Parts List question

[drspringer]

I am creating an assembly that is made up of different smaller "mix-n-match" assemblies. Within these smaller assemblies are purchased sets of components that have parts in each of those assemblies. For example, I have two different mold plate assemblies with side locks in them. The male lock is in one assembly and the female is in another.

When I stack these assemblies together and create the bill of materials, I can't get the set of locks to come up as one item, it lists out the male and female portions on separate lines and the screws for them on another. Is there a way to group these items together to be displayed as one line item. I can get the locks to do it with the group command and a comment in the BOM but I can't add anything to the screws from the component center. Besides, I'm not sure if that's even the right way to do it. I was hoping for something more automatic.

I'm probably making this harder than it should be but I'm new to the 2d detailing in Inventor. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Randy

[pauldoubet]

If you save your CC screws to a non-library location you will be able to edit the BOM data for those items and accomplish what you did for the other components of the lock. Not sure what the best approach is in your situation without seeing the model or a screen shot of the BOM data for the different subassy's.

Hope this helps, Paul

[mcgyvr]

For purchased parts that you create as an assembly in Inventor and you don't want the components of that assembly to show up in a parts list you do the following.

Open the purchased assembly.. go to tools..document settings..bill of materials tab. Change default bom structure to "purchased"

Please take a little time to read the Inventor help for the different options of bom structure.

[drspringer]

OK, I did that and everything is grouped together but now I have another problem. One catalog item is made up of 7 screws and 3 parts and I have four of them in my assembly. In the Quantity box I get 40 but I want 4.

I changed it in the parts list to show 4, is that the only way to do that?

[pcunningham1]

Is it possible to make the lock an assembly, set to flexible, and add it at the top level?

[dan_inv09]

The way I read it it seemed like the components of the purchased assembly are not together in one subassembly.

They may come in in one box but part of it gets screwed to one thing and another part gets screwed to another and the only time they come together is in a higher level assembly.

[drspringer]

"Is it possible to make the lock an assembly, set to flexible, and add it at the top level?"

If I did that wouldn't the locks need to be placed in the assembly as a whole?

The way I have these set up, there are multiple styles of A&B plates that I put together into different assemblies. A has the male half and B has the female. I want the BOM to recognize them as a single line item with as little intervention from me as possible. That way I will be liss likely to miss it in the stock list and no one will yell at me if they order 40 sets of locks.

[drspringer]

"The way I read it it seemed like the components of the purchased assembly are not together in one subassembly.

They may come in in one box but part of it gets screwed to one thing and another part gets screwed to another and the only time they come together is in a higher level assembly."

That is exactly what I'm doing.

[pauldoubet]

Try setting one of the subassy's and it's components to Phantom. Then adjust the settings of the other half using either Virtual components or Phantom settings. You also could use the Inseperable option on your subassy, depends on the end result that works for you. Again it is difficult to visualize exactly what works best in your situation without seeing the model, etc.

Paul

[drspringer]

Attached is an example of what I'm trying to do. The items pointed to in red are part of the same line item but attached to different assemblies that are put together as one main assembly.

[dan_inv09]

That was in reply to "For purchased parts that you create as an assembly..."

As far as 4 sets of 10 parts rolling up to 40 parts, I don't know if it was roll-up settings or column settings or something else but I think there is some way to affect how it does that (it could be in the parts list or it could be in the BOM or it could have something to do with the many types of quantity columns). Sorry, I guess I'm not being all that helpful.

I'm trying to think if there is a way to do this in a way that works best for Inventor (instead of the way that many would see as the right way - at least for now): would there be a way to use something like "level of detail" to pull what are now subassemblies out of the main assembly (without having them be subassemblies) so that the purchased assembly could be treated as such? I don't know, you may have to end up sitting down and completely rethinking the way this whole product line is handled just to avoid having to manually type in that 4. At the very least you might want to think about why you did it the way you did. Hey, here's an idea, get your reseller involved, aren't they supposed to be "value added"?

[pcunningham1]

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@drspringer wrote:

... 

If I did that wouldn't the locks need to be placed in the assembly as a whole?

... 

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Yes, at the top level. So you'd have one A plate sub (without lock components),  one B plate sub (without lock comnponents) and one lock sub (flexible). This assumes you don't need bom's and drawings of your plate subs, but I'm not sure if you do or not.

There's no clean way to fractionalize a component that has a unit of measure of 'each'.

[drspringer]

"At the very least you might want to think about why you did it the way you did."

