Creating a Bill Of Material

[snyper1982]

I am new to MEP and creating autocad schedules. I am pretty much wondering how I would go about Creating a bill of material that would have 5 columns, Mark(or list number of item), quantity(this should give the total quantity of the item), size(obviously should be the nominal size), length(for each individual piece of pipe, or cut length, fittings will obviously be blank here), and the Part Size Name. I am daunted by the sheer amount of options the scheduling options contain. It would be great it say there were 3 pieces of pipe with equal length they would all be included in the same mark row for example 5, and the quantity would be 3 for that row. It would also be great if I could list all the pipe first then the fittings. Any help with this would be GREATLY appreciated, as I am lost right now. Oh yeah, before I forget, Is there a way to show the data from the schedule that connects to the pipe itself. I think it is called tagging or something. Thanks in advance.

My end reslut is to create a residential plumbing, rough in(under the concrete slab) prefab kit. It will basicaly be like the building instructions you get for a computer desk or something similar. So I need to have isometric view that shows the mark numbers(I assume you can have the tags show that tpe of info). I did this at a previous company using a 3rd party add on called pipe designer 3d, MEP seems to be much more powerful, so I would be extremely surprised if it couldn't do the same thing.

[Keith.Brown]

Just using the standard out of the box part numbering tags i had no issue getting them to show up in paper space in a top down view.  In order to get them to show up in an isometric view i had to modify them.  Can you post an example drawing?

Here is what I use for spooling.  Is that what you are after?

[snyper1982]

Yes! That is exactly what I am after!. I found out how to get the tags to display in paper space. I had to change the annoallvisible setting. What you showed though is exactly what I am going for! How to you add tags like that to the paper space and not to the model? Or are you using a 3rd party software?

[Keith.Brown]

Yes it is third party software and they are not tags.  They are multi-leaders that just reference the pipe property sets and place that number into the text portion of the leader.

[snyper1982]

What software is it? Is it possible to spool the pipe without the software?

[Keith.Brown]

The software is from Eastcoast CAD/CAM.  www.eccadcam.com

Anything that is done in the software can certainly be duplicated manually.  Here are the steps.

1.  Create the spool template.  You will need to place your schedules in paper space.  Select the schedule and then on the property palette under the Advanced->External Source section set Schedule external drawing to yes and then under external drawing browse to the drawing that the schedule is in.  Yes you can tell it to schedule itself.  This will force the schedule to look in model space.

2.  COPY the items you want to spool from the main drawing to your spool drawing.  Please make sure that all property sets, etc are identical to the main drawing.

3. Create a multileader style that looks like you want it to and then place the multi-leaders in paperspace .  Set their text to equal the part number of the item in the viewport.

There are the low level steps that you need to complete the process.  Of course the EastCoast CAD/CAM software does everything for you automatically as well as autodimension the pipe.  (not shown in the video above).  Additionally the database that comes with the software contains thousands of real world pipe fittings for use in your designs.  The fittings are 100 percent autocad mep fittings in every way.

[snyper1982]

I can't seem to get it to work, but regardless it seems like it would take exceedinly long to do it this way. If I have no manualy number each individual piece of the spool.