Inventor BOM Structure

I’ve answered a question today on the inventor forum about the structure and sequence of the BOM. The question was why the structure set at the top level assembly doesn’t persist in the subassemblies and how to link them if possible.

The answer is I don’t know how to link BOM item structure in between different levels of a project” but I have a quick trick on re-structuring. I could think of doing it with illogic, to get the item number from the top level BOM and assign it the BOM of all subassemblies but what if you have reused components in different places? What item number would we give it? What if in one assembly you decide to change a part (or an occurrence) to phantom or reference?

So for now I leave the question open, maybe some of you have the answer and you’re willing to share it with us.

However I do have a workaround and I haven’t thought of posting it before because I’ve been doing it so often it became second nature and it didn’t occurred that others are unaware of it.

Unfortunately because the BOM item number is controlled at the assembly level you need to do this for each assembly that you want re-structured. Luckily, if your project files have unique filenames, than the structure becomes identical in all BOM’s where you do this routine.

It has always been a pain to do these but it takes seconds to fix. Normally in the top level assembly right at the end when the project is done I follow these steps:

1. Go to BOM in the assembly and enable the view, change it to all levels in the View Properties

2. Right clicking on the columns and selecting Runtime Column Customization, add BOM Structure, Component Type and File Path.

3. Use Sort Items and sort by:

3.1 BOM Structure - Ascending (this way you will have normal parts at the top and purchased, phantom reference towards the end.)

3.2 Component type - Ascending (this puts the assemblies and subassemblies at the top and parts at the end)

3.3 File Path - Ascending (if you have a logical part number structure and filename then it sorts by that)

4 Click ok and go to Renumber Items, make sure it set to renumber all rows. Specify the start (I have it on 1) and increment (1 again)

When you click ok they are all sorted out.

Unfortunately because each level can have suppressed, hidden components, this so you can generate a different structure, the component number is not linked between different levels. But it takes seconds to do this on subassemblies and sort them out too, and the item number should correspond because you use same sort order.

Let me know how that goes for you. You don't need to use expand all but I did it to check results.

And of course the video:

 

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