Explore the bill of materials interface

The bill of materials (BOM) section of a project is where you view and manage the project's bill of materials - the structured list of all assemblies, sub-assemblies, and parts that are needed to produce one unit of a finished product. This is the Project BOM and contains all eBOMs intended for the project.

Navigation pane and BOM table overview

The BOM interface of a project contains two main sections: the navigation pane on the left side and the center view in the middle.

The navigation pane contains all end items (top level item, no parents) within this particular project. Expand or collapse the end items to view the full tree. Click the chevrons on the right side of the navigation pane to collapse it to gain some extra space within the center view. Click an item in the navigation pane to display it, its BOM, and its attributes within the center view.

The center view is empty by default until you select an item from the navigation pane. The center view is a customizable table that displays all item and eBOM attributes of the selected item and its children.

Click an item in the center view to load the item details pane on the right. You can resize the item details pane and also pin it to always remain open.

Navigation pane actions

Above the navigation pane is a button to create a new end item and a more actions menu:

• Add a new end item

  • Click the Add End Item button in the top-right corner of the BOM interface to create a new end item in your project.

• More actions

  • Click the more actions button to perform additional actions including: paste items as end items within the BOM and create a BOM report in .xlsx format that includes all end items within the project.

Item actions

In the center view, click more actions to the left of an item's name to open a menu containing all available actions for the item.

Navigation pane filters

The drop-down menu above the navigation pane contains filters that change what end items (and their versions) are displayed. Select one of the following end item filters from the drop-down:

• All - Displays all end items and all of their previous revisions that have existed on this project.

• Latest Working - Displays the latest end item version for each end item in the project and its As Saved structure below.

• Latest released - Displays the latest released end item vision for each end item in the project.

• Effective Date - Displays the end item versions created before and up to the Effective Date set for the project. Any items (end items and those below) created after the Effective Date are not shown.

  If you have not enabled the Effective Date option for this project type, or set an Effective Date for the project, this filter will not be displayed.

BOM table filters

For an item loaded into the center view, you may filter it further to display:

• As Saved - Displays the eBOM structure containing the specific item versions with which the eBOM was last checked into Upchain. In other words, the item versions that you added to the cBOM and subsequently pushed to the eBOM using the BOM Anomaly window is what is displayed under this filter. This is the only filter where you may perform most item actions.

• Latest Working - Displays the saved eBOM structure updated to show the most recently created item versions for each of the child items.

• Latest Released - Displays the eBOM structure it had in its most recent released state.

• Virtual Latest Released - Displays the saved eBOM structure updated to show the most recent released versions of each child item.

Click here for an example of each of these filters in action.

Configure the BOM table

You may sort, filter, and add/remove columns to to display just the information you need in a way that you like. You may also save the view as the new default so the information is displayed exactly as you need it every time you load an item into the BOM table. Be sure to save the table preferences each time you configure the own view. Tenant Administrators may configure a table view and push it to all users.

Notable columns

Some key columns to consider when configuring the BOM table include:

• Item name - this column contains the item actions icon where you can access the item actions menu. Therefore you must include this column if you intend on working with the items.
• Files - this column contains icons to visually display whether each item contains files and documents of different types. Double-click on each icon to open a window to download or open the relevant documents.
• Visualization - this column contains icons to visually display whether each item contains visualizations and comparisons.
• eBOM attributes - there are seven colunns in total and display the eBOM attributes configured for the loaded BOM. Click on each entry in each column to edit the attributes (as long as the parent item is in development).

BOM sequence numbers and sorting

Every item in the BOM is assigned a unique sequence number based on its location in the BOM, displayed in its own column in the BOM table. By default, this number is what determines the sort order of the BOM. However, you may drag and drop items within the same level on the BOM to re-order them and assign them a new sequence number. This allows you to sort the items in a way that makes sense to the company.

eBOM versions

An eBOM version is created for an item that has an eBOM structure every time it is checked in and the structure changes. This helps to track the changes to the eBOM over time. This may be useful if items are accidentally removed and you want to retrieve them. The latest eBOM version is displayed by default but you may choose any previous eBOM version from the drop-down list.

Save a new eBOM version

You may save a BOM to a new eBOM version. This function takes the BOM for the item loaded into the BOM center view and saves it into a new eBOM version. This works for any item in development loaded under any of the navigation pane filters except Latest Released and Effective Date, and for previous eBOM versions as well. This is useful for a number of cases:

• To make changes to the BOM without affecting the latest saved ones.
• To retrieve a previous eBOM version of the BOM, should the latest one contain errors.

To save the BOM to a new eBOM version:

1. Load the desired eBOM into the center view.
2. Click the Save as new eBOM version button.

A new eBOM version is created.