That's what I'm doing now, looking for ideas on how to set it up the right way. By the time I'm done, I should be a pro since we have 2 sizes in three types of molding for four different styles with four different cavity configurations for a total of 54 similarly designed molds. I know, the math doesn't work but that's where the mix-n-match comes in.

I already have spreadsheets full of prameters worked out for the different sizes and I'm doing my best to keep the components organized in a way that I don't lose track of what I'm doing. With technology being what it is, I'm just trying to get Inventor to do as much of the work as possible so I don't leave out something because I forgot to go back and change a quantity in a box. With all the prep work I've put into this, that would make me feel stupid.

The first series is tweaked in pretty good and I've applied some of what I learned on that one to the second one improving each as I go along, hopefully. The biggest problem I run into is producing a clean parts list and it's only because I haven't used it on this extent before.

That's why I will take any suggestions to heart, there is a lot of time invested in this project and the possiblity of more in the future. To get it worked out now will be a great asset later.

[drspringer]

Thanks to all for your suggestions, between grouping items and using Phantom in the BOM I think I can get it put together with minimum modification. Some of the options explained in the help files make no sense until someone gives you a real world example of how to use them.

I appreciate your help.

Randy

[pauldoubet]

Looks like you got quite a few responses, if you need additional help I do have a cooler style door latch that is placed as two seperate components that I could post some screen captures of to show how I set this up to only show a quantity of one for the latch when there are actually multiple components to the purchased latch.

Paul

[drspringer]

Paul,

If you want to post your way, I would be happy to see it. It can't hurt to have more options and mine still requires a bit of "adjustment" to get it right.

Randy

[pauldoubet]

Attached are 2 screen captures showing the door latch and the BOM editor. Notice that the latch consists of multiple components in 3 sub assy's. The screen capture of the drawing shows the resulting parts list. I could easily added screws and the nuts to the door half of the latch, they won't show up on the BOM if it is setup as Purchased or Inseperable. In addition I could set the latch assy's as Flexible if I wanted to add the bolts and nuts and properly constrain the bolts and nuts to the actual door for a realistic parts illustration, etc. The Hinge assy is set to Flexible, this allows me swing the door by either Driving a Constraint or Suppressing the Constraint for a free hand swing.

This drawing contains a Structured Parts List, but a Parts Only would show the same result with the latch and hinges. Let me know if you need more ideas.

Paul

[pcunningham1]

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@pauldoubet wrote:

Attached are 2 screen captures showing the door latch and the BOM editor. Notice that the latch consists of multiple components in 3 sub assy's. The screen capture of the drawing shows the resulting parts list. I could easily added screws and the nuts to the door half of the latch, they won't show up on the BOM if it is setup as Purchased or Inseperable. In addition I could set the latch assy's as Flexible if I wanted to add the bolts and nuts and properly constrain the bolts and nuts to the actual door for a realistic parts illustration, etc. The Hinge assy is set to Flexible, this allows me swing the door by either Driving a Constraint or Suppressing the Constraint for a free hand swing.

This drawing contains a Structured Parts List, but a Parts Only would show the same result with the latch and hinges. Let me know if you need more ideas.

Paul

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Why not just have the latch, with catch, etc,  be a single purchased flexible assy?

It is my understanding that the o.p. would want the handle to be part of the door sub- assy, and the catch to be part of the cooler sub-assy. If that's the cse, your method would work unless he needs the latch to be represented in the bom of both subs.

[pauldoubet]

I suppose you could do it that way. In our library the handle portion contains the correct part number and stock number to allow for ordering. It seems to be six of one and half a dozen of the other. These door assy's are setup as iAssemblies so we don't need to recreate anything, we just change the size and the BOM data shows up correctly in the Parts List. In our iAssembly the purchased latch is actually 3 sub assy's; could be 1 Flexible assy and work just as well. The method I use accounts for breaking a purchased in 1 box part into 3 logical sub assy's and still get the correct BOM/Parts List result.

Paul

[drspringer]

Now I get it. It wasn't the way I was tyring to build the parts list, it's the way I was approaching the assembly. Now that I understand flexible and adaptive for the models, I can put the purchased components as a single assembly into my main assembly and still constrain it to show movement. That was my main goal and what caused my BOM issues.

Setting it up this way immediatly fixed the BOM. Sometimes you have to go through the back door to unlock the front door.

Now I'll go back and rebuild my purchased assemblies the right way and I'll be in business.

Thank you all for your help, it all came together for the right solution. Exactly how a forum should work.

Randy