Use this activity to import a Bill of Material from an external system into a part structure. A part often has a corresponding drawing, which can contain a list of what the part consists of, or Bill of Material (BOM). Most combined drawing/BOM systems can export the list to a text file. You can use this text file to import the list directly into the Engineering Part Revision/Consists Of tab.
The BOM must be exported to a delimited file (with a allowed delimiter) from your drawing system before it can be imported.
The parts defined in the text file are imported into the Consists of tab, where you can review the imported parts, transfer them to Engineering Parts for entry into the system if they do not already exist, and eventually save them as part of the structure.
Engineering Part Revision/Consists Of
- Select the menu option Import External Structure, then Configure Import Layout.
- Specify the delimiter and the sequence of the data items in the file to import, then click OK.
- The definition of the delimiter and the sequence for data items in the delimited file are now configured. It specified what parts of the delimited file should be imported to the Engineering Part Revision/Consists Of tab.
For example, your delimited file may look like this (delimited using a comma):
10,00A,Description of 00A,Position 3,5,Note of 00A
20,00B,Description of 00B,Position 5,11,Note of 00B
30,00C,Description of 00C,Position 2,1,Note of 00C
You can select one character from the list below as the delimiter.
| Delimiters |
, |
! |
@ |
% |
^ |
& |
* |
: |
; |
~ |
/ |
$ |
You can use a value between 1-5 from the drop down list boxes as the sequence of each data item, except for the column 'Note'. 'Note' should be the last data item of each row in the delimited file. So the sequence of 'Note' should be '6'.
|
Column |
Data Item Sequence |
|
Delimiter |
, |
|
Sort Code |
1 |
|
Part Number |
2 |
|
Part Description |
3 |
|
Drawing Position No |
4 |
|
Quantity |
5 |
|
Note |
6 |
Any other character can be used as values in the delimited file other than the delimiter used. However, for the 'Note' field you can use the delimiter character as well.
- Select the menu option Import External Structure, then Import External Product Structure.
- Specify the filename and location, then click OK.
- The parts are now inserted into the table in Engineering Part Revision/Consists Of. A dialog box shows how many of the inserted parts do not exist as engineering parts.
- If all parts exist as engineering parts, save the import.
- If there are parts that do not exist as engineering parts, you need to create the engineering parts before you can save the imported parts.
- Select the parts that do not exist as engineering parts (the parts with a value in the part description field).
- Select the Create Engineering Part menu option.
- The part number and the part description from the import file will be transferred to Engineering Parts. Enter the needed information, then save the records.
- Go back to Engineering Part Revision/Consists Of and save the import.