How to create Siemens Solid Edge BOM (Bill of Materials) using OpenBOM Add-in

If you are using Siemens Solid Edge to design products, one day you will have to create BOM to build an actual product. Even Solid Edge has BOM report function, it will open a pandora box of Excel BOM management. The last thing you want your manufacturing organization to do is to get drawn into BOM Excels. Because then you need to hire a CEO (Chief Excel Officer) to manage them. 

Excel is limited in many ways. When you need to calculate the cost, mass or plan purchasing, Excel is not a good tool. Also, sending Excel and Drawings to a shop or to a contract manufacturer is prone to many mistakes. 

OpenBOM is coming to help you. To make it really easy, OpenBOM created integrations with all CAD systems allowing you to collect information engineers and organize it in a way that allow you to manage data about all your parts (standard, fabricated, outsourced) as well as product structure.

Below, you can find a typical scenario to follow in order to organize the data and create a first BOM from Solid Edge. I assume, you already installed OpenBOM Add-in for Siemens Solid Edge. And here are the steps: 

1. To configure OpenBOM Add-in using settings and define templates
2. Create an OpenBOM catalog from the assembly. Add business parameters you don’t want to store in Solid Edge (Eg. cost, manufacturer and supplier names). 
3. Create a catalog – this is a central place to store data about parts 
4. Create a BOM – it is a structure that helps you to capture usage of parts in this particular BOM
5. Connect BOM to a catalog to create a complete data representation of product structure. 

Please watch the video with step-by-step instructions.

Conclusion.

Establishing product structure including information about parts, usages and other business information (Eg. cost, supplier) is a great step to improve the way you work in product design and manufacturer. OpenBOM Add-in for Siemens Solid Edge allows you to capture data about BOM and keep related information closed, but not messed up with multiple Excel files. 

So if you want to ease the production, start planning the procurement of materials and make schedules, as well as calculating the cost of production, you need to focus on the bill of materials BOM. You can also use BOM in order to describe the product and determine the method of its manufacture. All components will be taken into account in the main production schedule, including raw materials that need to be purchased or manufactured.

OpenBOM Add-In for Solid Edge is available with an OpenBOM subscriptions.  

Best, Oleg @ openbom dot com.

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