How to paste a bom table correctly?

[SayWhatEh]

A questions for the wise ones.

My company has several kinds of bom tables and other tables that can stack in a number of different ways. Best is just to provide the pieces and let the user assemble it by insert table from file.

But when they paste the table there is no point to fix the table to, since everything else belongs to the form, not the drawing. I tried making lines and points on the form, but I can't use them in the drawing mode, right?
Sure, they can put it approximatly right but that just looks like crap when you print it.

So, how have you guys solved this?


Thanks for reading
/Jocke

 

[magneplanar]

SayWahtEh,

Here is one way to handle this...

1) Turn on the draft grid and set the spacing
2) Select to "snap to grid" from the environment menu
3) drop in your tables/boms/whatever and let them snap to a location where you want them
4) tweak the height/width to fill in any gaps and or adjust the grid spacing to your preference

the draft grid is also useful when making a detailed view so you can make a circle or square spline instead of that wild and crazy spline without the grid snap.

cheers,

M

 

[SayWhatEh]

Thanks for the tip magneplanar. It sounds like a useful thing to know, but it is to much for me to expect people to use the grid just for this. I'd rather find a solution that is automatic for the user (no matter how much work I have to put into making it work), something that can be scripted with a mapkey and perhaps some coding.

But still thanks, I never used the grid before and it sure looks useful.

Any other tips? Somway to define points in the form that can be used for snapping in the drawing or someway to snap one table onto another?

 

[doronron1]

You could create a mapkey to place tables with absolute coordinates.

 

[vlad1979]

Put all the tables in your format.


I have different size formats (B, C ...) and (A4, A3, ...) and the BOM table is a part of the format. Like this all the BOM tables are in the same position on all drawings.


If you don't think this is an optionfor you then go with the others sugestions. I don't think there is another option then magneplanar's grid idea.


Going forward with doronron1 idea, I think a mapkey will work only if you put the table in the bottom left corner of the drawing. Because when you change the format if I'm not mistaken that is the corner that stay in place and the right side moves.





PS: another idea, a stupid one but anyway: I don't know where you put the BOM table left , right, up... in a drawing but I guess you put it near a format line. What you could do is to thicken the format line so when you add the BOM table and drag it near the format line, it will come over that line and it will not be noticed whe printedif they are not exactly alligned. But if I were you I will not mess with the format.

 

[SayWhatEh]

Doronon1, that will not work for all formats, since the absolute coords change. Maybe if I code a bit in the mapkey to use different coordinates for different format, perhaps?

vlad1979, since the bom table and such will be different depending on what kind of part and such it's showing, I really can't put all the tables on the format, that would mean I have to do like a hundrer formats, and changing those would be a nightmare.

Oh dear, is there really no easy way to do this in Pro/E?

 

[SRINIVASANIYER1]

bom tables should be in Drawing templates. I too have different BOM tables. Hence I have one template for Fabrication drawing, One for Assembly and so on...


Though I was not very particular about positioning a Bom table, I thing you should be able to position it in templates (Using Grid). With the templates available to the users, you should get the tables as desired.


With this you would need ONE format but Many templates...


By the way templates can also be used for automating the drawing process....

 

[SayWhatEh]

Just want to update everybody, lines made on the template in the template mode can be used, they follow the template and can be snapped to.

I thought templates didn't work that way, but I have been wrong sh*tloads of times so, hehe

Anyhow,now I have a mapkey that paste different kinds of drawingtable, articletable and bom table according to what the user wants, all rightly aligned. Pretty sweet.

Thanks for the help everybody.