OpenBOM For Autodesk Platform Services: Design Digital Thread for Mechanical, Electronic and AEC Projects

Data is a central part of any successful project. Modern businesses are looking for robust data management platforms and capabilities to help them manage project information and processes. Starting from the project idea, initial engineering efforts and later procurement and supply chain management, data is a centerpiece of making these projects efficient and supporting the effectiveness of decision-making. 

The reality of products and engineering services requires dealing with a large amount of multi-disciplinary data. Complex products include mechanical, PCB, and software components. Industrial projects include equipment and construction (AEC) elements that are required to design installation and deliver equipment in the field. 

Managing all this information together is a big challenge for industrial companies that for a long time were focusing on Excel and Email to manage information outside of the design systems. 

Design Digital Threads Vision 

One of the ideas we developed at OpenBOM is to have an OpenBOM product knowledge graph to provide a foundation for multidisciplinary and multi-application information combined together for the projects. The foundation of OpenBOM is a graph-based flexible data modeling service that gives you a real-time multi-tenant data management system to store all data. 

OpenBOM engineering integrations allow you to bring data from multiple design systems, combine it, and deliver an entire product data and product knowledge graph for this information.

This is a vision of the digital thread design that we developed at OpenBOM. As part of the implementation of the Design Digital Thread, OpenBOM introduced a Design Dashboard that allows connecting multiple design services (CAD systems) and importing information seamlessly with a single click.

OpenBOM for Autodesk Platform Services 

An an example of the digital threads integration of OpenBOM Design, you can check OpenBOM integrations with Autodesk Platform Services (APS). The first integrations to support it was Fusion360 and AECBOM (Autodesk Revit). Check our press release here from October 2023.

In the last OpenBOM update, we delivered an extension of integration with Autodesk Fusion 360 Electronics and few other new integrations and enhancements to existing ones.   

• OpenBOM Autodesk Platform Services integration for Fusion Electronics
• Enhancements to Autodesk Fusion360 Mechanical Design
• Integrations of Workspace Manager (Publish) 

Together with the already existing OpenBOM for Revit (AECBOM), these integrations provide a seamless mechanism to extract multiple project information from Autodesk Platform Services (APS) – mechanical, electronic, and construction (AECBOM). Let’s talk about them more in detail. 

Autodesk Fusion 360 Electronics BOMs in one click

Create a BOM of your favorite Autodesk Fusion 360 Electronics Design including Reference Designators and thumbnail images. For the first time, you can browse to your favorite Fusion Electronics design in your Autodesk Cloud storage and create a complete BOM with a single click!!

Watch the video: 

OpenBOM For Autodesk Fusion 360 

We brought more features to the Autodesk Fusion 360 for Design.  Create complete multi-level BOMs of your Fusion cloud design directly from the OpenBOM Design Dashboard without opening Fusion.  Includes all properties and metadata, thumbnails, and (optionally) create STEP files for Part and/or Assemblies.

Check the video where we demo it in work and compare it with a traditional Autodesk Fusion 360 Add-in.

OpenBOM For Autodesk Revit (AECBOM)

If you have Autodesk Revit projects managed using Autodesk Platform Services and ACC, you can get access to these projects using the OpenBOM AECBOM service. Fully integrated with OpenBOM Design Dashboard, it gives you a way to bring construction takeoffs and construction Bill of Materials. 

Check the video: 

Conclusion: 

OpenBOM provides a flexible data modeling platform, with multi-tenant data schema and multi-applications graph-based capabilities to aggregate data from multiple sources and projects in a single product knowledge graph. It is a robust mechanism to support complex design and construction projects, a platform for design, and supply chain collaboration, and a foundation for generative AI capabilities. 

It allows engineering services, design, manufacturing, general contractors, subcontractors, and other companies to get rid of old-fashioned Excel-based data management and turn data into digital services.  The companies that will do so will be successful in the future digital business. Companies that will keep their old-fashioned data management priorities will be outcompeted by new digital businesses. 

REGISTER FOR FREE and check how OpenBOM can help you today.

Best, Oleg