How to produce a Bill of Materials/Schedule

[Tommy111]

Hi everyone,

 

Basically what I am looking to do is to produce a bill of materials(BOM)/schedule of materials from the contents of my AutoCAD 2007 drawing. I have all my blocks (most of which are dynamic) currently set up in my tool palette.

 

I had downloaded a trial version of Global CAD, but unfortunately it does not seem to handle dynamic blocks very well.

 

I had been told by our CAD supplier that 2007 does not produce a BOM and that this can only be gained through a third party software. However, they told me that 2008 has now got a very good BOM/schedule producing tool (Maybe this is only because our subscription is now due:) ).

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Domdeezy]

The best I could find in 2007 was Attribute Extraction under the TOOLS menu. I set up the blocks with the attribute with the information I would like to appear in the BOM (Material Description, Material Pcmark, Length, Qty, etc...). With Attribute Extraction you can select entire drawing or multiable drawings or just an object. You could either extract the BOM to Table within the drawing or Excel format. If you need help setup something up let me know. I running a BOM for trusses now and works great. Good luck.

Dom

[Tommy111]

Thanks Dom.

 

Does it work ok for Dynamic Blocks, e.g if you stretch a dynamic block, will the revised length show up ok in the BOM. I have found that I can get a BOM from Glodal CAD from standard blocks easily but dynamic blocks seem to be a problem.

 

Thanks for the advice

[Domdeezy]

Yes it works for Dynamic Blocks. What I did for the length was added a attribute with a formula so if I adjust the length it updates the correct length. I had also created one for weight of material so it would calculate per the length.

[soprano]

Hi Dom,

 

I have less experience in autocad BOM. I follow what you said but when i want to extract attribution , it asked me to create a template file for cdf and sdf output. I will appreciate if you can write some few steps for me how to do it.

Thanks,

Soprano

[Domdeezy]

I haven't worked with autocad in a while. Let me see what I could figure out. Send me the drawing you are working with. From what I remember you need to make sure you have a table setup in your drawing.

[soprano]

Hi Domdeezy,

 

I really appreciate your help for this. I love autocad for panel wiring and layout diagram design but I have to come out the challenge of generating the BOM.

 

Please find out the attached drawing.

 

ZB: ZENER BARRIER PHYSICAL LAYOUT, FROM RS COMPONENT WEBSITE

TB : TERMINAL BLOCK FROM MANUFACTURE

EDM 5017: DATA LOGGER

THANKSAKZO WIRING DIAGRAM-BOM HELP Layout1 (1).pdf

 

PS: I am struggling to up load a dwg.

[ReMark]

As long as you have blocks with attributes and access to the TABLE command you would be able to do it. I'm thinking the Table command showed up in 2008. Am I right?

 

For anyone with a version of AutoCAD that does include the TABLE command find and watch Mark Petrucci's YouTube video entitled "AutoCAD 2012 BOM Example" that runs a little over two minutes. Pay close attention to the different choices he makes at the various windows as he works his way through the process.

[Domdeezy]

Soprano follow that video Remark posted. Thanks ReMark.. I haven't messed with AutoCAD in a long time. I couldn't even find Attribute Extraction, it looks like it has changed to Data Extraction.

[ReMark]

Attribute extraction is still an option as far as I know.