Maintain order when adding items to a BOM and other improvements ideas

[sten]

I am forced to enter all my bill of materials by hand since PLM does not support importing BOM with cross workspace items.

To make matters worse, when I add items to a bom I have to enter them one at the time:

For every BOM item I have to:

 1) Add Item to BOM  (Click and wait)

 2) Find the next item to add from list. Click Next

 3) Enter Quantity (Save)

After all items have been added, I can add designators.

With a BOM with 100+ items, this is painfull and error prone process.

When adding items (step 1) PLM allows me to add more than one item, but it does not add them to the BOM in the order that I pick them.

If it just did this, it would be a big help. (or at the very least sort by descriptor before adding them).

It would also be handy if could add designators (And other BOM fields) in the same step, instead of a second operation.

[nguyentru]

Hi Sten,

Currently in our system, when you add an Item to a BOM, the Items are setup in the order that you select them.

I am not understanding this request.  Please provide more information.

Thanks,

Trung

[sten]

Sometimes you get lucky that they are ordered in the order you selected
them, but more often not.



Here I selected 5 items in order 100,200,300,400,





This is the order the show up when asking for quantaties, and the order they
show up when inserted into the BOM.







I can only add them to the BOM is order if I add one item at the time.

[Anonymous]

FWIW, I'm going to chime in that I concur with Sten.  In my experience items are not usually added in the same order that they are selected.  I wish they were.

Joe Hendrickson

[Anonymous]

we have also found that items do not wind up on the BOM in PLM360 in the order they were arranged before import.

by default, there should be an option to import BOMs ordered by an Item Number Field on the original import file. (we created a separate field in PLM360 to have an Item Number field that we would have some control over, but it shouldn't be necessary to create a work-around like this.)

cheers!

e

[gasevsm]

There's two ways to add items via import and direct via the add items dialog. Ive heard different opposing requests and am curios as to the use case. • From import PoV, one camp of users ask to import the line items the way they are specified in the file; another camp by part part number (which i extrapolate could be any custom field on item details for example), and third camp by the item descriptor as these items get created/modified and added in the BOM (which may not be part number based). • From add existing/new items to BOM or othe tabs via UI, one camp asks to add to tab by the order of the way checkboxes were selected in the additem selection dialog, others by some field on item details eg part number, third by item descriptor order as they get added to the tab container. I'm interested about your take on this problem, forum members. All comments are welcome ~!

[Anonymous]

ideally, there would be an Item Number field in PLM360 by default (instead of having a "#" field that is a combination of BOM Structure Level and an apparently random List Number), and it would possible to sort a BOM by any field.

the fact that PLM360 is missing the basic function of sorting a BOM Listing by field (Item Number, Part Number, Title, Rev, Qty, etc.) exacerbates this issue of how things need to be sorted at entry since it forces users to only live with the one view sorted as it was imported. if there was the ability to do a basic 'Sort' on views, many of the problems on how things are ordered would go away for many instances.

bottom line issues;

1- if a BOM has Item Numbers, Import should keep this (unique) Item Number field unmolested, except to renumber the Items on a (single-level) BOM as a special request function.

2- it should be possible to sort a BOM listing by any column (as simply as is done in Excel, and many other programs).

cheers!

e

[sten]

I would love being able to import my bom, but since my bom's crosses workspaces this does not work for me. (separate idea ticket)

Therefore, I am stuck with manual entry.

And to reiterate, my problem is that when manually adding more than one item at the time , the items end up being added to the BOM in random order. The only way to enter them in the right sequence is adding the items one at the time (very slow), or to reorder all line numbers afterwards (can be quite the puzzle for larger boms).

Since the descriptor is the only field I have available when adding, I recommeded sorting on it.

However, it would also be acceptable if you added more functionallity to where I could enter line number and bom fields (designators in my case) . In that case sorting becomes irrelvant.

Of couse my prefered solution would be to import my BOM, then I could live with the randomness of the manual insert.

Regards,

Sten