BOM from MRP project (for Corey)

A while ago I had posted about some problems with the API and inserting
BOM tables. I was working on integrating our MRP system with the
SolidWorks BOM table to automatically update from SolidWorks to the MRP
system. Corey asked me to let him know how it worked out, and it's
finished now (after a lot longer that I hoped for, but hey, I'm the
only developer on that project and I got pulled away a bit to work on
other stuff).

Basically, what I did was make an add-in that allows you to insert a
macro feature. The macro feature has a property page that lets you
pick a drawing view that it is tied to and set another option. The
macro feature then creates a BOM table in the drawing. It saves all
the links to the drawing view and BOM table via the persistent
references feature (watch out for bugs with this and BOM tables pre
2005SP3). If you set an option, it will run automatically on rebuild,
or you can run it manually by right-clicking on the macro feature.

When it runs, it queries our database to find out what product
structure is currently stored. Then it counts or measures (depending
on the part and what unit of measure is stored in our database) the top
level parts/assemblies in the SW model and also reads a list of the
item numbers from the BOM table. If there are any discrepancies
between the model and the product structure, it pops up a window with
all the part data (quantity, item numbers, etc), and lets you edit the
quantity that will go in to the database and also the item sequence
numbers used in both SW and our MRP system. It then will update all
the data (updating, inserting, and deleting as needed) and sequence
numbers so the balloons in SW will match our MRP system. The way I
have the BOM table options set, there may be multiple lines per part,
but that's not a problem because I just set the item number to be the
same for all lines.

Anyway, it works pretty well and saves us a bit of time by not having
to manually enter BOM data when it is readily available from
SolidWorks.

Jonathan

 

Wow Jonathan that sounds great. When had we discussed this before I
want to refresh my memmory.

Corey

 

The thread where we had talked before was March 3-7 with the title
"InsertBOMTable2 with top level only" Here's a google link if it
works:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group..._frm/thread/661e99c4c1c49dd3/3240836304fe45e6