Bill of Materials Editor
In this tutorial we will take a look at generating the Bill of Materials and it’s Editor.
When using components in the canvas HydroSym automatically generates a Bill of Materials. It can be customized on two different levels, both with different purposes:
- You can adjust the Bill of Materials’ content while working on your project in the Bill of Materials Editor.
- And you can change the Bill of Materials layout, for specific output requirements, in the Bill of Materials Output Window.
Approach
The Bill of Materials Output Window will be covered in our next tutorial.
For now we’ll get back to the Editor, the subject of this tutorial.
- To work in the Editor you open the Bill of Materials here under ‘Assist’.
- To get a feeling for how the Bill of Materials relates to component properties and your schematic in the canvas, let’s make some adjustments in the Editor to show you what happens first.
- Some of the editing options will be explained along. The others will follow after.
Practice:
- I’ll start with the ‘Show in Drawing button’ in the top menu. When it’s on, as it is by default, the selected component in the Bill of Materials editor comes up in blue in the canvas, in this case Position 1.0, the ‘Aron multi station subplate’.
- To change between components, simply select another one in the list.
- Next let's adjust position 2.1 in 2.1 A. As you can see, the change is now reflected in the canvas.
- If you click "properties" button, this opens the properties of the selected component, as you can see the changes are also reflected.
- This works the other way around as well, so if we adjust type, and deselect ‘Show in Bill of Materials', Component 2.1 is no longer visible in the Editor. It’s stored under ‘Hidden Components’. But the type adjustment I made is also reflected.
Columns
Now that we have experienced how the Bill of materials relates to the canvas and component properties, let’s see how we can change and sort columns.
- Click into "Select Bill of Materials Columns" from the top menu
Let's insert article codes as they are often used.
Adding columns is a matter of selecting them in "Available Columns" and moving them to the "Bill of Materials Columns". Removing the columns works the same way.
Arrow on the upper right side allow us to move entries up or down in the column.
Exporting to Excel
Select "Excel" button, press ok, and your Bill of Materials file will be generated.
- Print button in the top menu is where you can manage the Bill of Materials Output tool
- Which will be explained separately in our next tutorial.
Adding/Replacing/or creating New Components
Working with components is usually done in canvas, but it can also be done in Bill of Materials editor.
- "Add" "Replace" and "New" buttons are for this purpose
- It is possible to Add another component from the Library to BOM only, click "Library" find the component, click "Add", complete with an item number and click "save".
- Replace: First select the component you want to replace, search for a different one in the "Library" and replace.
- You can even add a new component that does not yet exist in the Library by clicking "New" and filling out the "BOM only component properties" form that pops up. For example: Adding "40 man hours" to your project can be done with this function. This data will only be presented on this Bill of Materials and nowhere else. (If you wanted to add a new component to the library, that can be done by creating a new component in HydroSym Library).
Language
And the same goes for languages down at the bottom menu. Select the language of your choice, say German, and both the Bill of Materials and component properties immediately switch to German.
We hope you found this tutorial useful, don't forget for any specific questions do not hesitate to be in touch with us, here please contact our team or visit support .
To learn about other features, please watch our other tutorials.