Structure Browser/Tree for a assemblies, including drawings

[Anonymous]

In our PLM system, I can call up a structure browser for an assembly and it will show all the sub assemblies and parts and associated drawings for each of those pieces along with the current version numbers.  

For large assemblies this is a good way to find the bit you're looking for without having to open all the intervening assemblies and whatnot.

This is especially useful for our Customers who like to get involved with our configuration control, as we can pull up the structure browser and show them exactly which version of each part and drawing is being used in their product.  And a lot easier than sending them a massive PDF of all the drawings, which they will probably never look at anyway.

Is there a tool available for fusion that can create this tree of sub-assemblies parts and drawings, with version numbers?

If not, can you add it to the wish list as it would be really useful.

thanks

[chrisplyler]

To achieve similar functionality with Fusion, I think you would have to organize your project folder in the Data Panel. Create sub-folders, and put individual components and their drawings into those sub folders as is appropriate.

[TrippyLighting]

Short answer: No!

The first thing you need to separate is between what Fusion 360 calls a version and a revision and then there's also a (production) release. 

A version in Fusion 360 is basically every saved change you make to a model even if that only includes minor changes that don't affect anything on the drawing. Every change is saved, even just adding a constraint in a sketch. You definitely don't want to reference that sort ot " version".

The next level might be revision or drawing change like adding measured weight vs. calculated weight etc. No change to product performance, appearance.

What you likely want to keep track of is engineering changes that affect product appearance or performance and when your engineering revision level changes. You might also want to keep track when that change was implemented in production.  Fusion 360 and it's data management tools do not provide any real mechanisms today to handle that.

[Anonymous]

Understand your point.

But, if I can capture the fusion version number of all the component parts
then I can say that revision A of the product is represented by version 42
of the top level assembly, and this will capture all the versions of the
sub-components their associated parts, and the drawings of all these
things, which fusion team already keeps track of.

If I can present a tree structure, indented list, or whatever, then I save
quite a bit of time, and I can be sure everyone involved in building my
things (many of them are outside contractors) have the correct version of
the models and drawings, and provide the Customer with something a bit
nicer than a hand compiled excel spreadsheet with all the information in it
(because that is hard to do and time consuming, and I have real issues
with attention span when doing tasks like that, and it will almost
certainly contain errors)

[TrippyLighting]

That sounds to be similar to a traditional multi-level BOM. I know only of three tools that probably can do part of this.

1. Bommer

2. CSV-BOM

3. OpenBOM

You might note that none of those "ship" with Fusion 360.

[Anonymous]

Yes, exactly, but with version numbers and drawing.

I'm using BOMMER, which produces a nice multilevel BOM in excel format, but
it doesn't capture the version numbers or the drawings.

Might be time to learn how to write my own add ins (in the copious spare
time I keep hearing about)

[TrippyLighting]

In that case I'd try to get in contact with the developers of Bommer. This sounds like a worthy addition.

I've had a phone conference with Jesse Rosalia in April last year and they are very eager to improve their product!

[Anonymous]

I've spoken to them before as well. Always been very helpful and
responsive (I'd recommend BOMMER to anyone needing BOM integration with
fusion).

I will ping them and see what they say.

[jesse · Accepted solution]

Peter, Iain: thanks for speaking so highly of Bommer, and thanks for the mention!  I wanted to write to say thanks, and also to post some thoughts for anyone else who may be searching for a solution here.

Bommer can export Document Version as a column in your bill of materials, using one of our Builtin properties; Builtin properties are how we expose data fields that are built into Fusion and are not custom properties, e.g. description, part number, mass properties, bounding box, and (amongst others) document version.

See this guide for more info on how to edit your columns from within Bommer: https://help.getbommer.com/en/article/customizing-your-properties-in-bommer

(available to all subscribing and trial users of the add-in).

Re: drawing version/link/indication a drawing is available: this may prove to be trickier, due to the limited Drawing API, but I've added an item to our product backlog to investigate what is possible; assuming we can get the info we need, we can look at supporting what the original post is asking for in a future version of Bommer.

Thanks again for the kind words, and the great question; as Peter said, we are always looking for ways to make Bommer better!

--

Jesse Rosalia

CEO, Bommer

https://www.getbommer.com