Need to make an update to a released assembly? Some important bits to remember. There is a Special Permission you’ll need to make sure you have – Override Revision Control Locks (I talked about this when first introduced back in 2012: Taking Control (Overriding Revision Control Locks in PLM 360).
It’s also important to note that you need to specify Revision, Lifecycle State, and Release Date – this allows the import tool to make sure it’s updating the correct revision.
-- Michelle
Today’s tip is hot off the presses from a recent Discussion Forum post. There was a question about adding Classification fields to the BOM Views on the BOM tab. While this currently isn’t possible, there’s a great workaround to achieve the desired result (and this can also be displayed on the Item Details page). It’s covered in detail in an Autodesk University class from last year, Keep Your Tenant Cutting Edge, Part 2: Advanced PLM 360 Classification Techniques. I'll include another example in this post as well...
The Classification information can be used to drive the description field.
For background – here’s a look into the Classification Manager set up for this class:
This is done by concatenating the values from the classification along with some text:
'RESISTOR ' + item.classification.PACKAGE.displayValue + ' ' +
item.classification.MOUNTING_STYLE.displayValue +
' ' + item.classification.RESISTANCE + 'Ω ' +
item.classification.POWER_RATING + 'mW ' +
item.classification.TOLERANCE + '% '
You can use that field in a BOM View (if it’s not already part of the descriptor) and see the classification info that way.
Hope that helps!
--Michelle
In a previous post, I explored my own experiences on what it was like to manage business processes with a failing PLM. One thing I have experienced is the rampant overuse of Excel in businesses today. I share some of my experiences using Excel and other hybrid solutions in the following presentation: watch it here.
A quick cheaters guide....
Excel often gets used for Bill of Materials and Change Management.
BOM Management, whether it be the designs in CAD, what gets purchased, or what gets manufactured - it must be shareable across the company and managed.
Shareable means engineering, supply chain, procurement and others can get to the master document or their needed version of the BOM. With PLM 360, being in the cloud means hyper-connectivity and infrastructure is moot - downloads, installs, and updates.
On the flip side, it must be managed. It needs to restrict certain users and groups at certain points in the project phase but also the ability to make changes and have those changes approved. PLM 360 lets you manage roles for your users and let's you build approval workflows for all changes to your bill of materials.
Learn a little bit more about it here.
- Tyler Beck, Technical Marketing
Next week on PLM Talk – Gavin England will be demystifying Bill of Materials with some tidbits from his 2015 Autodesk University class “PL11957: Become an Autodesk PLM 360 Power User: How to Use the Broader Range of Features Available” (you can watch the class in it’s entirety as well).
I wanted to share a quick reminder when using the Export BOM feature – keep in mind that the output spreadsheet with reflect the BOM View that’s selected. You may want to switch to a different view to make sure you are getting all the fields you want in the exported spreadsheet. Also, if you select a particular revision of an assembly (or the BOM structure as of a previous date in time), the too will dictate the content of the output spread sheet.
Join us on Wednesday February 24th at noon East coast time for more BOM tidbits, tips, and tricks!
--Michelle
Happy Back to the Future Day! You won’t need a time machine to catch the latest PLM Talk covering BOM Configuration and Compare if you sign up now – today at noon EDT. (Of course, if you do miss it, a recording will be available). In the meantime, here’s a workaround for displaying links in the BOM tab.
This was covered on our PLM General Discussion forum in the Autodesk Community - TL;DR - You can't use a script to generate an HTML field that will be directly shown on the BOM tab. Instead, as to not display raw HTML code, you’ll create a computed field on the Item Details tab (you can hide this from users in an admin-only section) and then create a field on the BOM tab referencing it that will display as a link.
--Michelle
In Previous Releases, Participant licenses did not include BOM Compare functionality. It was requested on our IdeaStation to change that, so we did! What’s so great about this? BOM Compare functionality along with all the BOM Configuration (as of date, bias) is now made available to users with Participant licenses so that they may evaluate relevant information before approving a Change Order while participating in a workflow process. This really extends the value of BOM Compare so that Workflow Participants can make better decisions.
Learn more about how the Compare BOM Data functionality works on the Help.
