Bom Column description problems

I have not seen such things (yet).

It would be helpful to know what release and SP you are on, where the parts and assemblies come from, i.e., 2003,2004, 2005 etc. and whether you are using the Excel based BOM or the SW BOM.

If you can capture this behavior using SW Rx send it in to your VAR. You might get and SPR for it. If you can put a file somewhere for us to look at grab the .wmv file from the Rx files.

I am in the habit of working entirely with configuration based custom properties. I don't generally fill in the default ones. In setting up configuration based properties there are certain check and list boxes that you might want to examine on each file. Their settings can effect what is displayed in the BOM.

There are also settings in Options.

Dames, I feel your pain, but can't contribute much except to second TOP's advice. Any program, unless you've found a major bug problem, will operate consistantly. Our task is often to try to figure out what the consistant thread is.

IMHO, Solidworks has some major issues to deal with with regards to the flexibility, usability & consistency of the BOM. Either that, or then need to publish a learned tome of how best to utilize what they have coded into it.

As TOP said, though, a consistent set of custom properties helps. I've just sweated through making up parts and assemblies and BOM templates for our company with a set of custom properties - talk about brain sprain - that seems to work the way we want it to, with some adaptations on our part. But there are shortcomings, particularly relating to getting, say, developed length of a part into the BOM (our BOM include part dimensions for ordering material).

All in all, I think they really need to focus some efforts here. As I said on another thread, keeping the BOM info linked to the model is paramount. Us analyst types can be off by a 1000 psi or so, but that drawing and BOM has to be lock-on.

For starters. I was using 2005 sp2.0 when i first posted this msg. but have since upgraded to 3.0 but these problems still seem to be there. I have part templates setup with custom properties for most of my parts, it just seems to be happening with some of my BOM not all. I have sent of my full assembly and drawing file to my Var to see if they can figure it out but i have not heard back from them yet. By the way Tom you mention that you have problems getting a developed lenght of a part. For many months i needed the same thing on my sheetmetal parts but no one could help me. Then the penny droped. All i neede to do was put an Unfold feature into my part, add 2 construction line that end points of these lines are coincident to the edges of the flat pattern, place a dimension on these line(wich are notes) then fold it back up. Then in the custom properties i have a field called Blank_X and Blank_y wihch is populated by the 2 dims from the constuction line sketch. It works for me but there might be a better way. I have heard that there will be somthing to get these lenghts in 2006. Cheers Damian

I ran into something similar while working with custom properties.

Do the affected parts' custom properties all have the same capitalization?

I was working with the API and found out that "material", "Material" and "MATERIAL" are three different things.

RMcHugh

Good question. I did find that 1 of my parts was in lower case and i tried to make it upper case but this would not change in my BOM it stayed in lower case

Good question. I did find that 1 of my parts was in lower case and i tried to make it upper case but this would not change in my BOM it stayed in lower case

Not to beat a dead horse, but... I found that I had to delete the lower case property entirely then replace it with a properly cased one.