Mirrored and Patterned Components in Tables

[brandon.mullin]

Is there a way to have the table/ bill or material in a drawing count all the mirrored and patterned occupancies of a single component in an assembly grouped and counted together? Right now I get (Mirrored) and it’s sequence added number after each different occurrence making it appear to be a totally different component.

Lars Christensen did an tutorial excellent YouTube video (as most of his videos are) about trying to work around this a few years ago, but as someone in the comments of the video pointed out, his work around of putting all those components together as sub components made the table/ bill of material count only the top level and appeared as a count of one. He mentioned he was going to follow up with the Fusion team and then do a follow up video, but I have never found his video. Thanks

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

Mirroring components in Fusion 360 is generally not a good idea for exactly the reasons you are describing.

Sometimes, instead of mirroring a circular pattern can help, but not always.

Patterned components should be accounted accounted for properly on a BOM.

How this shows up in the BOM also depends how you have structured the assembly.

In order to purchase parts, I would want to be able to create a flat, leaf-level  BOM across an entirr assembly, properly accounting for all the parts in a multilevel assembly.
I don't think that Fusion 360 can currently do this.

I don't believe improving the component mirror functionality this is high up on the priority list on a roadmap.

The Fusion 360 team is working on improving the BOM functionality. In the meantime I use OpenBOM.

The mirroring problem is not addressed in OpenBOM, but it has a lot of other very useful functionality.

[brandon.mullin]

I’ve never thought about the circular pattern vs mirroring, seems like a good idea since most times I am mirroring about the Origin planes anyway. I’ve been trying to get away from mirroring for awhile, but it actually does make sense that they don’t just include it in the original parts count in the BOM since sometimes the features may be adjusted. It would be great if Fusion 360 could tell if the geometry wasn’t changed in any way that deviates from the original component and include it in the BOM though, but hopefully in the future they consider it. I’ll give OpenBOM a try, it looks like a well executed plug-in. Thanks for the help and for the quick response!