--Michelle
Photo: TheBusyBrain
Can you believe the Call for Proposals for the next Autodesk University is almost here? That’s right – April 22, 2015 is the date to mark on your calendars to submit your ideas for a class. So while you’re mulling over ideas of what to present this year, maybe look over some of last year’s presentations.
The first class from last year’s Power Track was Bill of Materials Management: The Center of your PLM Universe. This covers key existing BOM Management capabilities and gives some great ‘Did You Know’ Tips. You can watch the video or download the class handout to learn more.
--Michelle
So if you’ve seen the Lego Movie, you’ll get that the blog title is a play on the catchy tune “Everything is Awesome” (and if you haven’t seen it, it’s a cute movie). If you’re new to PLM 360, one of the first things you probably want to do is import your information into your tenant. This can easily be done using the import tool provided. It’s been awhile since we’ve walked through this, so I thought I’d do an example using our latest configuration and a sample assembly I got from a Bill of Materials Template. I’m a big fan of both Lego and Star Wars so love that this example is of a mini X-Wing. I need to massage the Excel a bit to meet the format needed by the import tool and how I have my Items and BOM workspace configured. I’ve put a post on the discussion forum that will have both of these Excel sheets if want to play along at home. Here’s the sheet our ‘company’ has been using to manage their BOMs:
We’ll tweak the data a bit to fit into the sample import sheet (snagged this from Brian Schanen, so many of you may have this from training, else check the forum post).
The model isn’t really set up to show the subassemblies, so we’ll wing it (see what I did there?) and put in some reasonable level values. If you are doing an initial import, you’ll want to set the number field (which is usually configured to be autogenerated) to Editable just for the import and then change back.
When you set up the import project, be sure to set the level key:
and do the rest of the import settings. You can always refer to the Help topic Import for further details. It’s super important to remember when you are importing lifecycle and revisions, life cycle, revision, and release date must all be defined.
Once I run the import, I see my assembly with the structure I indicated in my Excel file:
I’ll be doing a live walk through of this example and others in our next PLM Talk. Join me on Wednesday March 18 at noon East Coast time and we’ll cover what’s important about importing!
--Michelle
At this point we have created our new Item Lifecycle Scheme in Vault Professional 2015 R2, mapped out all the transition requirements and actions, defined the state based security for items and their attached files making our job almost complete.
The last few pieces now relate to the item state definitions as they relate to work-flow and system behaviors.
There are two important check boxes to start outlining this item behavior, defining whether the selected state is a "Released" or "Obsolete" state.
As our new custom released state can have any name and administrators can have more than one released state (think "Released to Construction" and "As Built" for example) we need to flag which states can be considered "Released". The "Released" state is used to control things like our transition rules where child items must be released to proceed with a release operation on the parent.
Similarly, when we want to restrict release of files that contain "Obsolete" data, we need to identify that state information here by checking "This is an Obsolete State".
Note that signifying this state as released or obsolete does not affect end user access, or our own transitioning rules - it merely informs system processes like conditional rules on lifecycles or item export settings. Typically a WIP or Review state has no special behaviors and would not be explicitly tagged.
This tab also contains the system purge controls for the lifecycle state. Another great new Item features in Vault Professional R2 is the ability to view the item versions we generate as modify the properties, BOM etc. (We have basically always created versions, we just didn't make them visible). Users can now (as they do with files) display versions or only revisions of items depending on their requirements and can purge unnecessary item versions.
For each state, the administrator selects whether or not to keep every version of that particular state on purge, remove all versions, or perhaps keep last or first and last.
In the example above, when we identify the state as a released state, there is no option to remove all versions - you have to have at least one - and I would suggest doing the same for obsolete states. The rest is at your discretion, I always like to err on the side of caution though and perhaps save at least one version for each state, in case you are wondering what changed after review for example.
So there you have it, a completely configured item lifecycle scheme with all behavioral conditions applied, as a final touch though, jump in and add some Comments.
The comments are the default text that appears when you execute a lifecycle transition, they're designed to help others understand the state intent, like "Sent for Customer Approval" or "Approved by Line Manager" for example, these can be edited when needed but its a nice touch to have a clear descriptive comment for the lifecycle action.
- Allan
