A question for the Solidworks PDM users. We have assemblies of 1000s of parts, hundreds of part numbers. We want to export a BOM for these with total quantities. The drawing BOMs are the source of truth, but not all drawing BOMs count. A sheet metal drawing has a BOM for the inserts, etc, but we don’t want the exported BOM showing counts for inserts. There are few other things like that, where we want to trim the ends of the structure. In Solidworks PDM, is there a way to handle that, to code or manually set properties so we can say what is in or out of the exported BOM without having to do it every time we export?
In 2024 (should have been years earlier), Solidworks PDM added a Flattened BOM export to Excel/.csv. It’s essential for getting total multi-level order quantities right. Welcome to the SOLIDWORKS Web Help
Quantities from Indented BOM are misleading and difficult to utilize for large scale orders. Parts Only BOM neglect the subassemblies.
Managing what shows up on the BOM is a fundamental responsibility of the CAD authors, and there are a number of tools and methods that support this activity. It’s true that many designers/authors don’t fully understand that work, but it’s something they can be trained to do better. If your users have been plowing along without paying attention to this, then it could be a big job to fix. It’s best if most of the BOM accuracy work is handled in CAD, but there are PDM and ERP tools to manipulate and create multiple types of BOMs. You could also look at www.openbom.com
Inserts example - if you never want them on the BOM, it’s easy: in Solidworks set to ‘Exclude from BOM’ at the immediate parent assembly. But if you want to see the inserts listed in the sheet metal drawing, but not the multi-level export then [at first I said use 2 configs, correcting] - they need to understand the “Child component display when used as a subassembly” - the Show/Hide/Promote option is great. https://help.solidworks.com/2020/english/SolidWorks/sldworks/HIDD_NEW_ADD_CONFIG.htm?id=10.2.0.2 If you want the finished sheet metal component to show up as one line (in a multi-level BOM) then Children are set to Hide.
And yes, you can also add columns and datacard fields to any item in PDM. But again, getting it right in CAD is the best practice.
Could look at https://www.getbild.com/ and some other cloud based options like https://www.sibe.io/ (Israeli I believe). As you grow, the floating network licenses (vs named-users for most of the cloud stuff) offered by traditional PDM become more cost effective.
Will they be affected by the SolidWorks Partner Program issues that @xtmechSB mentioned?