With the Bill of Materials, there is an underlining concept of level of details you want. Depending of whom is going to use the BOM, you need to adjust the zoom level. To each line in a BOM corresponds something that you need to get with one way or another. Buying it or manufacturing it yourself won’t be done with the same level of details. This is the concept of the Scope of Supply: the more you zoom, the more lines you have in your BOM, the more components you have to source yourself.
Tag Archives: Naming
Components Identification
The most important properties of a component are the ones that permit to define it unequivocally. This should be accomplished with the minimum information for clarity and simplicity. In your Bill Of Material you want to have the minimum number of columns that display information to identify a component.
Continue readingComponent Unique Identifier
Components have to be uniquely identified in some way to avoid information collision. Having different things with the same unique identifier could lead to confusion and inconsistency and create a nightmare for stock inventory or accounting in the real world, but also for file naming or database query in the virtual world for example.
Continue readingFiles Naming
Within a team, having a file naming system is very important to have consistency. It is not only to make it look good but it is also to make your life easier when you need to modify someone else’s work. It improves readability and clarity as everything is formatted the same way. It also sets the path towards the integration with a file management system like SolidWorks PDM, miniPDM or company software like ERPs.
Continue readingFolders Structure
Within a team, having a defined folders structure is as important as having a Files Naming convention. Properly classifying the files helps to quickly find them, helps to avoid duplicates, facilitate backup and save hard drive space.
Continue readingConfigurations Naming
Configurations are very useful when you want to show different positions in an assembly, to have similar parts with different sizes in a family, when you want to hide something specific in a drawing, etc… But like file names, the configurations names are used by SolidWorks as an identifier, as a reference. If that name is changed, an assembly or a drawing using it will throw an error.
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