Product Structure, Reports, Bill of Material

T-FLEX CAD provides convenient set of tool for creating standard and custom BOMs and reports.

Report is a flexible mechanism for creating technical documentation in customized formats. This mechanism can be used for a standard BOM creation as well as for your own reports based on the product structure. Thereby program technical documentation tools can be adapted for various specific industries.

BOM in program is a table containing data about fragments (parts, subassemblies) inserted into the main assembly. If necessary, one drawing document may contain several BOMs.

BOM data is automatically copied from fragment files or added manually by user. In addition to fragments, the data from other sources can be included in the product structure – from 3D objects or drawing elements.

BOMs and reports can be created on the base of prototypes or report templates.

The BOM prototype is a program document that contains empty BOM table with preset properties. The BOM prototype describes structure of columns and sections for the created table. Prototype-based BOMs is a legacy mechanism and is not recommended for usage in the new documents.

The report template is a more flexible mechanism with extra options comparing to BOM prototypes. When you work with the product structure, the templates usage is preferable because of various advantages.

The report template is a program document file. BOM format and its data structure are described in this file according to certain rules. Tables and data description are inserted as text entities that are created in the template.

The template may contain macros (special microprograms) for additional template data processing, for example, empty rows adding.

Each macro has some number of attributes. Their values can be set for inputting when you create a report. Report is filled according to the product structure and the report template.

Report and BOM data is displayed in Product structure window.

The Product structure is used to collect technical documentation data. The data about the structure and the hierarchy of a product can be added to product structure manually or automatically. You can specify sorting, grouping and displaying rules for data in the table. There are commands for callouts creation, export to Excel, report generation, etc.

New product structures are created on the base of product structure types either included in the program installation or custom. Each type specifies various properties and column composition.

Several product structures can be created for one product. Each of them will display appropriate data for further generation of reports and BOMs.