Working with a Bill of Materials

You can generate a bill of materials (BOM) and also position it relative to any other objects, including the objects in the background view.

A BOM describes a product in terms of its assemblies, sub-assemblies, or basic parts. It consists of an itemized list of parts of a structure shown on a drawing or a layout in the shape of a table. There are different types of bills of materials depending on the discipline that generates them and the purpose for which they are intended. You can customize a BOM by choosing its type, style, properties, and so on.

This task shows you how to:

See Also
Modifying a Bill of Materials

Generate a Bill of Materials

You can insert a BOM anywhere in the active sheet or layout. If there is more than one view of different products in the same sheet or layout, you need to specify the product on which the BOM is to be computed. You can do so, either by selecting a generative view representing the product or by a direct selection in the work area. You can also insert several bills of materials in the same sheet or layout.

Before you begin:
  • Open a representation and an assembly product.
  • Define the EBOM collaboration intention on each product. For more information, see Social and Collaborative Apps : Product Development - Model Based: Collaborative Lifecycle User's Guide: Collaboration Between Physical Product and Engineering BOM: About Collaboration Between Physical Product and Engineering BOM: EBOM Collaboration Intention.
  1. From the Annotation section of the action bar, click Bill of Material .
  2. In the Bill of Material Creation dialog box, select the BOM style of your choice from the Style list.
  3. Click OK.
  4. Select a product or a view on which you want to compute the BOM.
    Note: If a representation contains two generative views of two different products, then you need to select the particular product or the view.
  5. Click at the required location to position the BOM. The following options are available for positioning the BOM.

    The BOM is placed at the selected location with the selected style. Additionally, the BOM.x node is added to the tree, under the Reports node.

    Notes:
    • By default, the phantom parts are not listed in the BOM.
    • The parts with EBOM collaboration intention set to Not instantiated in EBOM are not listed in the BOM.
    • Weight is not a default property. However, the administrator can add it in the BOM style definitions or you can add it after the creation of a BOM in the Reported Properties tab. To do so, right-click the BOM and select Properties.
    • The BOM links are displayed in the Edit Links & Relations dialog box along with the other links of the drawing.

  6. Optional: Right-click the BOM and select Properties. In the BOM Format tab, click Yes in Show Phantom Products.
    The BOM is updated to show the phantom parts.
    Note: To hide the phantom parts again, click No in Show Phantom Products. In this case, a blank line appears where the phantom part was displayed earlier.
  7. Optional: To add the Find Number column, in the Reported Properties tab, select the Find Number property from the Property list.
    The find number attribute is fetched from the EBOM relation for each instance.
  8. Optional: In the BOM Format tab, click Header at the bottom next to BOM Orientation.
    The BOM is displayed in the reverse order, that is the header row is placed at the bottom and the item numbers are arranged from bottom to top.

  9. Optional: Right-click the BOM and select Show Part in Views, and then select a row.
    A panel having the list of views appears. The first view in the list is zoomed in, and the generated item and the balloon corresponding to the product in the selected row is highlighted.

Position a Bill of Materials

You can position the BOM accurately by selecting a point (used as an anchor point), a line, a table, or, a frame and a title block as a reference.

Before you begin: Create a line.
  1. Follow the steps from 1 through 3 as described in Generate a Bill of Materials.
  2. Select a product or a view for which you want to compute the BOM.
  3. Select the line you created.



    The reference line is highlighted and the BOM is displayed along with the red orientation handles and a context toolbar showing the selected mode of BOM creation.
  4. Optional: Select the red handle to invert the orientation of the BOM in the corresponding direction.
  5. Optional: Use the context toolbar commands to change the creation mode of the BOM.

    By default, it displays Create a table aligned on nearest extremity mode. That is, it creates the BOM aligned on the nearest extremity of the selected line. For more information about the table creation modes, see About Creating a Table.

    Important:
    • If the size of the reference is smaller than the size of the created BOM, then, only two table creation modes are displayed, aligned on the reference and aligned on the nearest extremity.
    • When the reference size is bigger than that of the created BOM, Creates a table constrained on reference mode is displayed. In this case, the BOM is automatically resized (either by adjusting the columns' height or width) to match the selected reference geometry. This mode is unavailable when multiple tables are generated with the Multiple BOM command. If there is a single table created using Multiple BOM, this mode is available.

  6. Optional: Hover over the context toolbar and drag and place it to the required position.
    The pointer changes to that lets you change the position of the context toolbar as required.
  7. Click in the sheet to validate the BOM creation.