Bill of Materials question

I am using SW2007. Does anyone know how to overide the quantity in an excell based BOM and have SW retain the changes. We use materials in our assemblies, like solder and flux, that I would like to show up on our BOM as AR (As Required). I currently just save a blank part with our material part number and insert that into our assembly, so the quantity shows up as 1. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Cory

Cory,

Are you actually using excel, or are you using the standard SolidWorks method of doing BOMs? We have created our own BOM template. However, we are still using the basic, standard SolidWorks BOM functionality or structure. Following is how I accomplish this with the standard functionality.

I create a part file and simply model a small cube, or small cylinder depending on specific situation. I set up all of my custom properties as always in the part file. I create a drawing file with a digital picture of the product container (so that manufacturing knows what it is and purchasing knows what to buy). I then take my part file into an assembly and I mate my small cube or cylinder to the assembly. I hide the part out of all configs (hide, not suppress). I create my assembly drawing and the BOM. My part file then shows up in the BOM as you would expect. Finally, I simply double click the quantity cell for this part (in each assembly configuration where it is used) and select OK on the dialog box warning that I am about to override the quanity number. Then I type a capital AR in the box and select OK.

I hope this helps!

Slick

We are using the excel based BOM within Solidworks. We also have created our own template. We would like to find a way to have our BOM's automatically recognize our consumable materials and always display them as (AR) for the QTY. We have thousands of drawings and manually overiding each one is very time consuming.

There should be a way to overide the QTY setting in the part model to always have it display a user defined entity. Any more ideas?

Thanks ,

Cory