Inventor bill of materials - Actual parts and assemblies qty

[Stanfox99]

Hey, Im trying to generate a list of parts and assemblies that has all the quantities included in it.

Ive found that if i use the structured view it does not multiply the part count by the number of assemblies, so if i export the bill of materials i wont get the actual number of parts that i require.

If i use the parts only list then it wont include the sub assemblies.

the job that im working on has hundreds of sub assemblies and thousands of parts so manually adding them up is not an option.

Appreciate if anyone has any ideas.

Using Inventor 2014 Pro.

Thanks

[rhasell]

Hi

See my post at the bottom of the thread.

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Inventor/Multiple-sub-assemblies-in-a-Parts-List/td-p/4342872

I use it all the time. It will populate the Structured and parts fields.

All you need is a project number, (Automatic via the code) You will have to add this code to the BOM to see the results.

[rhasell]

Edit to above.

I meant to say Add the Custom Iproperty to the BOM.

See screen shot

[Stanfox99]

Thanks for your reply,

I have tried to create the new rule and i am getting the folowing errors and not sure how to fix them. any ideas?

[rhasell]

Hi

Not sure, possibly an error in the copy/paste.

See the attached text file.

[Stanfox99]

Thats awesome! you just made my week.

not sure why this typeof take off is not included in Inventor as standard.

Thanks heaps.

[pcrawley]

This approach looks great  and I'm really happy if it works for you.  The problem I have is that you are generating a quantity as an iProperty on the component (part/assy) file.

The reason I think this approach is risky is this:  Using your screenshot as an example, take Part Number 13052-[S]-S2-1.ipt - it shows a quantity of 1, and a total quantity of 2.  The "2" is written back to a custom iProperty on the IPT.  So far, so good.  What happens though if you now place 13052-[S]-S2-1.ipt into a different assembly and run this routine?  The custom iProperty for total quantity gets overwritten and your drawings are incorrect.  

I realise the part I picked is some SHS, and it looks like your numbering scheme identifies the part as unique to this assembly, but what if it was something more generic and used in multiple assemblies?  Every time you run this tool, you potentially break every drawing you've ever done that contains that part.

Perhaps I'm missing the point, or your model structure/reuse policy just allows this to work.  In which case it looks like a nice tool.  Good job.

[rhasell]

Peter

---- "The custom iProperty for total quantity gets overwritten and your drawings are incorrect."

That was the issue that I had to ovecome. The "PROJ_QTY" is attached to the Project number. I even got it to populate the field if it is blank, as well as offer a correction if needed. In most cases this should be unique, there might be isolated cases which will have to be addressed seperately, but when a part is re-used in another assembly, it will have a different Project number attached to it. So to answer your question, the QTY value will not be overwritten.

E.G. Some of my common laser cut plates already have up to 10 different project numbers in them with various quanty values.  I really does take the guess work out of calculating the qty for detaling purposes.

The most common use for me is detaling the individual sub assemblies, I used to have to count the sub assemblies off a marking plan and manually type in the qty, as of to date, Inventor does not do this.

It is not fool proof, but it certainly makes a detailing a lot easier.

On a side note, I took me a long time time to make this, as my iLogic skills are VERY limited, and I used snippets of code found on the forum, and the VBA help files.
This also forced me to create and use the Content Centre, which was great, as till now I have not been using it correctly. Reason for using the CC, all fasteners are now read only, so I don't populate an M16 nut with hundreds of QTY values.

[pcrawley]

Thanks Reg - that explains it nicely. It's even more impressive if you "cobbled" this together from snippets etc! Good job.

I think what you achieve with this tool is a combination of the Structured BOM and the Parts Only BOM, but when detailing on a drawing, you must have to somehow reference the appropriate project-related iProperty for the appropriate quantity. I guess this does not lend itself to quick drawings until you've set up some kind of mapping between the required property and the parts list you place on the drawing.

It's a problem I've battled with for years because there is no clean (or really robust) way to do what you have achieved.

The best solution I've seen so far is a tool that runs in the drawing environment - you press the button marked "Get the quantity from..." pick an assembly file, and it retrieves the quantity from that assembly and stores it as an IDW iProperty. So nothing gets written to the part file at all (therefore it works on CC parts, released Vault files etc. Whilst it's good, it's only correct at the time you retrieve the quantity value (so they added a "refresh"function). I hear it's about to appear on the App Store.

Maybe this is a subject for a new thread (sorry I hijacked this one!). I'd love to hear if there is a foolproof (ha ha) method of doing what we all seem to need, but I can't think how it could possibly be done!

[rhasell]

I have not seen the Drawing tool yet, should be interesting.

You are right about the field in the drawing, see screen capture for my common useage of this tool.

I do not use this in my Parts list though, WAY too much room for error, this has it's own set of work arounds to get the correct value without too much human intervention.

[pcrawley]

Yes - I can see how that works.  So you set up that text as a sketch-block in your IDW template for the project?  I can imagine typing that in for every part would get painful!

I'll let you know if/when that app appears - I believe it was submitted last weekend so it should be available once Autodesk have checked and aproved it.

[rhasell]

LOL, yes it is painfull, but it is not my default View label, so I have to manually type it in every time. I use my default/customised view label more than the above, so I just live with it.

Replace model reference works a treat, so a lot of the time I don't have to re-type the label.

I never thought of using it as a symbol, I will give it a test run and let you know.

[Greatwhitenorth]

---

@pcrawley wrote:

The best solution I've seen so far is a tool that runs in the drawing environment - you press the button marked "Get the quantity from..." pick an assembly file, and it retrieves the quantity from that assembly and stores it as an IDW iProperty. So nothing gets written to the part file at all (therefore it works on CC parts, released Vault files etc. Whilst it's good, it's only correct at the time you retrieve the quantity value (so they added a "refresh"function). I hear it's about to appear on the App Store.

---

Hi Peter,

Did this tool ever materialize?  If so, what's it called?  We've been looking for something like this so we can have the Total Quantity column in the drawing BOM (Parts List).

Thanks.

Bob

[pcrawley]

Hi Bob.  It did.  CPS Jobber - for a whole $1.00!

Apparently one user has had problems with it, but those problems are related to a particular model.  I know a few people using it with no problems at all.