Panel BOM issues - ACADE 2013

[dstnwst]

We just started using R13 and I am having problems with the panel BOM's.  When working in a project with more than one panel assembly and I run a BOM report on one of the drawings it deletes the BOM reports from other drawings in the project.  The only way I have found to get around this, so far, is to remove the drawing(s) with the BOM report(s) that I am NOT working on from the project, run the BOM on the drawing I am working on, then add the other drawings back to the project.

I have installed SP1.  Are there any others available?  Is any one else having this issue?

[dstnwst]

The source for the BOM data is, or should be, different.  When I run the BOM report for drawing 1234, I select "Project" then drawing 1234.  Then when I run the BOM for drawing 5678 I select "Project" and drawing 5678.  But when I insert the table it puts it on drawing 5678 AND it deletes the BOM on drawing 1234 and puts it there too.

[PatMurnen_Adsk]

If you select Project then it does not distinguish between picking a single drawing, a group of drawings, or all drawings from the project. It just knows "Project" is the "scope" of the report. So in that case all settings are the same. My guess is that it works this way because at any time if you add drawings and pick Project again it would want to update that same table even though the list of drawings you ran it on was different. So it only knows the scope was project-wide.

If you want the BOM to just be for that specific drawing then do not pick Project but pick Active Drawing. Then it will not see the other table as coming from the exact same report because it knows it was from just that active drawing. Then any time you re-run the BOM on that drawing and pick Active Drawing it will just update that one table.

[dstnwst]

When you select "Project", it DOES allow you to select the drawings within that project that you want to run the report on.  And it DOES run the report on the drawing(s) that were selected.  However, when you run another BOM report on another drawing it replaces the first one.

I can, and do, select "Active Drawing" when the BOM will be on the same sheet as the pictorial, but on our multi-page drawings the BOM is on a separate sheet, and therefore is saved as a separate drawing file, so I have to select "Project" and pick the drawings that particular BOM is supposed to include.

I just set up a test scenerio where I created 4 drawing files: 1234-1, 1234-2, 5678-1 and 5678-2.

The -1 drawings are assembly drawings that I just added random parts to.

The -2 drawings are the BOM pages for their respective assembly drawings.

I opened drawing 1234-2 and ran a BOM report from "Project" drawing 1234-1 and inserted the table.

I saved and closed both drawings.

I opened drawing 5678-2 and ran a BOM report from "Project" drawing 5678-1 and tried to insert the table on the drawing.  What it actually did was open drawing 1234-2 and replace the existing BOM with the BOM for drawing 5678-1.  So now, not only does drawing 1234-2 have the wrong BOM on it, but it will NOT allow me to put a BOM on drawing 5678-2 at all.

The way this is working I can only have one drawing in a project with a BOM on it!  Again, this has never happened in the 6 years that I have been using ACAD-E software.  It only started when I upgraded to release 13.  It may be something as simple as a setting that I don't know anything about, but I can not imagine that this is how the software is supposed to work.

[dstnwst]

I could only attach 3 of the drawings to the last post.

Drawing 1234-2 has the BOM for assembly 1234-1.

See if you can put a BOM for assembly 5678-1 on drawing 5678-2.

If you can, there is something wrong with my settings, installation, or something.

[PatMurnen_Adsk]

This has not changed in recent years. Do you have an earlier release of AcadE to try this on? It works this way for me on all the last 3 releases that I have installed.

When you run a report and place it as a table, AcadE looks for an existing, updatable table for that report. For a report table to be a match and get updated/replaced it must match in 3 ways.

First, the report type, i.e. Schematic Bill of Materials, Component, etc. If it matches on the report type (and options for a BOM) then it goes to step #2.

Second, report scope, i.e. active drawing, project-wide. It does not matter if you pick project and then only select some of the drawings, the table is still considered "project" for this. I know it will run a report this way but when it looks for a table that matches it does not go to the "which specific drawings were processed" level level to see if the table is a match. If it finds a table that matches then it goes to step #3.

Third, the format .set file and then it only matches the name of the .set file that was used.

This information is all saved as xdata on the table. You can use the Xdata Editor (Project tab > Other Tools sub-panel) to see the intelligence saved on the table that AcadE uses when a report is run. 

So in your description of your steps and using the logic described above, the table does match and it will get replaced/updated even though you selected different drawings from the project set.

Your options would be to run the BOM across the whole project picking all the drawings, then on the Table Generation Setup dialog separate it into sections (which can be placed on different drawings) based on number of rows or by a Special Break if either of those apply.

Otherwise, the only option that I know of would be to have differently names .set files (even if they all have the same settings within them) so the when it gets to step #3 it won't find the match.

Or as other users have suggested, use the non-updatable tables and when you need to update one just erase it and run the report again.