progress (WIP).
• When a part that is used in multiple assemblies is released, the new released revision of the part immediately appears in the BOM of every assembly in which it is used.

Release Availability

This feature is available in certain editions of Autodesk Vault. Refer to the table below to see if your edition has this feature.