Can you export BOM relationships ?

[Anonymous]

I use the reporting function frequently to create import documents to update workspaces en masse.  Our Materials workspace holds records of Materials used on Projects and dummy records reflecting the structure of our Projects, Areas and Items so we can see where the materials are used (essentially an adaptation of the Items and BOMs workspace, without revisioning).

If I try to include BOM fields in my export report, then it fails with a mystery error - I suspect that this is because the majority of the BOM fields are roll-ups and it doesn't like reporting on these - I haven't tested them one by one to check.  

However, even if it didn't fail on this, I can't see that it includes the 'Level' information needed to identify what is related to what.  That means that I could export the Item details data for the records, but would have to re-structure them fully in Excel every time by adding the Level data before I could them re-import the updated data - something that would be pretty tedious and time-consuming to have to do on a regular basis.  Or do the structural links stay in place from the first upload and only the Item Details change on the re-import ?  Or would I do a Level BOM import the first time, and any time after that if only needing to update details rather than structure, do an Item details import using the Materials ID to Match On ?

There will be times that I need to update the structure though with another Level BOM import, so is there another solution which exports the strucutral data as well for the BOM ?

Hope so!

Appreciate you giving us somewhere to ask all these questions and providing answers in return.  Keep up the good work!

Cheers,

Fiona

[dvirh]

Hi Fiona,

You are correct that you cannot report on BOM relationships from the Reports engine since it is not aware of the semantics of the BOM relationships themselves. However, there is a way to do that. In the BOM tab itslef there is an Export to Excel button. You can use it to export the current BOM View to Excel in a way that will allow you to reimport the data when you are done.

However, there are some pitfalls here so you need to plan this carefully. First and foremost, if your  BOM data is using Revision Control, you need to decide whether you are planning to import data into the historical revisions or just into the work in progress ('Working') item. Assuming you want to import data into historical revisions, there are a few things you need to do first

1. Set up a BOM View that has all the information you will need in order to reimport the data including PN, Revision, Lifecycle State, Revision Date, Effective Date (if different from Revision Date) and Revision Pinning (if you use that feature), in addition to any other data that you may want to update
2. Give yourself permission to 'Override Revision Control Locks'. Without that permission, you may not update historical revisions of items

But even if you don't expect to import historical revisions, make sure that there is a BOM View that will allow you to find the matching record in PLM and that includes all the information you may want to view or update. My recommendation is to set a specific BOM View just for that purpose.

BTW, you will see that the BOM Excel Export includes the line numbers in the same cell as the Level number. For example, it may show something like 2.25 which means line number 25 on level 2. This number can be mapped as-is to the Level colum in the BOM import and it will update the Line Numbers if you change them.

Hope that helps.