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BOM balloons with total quantities

R

Rbrgr83

New member
I'm still fairly new with drawings in Pro-E.


I'd like to know if it's possible to get my BOM balloons to display a total quantity rather than the quantity which the balloon is pointing to. Example:


View attachment 3527





Stange as it may seem, I'd like to get the 2 balloons on the right to display '2' for the quantity like the baloon on the left. This is just my company's standard. If I just have to manually override the entry for each specific balloon, then so be it. But I would like the entry to reflect the toatly quantity of that item in the model (i.e. so it will say 3 if I add another somewhere else.)


Any help would be much appreciated.
Edited by: Rbrgr83
 
That is very strange requirement.


I don't think ProE can do that.
Why don't you just look at the BOM for total quantities?


Charles
 
hmm, all my balloons display the total quantity. For examle if I have4 screws there is a single balloon displaying 4 (qty).There are some situations when they don't but very rarely. When that happens there is a merge command in the balloon menu that I use to merge the two balloons.
 
vlad1979 said:
hmm, all my balloons display the total quantity. For examle if I have4 screws there is a single balloon displaying 4 (qty).
Click to expand...


So what about when you have multiple balloons? For example, if you call out each of your 4 hypothetical bolts from above in 4 separate balloons, do they all display 1/4? Or do they all show 1/1 like the picture above? The former is what I am trying to achieve, so even if you don't know how to do it, at least I know it can be done.
 
Rbrgr83,


I'm afraid that what you want cannot be done. The BoM balloon qty is based on the qty in the BoM table (the total qty of all balloons cannont exceed the qty in the table). I see what your company is doing but what you are doing is effectively saying that the BoM table is incorrect


My two cents
smiley19.gif



Kev
 
I believe that you should work to get your company's standard changed. I think most will agree that it doesn't seem to make sense. For now it seemsyou will have to manually override the standard pro/e balloon until you get the company standard changed. Understand that overriding the BOM driven balloon can be dangerous, though. You will always have to manually manage that part of your drawings. I think you can make good arguments for changing the standard.


Good luck with trying to make the change. (Things at rest tend to stay at rest, you know)


Regards,


SrG.
 
Well, thanks for the info guys. I was afraid that this was the case. As far as changing the standard, I am fully onyour side of this arguement. Unfortunately, my company is very set in its ways. We're upgrading from ACAD, so the prospect of manually updating Bom balloons is not too much of a hurdle for them. I'll keep trying to pick away at them
smiley19.gif
.


Thanks again.
 
I must say that I agree. I've been developing formats and BOMs for my company, and I don't believe you can do what your company is asking.


One idea would be to show someone this forum exchange. You have some veteran Pro-E users replying to your query here; I can tell you that charleskim, prohammy and vlad have all solved problems for me already. There's almost no chance that all three of them are wrong.


Also, I think that charleskim was trying to be helpful.
 
SrGilberto said:
For now it seemsyou will have to manually override the standard pro/e balloon until you get the company standard changed. Understand that overriding the BOM driven balloon can be dangerous, though. You will always have to manually manage that part of your drawings. I think you can make good arguments for changing the standard.
Click to expand...


Further to this another couple of points....


When you get some guy who puts BoM balloons onto the drawing (ie unmodified balloons)where the qty in the table and on the drawing are the same, without using colour differencesor layers to distinguish between the two types of balloons, confusion will reign.


Every engineer/draffie will have to spend quite a long time manually checking every assembly drawing to make sure the balloons match the table. (It is quite easy to check in WF by picking a line in the table which willchangethe relevent ballon from yellow to pink)


Whenever a new part is added to the assy and hence changes the table, there will be no automatic updating of the balloon numbers (the parametric link is broken)


Other than that, best of luck


Kev
 
prohammy said:
SrGilberto said:
For now it seemsyou will have to manually override the standard pro/e balloon until you get the company standard changed. Understand that overriding the BOM driven balloon can be dangerous, though. You will always have to manually manage that part of your drawings. I think you can make good arguments for changing the standard.
Click to expand...


Further to this another couple of points....


When you get some guy who puts BoM balloons onto the drawing (ie unmodified balloons)where the qty in the table and on the drawing are the same, without using colour differencesor layers to distinguish between the two types of balloons, confusion will reign.


Every engineer/draffie will have to spend quite a long time manually checking every assembly drawing to make sure the balloons match the table. (It is quite easy to check in WF by picking a line in the table which willchangethe relevent ballon from yellow to pink)


Whenever a new part is added to the assy and hence changes the table, there will be no automatic updating of the balloon numbers (the parametric link is broken)


Other than that, best of luck


Kev
Click to expand...


Again, I've been over all of this with my company, at great length, with the very firm answer of "this has worked for us for blah blah blah years and we're not about to change it now." It basicly boils down to an unwillingness to retrain our own shop employees who are now accustomed to this system.


Again, I appreciate all of the comments, but the larger issue at hand I will be dealing with on my own. It was a big enough uphill battle to get rolled over to Pro-E in the first place. I understand the wieght of your opinions, especialy based on the amount of experience you have. If I need further support on this, i will let you know when the time comes. But I will let you know right now, it won't be for a while.


PRStockhausen said:
What you might do is only show one ballon with the quantity and show reference ballons for the others.
Click to expand...


At this point, this will probably the compromise I'll be shooting for.


Thanks again everyone.
Edited by: Rbrgr83
 
Rb,


Sorry for sounding like I was preaching, best of luck


Kev


EDIT: I may have been a priest/vicar in a former life, who knows
smiley17.gif

Edited by: prohammy
 
If your balloons are truly paramteric, you should be able to do a "Merge" of the two balloons. Table --> BOM Balloons --> Merge. Pick one of the balloons, then pick the balloon you want to combine the quantities with. As long as they are the same part, this should work.
 
At first I was thinking you want to merge the damn balloons. But then I understood what you need and I think there is a way of achieving what you want.


Put at first one balloon, like it's normal to do, one balloon with all qty. Then go to table / BOM balloons / and select split, enter the quantity you need for the new balloon andselect a new placement for the new balloon.


Let me know if it's working or if I understood wrong what you need
smiley2.gif



You can work with split to split the balloons and with redistribute to put quantity from one balloon to another. All this will have to be done manually there isn't something automatically, but all balloons will be parametric. When you add a new component in assy that will change the qty from 9 to 10 that qty will be added to the first balloon you put on the drawing, but the other balloons will remain the same.
 
Have you thought about just using the simple option for ballons and not have them display the qty? Then whenever you update the table it wont change the quantity in the ballons because they won't have a qty in them.
 
I have thought of this, and it is definitely a viable solution, one that we may have to fall back on. But the larger issue at hand is that my company would like keep as many of their current conventions as possible, this one included.
 
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