Get a BOM from Windchill to Creo Drawing

[Amirtharaj_K]

Hi Everyone,

I am looking for a method to get the Windchill BOMs to the Creo drawing. What are the information in USES TAB get into Creo BOM.

Regards,

Amir

[avillanueva]

Are you looking to refer the data as a table? Recommend against this as you will likely always run into Sync issues.

[Hari_Vara]

Hi,

As Villanueva says, Sync issues will creep in that will cost you dearly at shop floor! You should only have one Master BOM, for which Windchill is best!

For shopfloor ppl to have Windchill access there is something called Navigate "Terminal" license, which is not per user but per Terminal in shop floor. Please check with your PTC Partner. You need to set up Navigate server, but its worth!

Best Regards

Hari

[joe_morton]

I'm really curious how others have implemented not having BOMs on drawings? How do you identify the parts in an assembly drawing if not using a BOM and balloon callouts?

[BenLoosli]

When I worked for an aerospace company, we had separate documents that contained the BOM. A package sent to the shop floor consisted of the drawing, BOM sheets and manufacturing instructions. This was pre-PLM, so it may have changed since then.

[avillanueva]

The simple answer is that you don't. You create a package like @BenLoosli and @ScottMorris suggested. I remember Weatherford creating an automated coversheet in their Windchill implementation a long time ago but you might have to go digging in some PTCUser presentations to find it.  BOM Balloons are find and should be done via repeat regions as you always have done. This gives you a mapping from a component to a number which can be transferred to the Windchill BOM. The issue will always be that the Windchill BOM talks to your downstream ERP systems and may include lots of non-modeled parts. You may have to jump through hoops to get the CAD to 100% represent the true BOM if you want to display on the field of the drawing. I have also seen users in my company ditch BOM balloon numbers all together and simply call out the part number with a leader. It can get cluttered though.

Now, I have seen lots of drawings from other companies that do put tables, sometimes with multiple configurations on a table visible on the drawing. It takes manual work to keep in sync. When the BOM changes you need to make sure that both Windchill and the drawing are updated and include steps to check that they are in sync (more drawing reviewers). Since we use mainly BOM balloons, our checkers verify the number against the BOM and the qty if noted like 3x near the balloon. The repeat region that generated it is hidden via layer so we do not have to concern our selves with name and number parameters not 100% matching. 

We took the same approach with revision block or change tables on drawings. By removing them, you are directing folks to the Windchill system to look at the real data in change notices. No need to manually keep a second record and no need to have checkers verify that it is accurate. 

[GrahamV]

One thought, it should be possible to add item numbers ('1', '2', '3'...) to parts in the assembly via a custom parameter which could be shown in the Creo BOM balloons (but don't show a table), this could be mapped to a WTPartUsageLink attribute so you can show the item numbers in the WTPart structure along with their part numbers. It might be possible to streamline it further by using something like feature number to drive the item number. This could give the best of both worlds, users can keep their BOM balloons on the drawing, but the only BOM table is in the WTPart so no data is duplicated so no synchronisation issues.

[avillanueva]

This is exactly how the integration works via component parameters at the assembly level that can be mapped into the WTPartUsageLink attributes. In practices we had issues since it was possible to enter different values for the same component and muck it up. Required too much user hand holding.

[ScottMorris]

This is a great question. Creo has a built-in BOM table functionality that can be placed on the drawing, but it is related to CAD documents and not the wt.parts. The question is what information is most important for the drawing and whether or not your CAD docs and wt.parts use the same identification method.

I have an old idea kicking around in the backlog to get as much business information as possible off the drawing and onto a cover sheet that is printed with the drawing by the CAD publisher, but its only an idea right now.

[GrahamV]

Funnily enough, I've been playing around with same idea, though I was thinking of implementing it as a JSP that could generate a PDF only when required (e.g. sending it to an external supplier), as publishing carries the risk that the data isn't really live and users could end up looking at old data if something goes wrong with publishing. I was thinking the report could collect things like part attributes, BOM table, thumbnails, reference documents, and anything else that's linked in Windchill. Automatically generating a cover sheet like this would make a lot of the simpler drawings redundant, I reckon I could ditch 10% of all the drawings we produce!

[avillanueva]

Check out @LewisLawrence post here:

https://community.ptc.com/t5/Windchill/How-to-capture-the-quot-Approver-name-quot-from-the-promotion/m-p/39356#M4741

Oddly, this just popped up to top today.

[Amirtharaj_K]

Good Morning Guys thanks for the replay and appologize for the delay in response.

1. If the person is a CAD user, he can use the repeat region to get the EBOM in drawing, but once he integrates with Windchill, he might be able to add any data he has in the structure column right. can we get the same thing into drawing.

2. In the uses/occurance tab, we have a reference designator to control the order list. Can we get to the drawing?

3. We have other options like a MBOM and SBOM can we get into the drawing.

Regards,

Aj

[OliverDroop]

mBOM should share the same find number as eBOM. It also consumes the same cad drawing

sBOM will have their own documentation. e.g. Creo Illustrate and Arbortext IsoDraw. But you should be able to reuse the FindNumber from eBOM which is copied forward. 

The problem with repeat region is that you do not get additional wtparts into that. or you need to model it as bulk items as well. I would try to avoid and generate a BOM Report which can be used in addition to the drawing or you stitch this into the PDF as additional sheet during release.