Browser organization has always been a contentious
issue.
IV by its nature disregards this by throwing
pattern sources upon deletion of the pattern to the top of the browser (if the
app option is enabled to keep the souce) and will also exhibit this behavior
during the save-copy-replace, the save-as-derived and a few other
functions of the Assembly Tool Extensions. This isn't necessarily a bad
thing as it makes new components easy to find without having to constantly
RMB->Find in Browser on the model instances.
That said, there are two other tools in the
asssembly tool extensions that allow the borwser entries to be renamed by iProp
values and also a tool the will sort the browser aphabetically.
Browser clutter has finally been dealt with in 2010
with the addition of the much asked for user defined browser
folders.
In terms of the BOM-Partslist connection, the
Partlist pulls its info from the BOM from either the structured or parts-only
tabs of the BOM (depending on which one is selected upon Partslist
placement)
Components ae reordered in the BOM and Partslist by
dragging on the "brick" located on the leftmost area of the table. Multiple
parts can be shift-selected and dragged around as a group. Once the order is
set, the renumber button will renumber all the items. This order filters into
the Partslist, however, for reasons unexplained, the Partslist still need to be
manually alpha-sorted against the item numbers so it will reflect the
BOM.
I recommend to do as much work in the BOM as
possible as it allows "spreadheet" editing functions like drag-fill, direct
iprop editing, control over quantity types, shows thumbnails, controls part
number rollup, and even has the capability to open parts if
needed.
Once the Partslist is placed and sorted the need
may arise to tweak the order further. Once a row is drag-reordered and the table
is renumbered in the Partslist, the item numbers affected will turn blue. At
this point, the "Save item overrides to BOM" button will light up. This function
will renumber the BOM accordingly FROM the Partslist and keep the one to one
correlation between BOM and Partlist.
Over on McadForums, Bob Schader
wrote a cool add-in called Renumballoons
that may help you. What it does is allow the selection of balloons in an ordered
fashion (say; right to left or in particular order) then it runumbers the
selected balloons in numerical order and at the same time changes the item
nubers in the Partslist (obviously).
QBZ
What
does Browser order have to do with anything?? The browser order reflects the
order in which the parts were assembled into the assy and in this case
reflects the order that the actual physical assy is to be assembled. Start
with part #1. Add part #2 Then part #3 etc Not a really outlandish idea. But
more importantly, it reflects the order that I wanted the bom to appear. The
current bom is just a jumble of components with no particular logic. It seems
reasonable that Inventor would include a way to control the order of the bom
and that further that reflecting the engineer's intent as reflected by the
order that the assy is constructed would be one reasonable option. Apparenly
not. I did not have much luck reordering the assy bom. But I can drag items
within the partlist if that's the only way. But you say that the partlist can
be used to reorder the assy bom? I'm not aware of this option. Can you give a
clue as to how I would find that command?
