A support call cropped up this week which I thought was worth sharing in a blog post. Quite simply a customer was reviewing their Assembly Bill of Materials (BOM) and finding an incorrect value for the Quantity column against a certain part. Clearly this column should simply sum up the number of identical components found in the assembly and report the value- so how can this go wrong?
The answer here is that you can, on a part by part basis, set the quantity to report a different custom property. Take for example accounting for paint, oil, grease or any other supplementary product that you want to show on a BOM. It would be unlikely you want a numerical value showing an item count up, but rather an amount on for example, a volumetric basis- so therefore it may be appropriate to show 10 litres of paint- hence need the flexibility to change what the quantity reports.
So in order to do this in SOLIDWORKS, either deliberately or to correct a problem, you need to open the part (you can open parts directly from the BOM by right clicking the relative row). Then use File > Properties and change over to the Custom tab. You will see in the upper right corner a drop down menu titled "BOM Quantity"- this should ordinarily be set to "-None-" but can be altered to any other Custom Property found on that screen. So simply if the Quanity is wrong, set it to "-None-", if you want it to be a specific property, you can change this in the list.
Find our more about Bills of Materials in our Webcast archive
By Adam Hartles
Senior Applications Engineer