An OpenBOM experience.

“When the student is ready…”

digitalcarbon’s focus its to model everything.  This is an attempt to have projects assemble like big “kits”, reducing the amount of RFIs & angry words generated during typical construction.

I was asked to start providing BOMs in addition to my modeling.  I thought, “Sure, just push a button…” Woefully naive. Vendor parts, fabrication parts & field installed parts wreak havoc on BOMs.

Here I am ranting about my first BOM attempt… 

In addition to that headache, BOMs generated by sophisticated CAD systems require others to have the same sophisticated CAD systems in order to access that information.  NOT happening…and your BOM data is held hostage.

OpenBOM is different…It is a cloud based system that I can invite anyone into to view and edit…This means that I CAN share my BOMs with others and they CAN review and/or edit this single source of truth.

Not only that…I then found out that I can place these BOMs on my drawings, which maintain a link to the cloud BOM!!

This means that someone else, who does NOT have my CAD system can update my BOMs that are placed ON MY drawings IN my CAD system!

Does everyone understand the magnitude of that?

As for OpenBOM “Catalogs”. These made absolutely no sense to me.  Then I had to edit some excel spreadsheets for similar products that used about 50% of the same parts.  If I updated one excel sheet then there was a 50% chance I needed to update the other. Duplicate information is the “kiss-of-death”.  OpenBOM Catalogs eliminate this by providing a “single source of truth” that can be referenced into any BOM.

I have heard it said,  “When the student is ready the teacher will appear.”

I now get it…OpenBOM is state-of-the-art.

Who I am and what I do.

https://vimeo.com/album/5389311