BOM grouping and subassembly balloons

[armansesar]

Hi all, I'm having a few issues regarding the BOM setup in inventor that I have not find a solution for online. First problem is with possible means of grouping when setting up multiple subassemblies within a main assembly for  which you would like its individual parts included in the main assembly's BOM, each with a number of smaller identical parts (this is to avoid re-constraining and a mess of small potentially misplaced parts and also placing individual views of the isolated sub-assemblies, rather than placing the main assembly and hiding all other components (not sure if there is a down side to doing the latter aside from possible processing time and manual time hiding the unnecessary components), anyways, here is an example:

lets say you have a sub-assembly of a plate with 4 screws placed within a larger assembly, you then have another subassembly of a different thickness plate with 8 identical screws as the first subassembly placed also in the main assembly. How do you then group these so that the BOM shows 2 unique plates with different part numbers and 12 identical screws combined in one row with a shared item number? This does not seem possible with the grouping function of the inventor BOM as you can either list the 2 subassemblies without the individual parts, or it simply groups the rows near each other, placing 8 individual screws next to 4 individual screws without combining the rows or item numbers.

Next issue is with adding balloons to these subassemblies when placed as individual views. When doing this the balloon is not linked to an existing BOM. Is there a way to have the view reference the main BOM rather than its own handful of individual parts? Again the only work around I see is adding the full assembly every time you want to highlight a couple components or adding manual unreferenced balloons. 

Please let me know if you know of another solution and thanks in advance.

[Eide.N]

Could you mock up a drawing that looks how you want it to look? That we we can see what you want, and what you can't get to work.

[armansesar]

Here I have many round bars placed individually into the main assembly, as an example, i placed another set as a sub assembly, you have the option of having the whole subassembly listed as an individual part, or expand the components (which I did), then I grouped them by stock # and length for example, and this is what happens, it still lists them as individual item #'s under one row, and lacks the quantity.

how it should display (total quantity of each individual length under one item#):

 

how it displays when adding a set as an assembly (expanded, not grouped)

how it displays (expanded & grouped)

[Eide.N]

I used to do this all the time with Frame Generator parts lists, but I can't remember the trick. I'll dig around and try to find it. Anyone else know how to help @armansesar?

[swalton · Accepted solution]

Set the bar sub-assembly to Phantom.  That should make the BOM editor and the Parts List ignore the sub-assembly and push the individual bars up a level.

See: https://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-A0A95805-CBF6-4524-8314-4AC8B53C19CF

The control is in each .ipt/.iam Document Settings window.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! To facilitate the discussion, please share the files in zip here. I believe it should be doable, though it is not as straight forward as it should be.

Many thanks!

[armansesar]

@swalton You are an expert sir, I read this last night but wanted to wait until I could try it, it absolutely works, such a simple solution I didn't think of, I guess I assumed it would completely hide the subassembly and its components. 

@Eide.N thanks a lot for your input.