Updating an old drawing with dead BOM items and lots of other shenanigans

[andre-the-engineer]

I've inherited an old drawing. We built this assembly and shipped it. However I need to update it per latest build notes for future builds. There are dead BOM items, there are fasteners that are just in the BOM as custom components, there are fasteners that arent called out in the BOM, there are fasteners with iproperties not set, thus they are overridden in the BOM, all kinds of shenanigans. How do I begin to think systematically about this drawing and fixing all the issues with it? Should I just make it look like its fine on paper, and leave it up to the next generation to fix it?  

[kacper.suchomski]

Hi

What do you mean by "old drawing"?

Do you only have an idw/dwg file? Is the entire project with file structure?

If you plan to make changes to this design in the future, it will be safe to rebuild the whole thing from scratch and configure the BOM correctly.

However, if you need a one-off drawing, you can try to overwrite the values and content directly in the parts list in the drawing file.

[pcrawley]

Welcome to "old cad" drawings.  There's no 'silver bullet' here sorry.  Old drawings & models are just hard work.  You don't trust the drawings (for good reason) and you don't know what else the creator 'cheated' in the background - so you really don't know if what you have on paper actually got built.

In my current role, I have a pile of data going back about 10 years and each time we want to "reuse" a design I print the drawings for reference, then rebuild the model using all the original components where possible (cleaning them up along the way).  It's not quick, and not efficient, but it is the only way to be sure what's going on paper this time will be an accurate record of what gets built.

You could make it look fine on paper and leave it to the next generation - but the fact that you're even asking the question suggests the world needs more people like you.

[Frederick_Law]

Depends on what you want and need to do.

How much parts in this assembly are used in other assemblies?

Are there duplicated parts (same bolt different file name)?

How often you'll need to update this assembly?

Do you have other more important things to do?

I'm cleaning up over 30 years for 1.5 years.

Start with templates and styles.

Same CC part copied to different folders with different part number and description.

Same with manufactured parts.

BOM is a sea of blue.

Even dimensions are overridden.

Random adaptive, good luck finding referenced files.

And everything is in Vault.

Boss keep asking why I'm so slow and double checking everything.

Because every file is an Pandora box.