Creating custom Bill of Materials using OpenBOM Part Catalogs and new integrated search

If you follow our blog, you probably noticed early message about new integrated search functionality that will be soon introduced in OpenBOM. If you missed that, here is the link — Early preview of BOM integrated search.

Today, I want to give you another perspective on how integrated search fills the gap in OpenBOM service between Part Catalogs and Bill of Materials.

Part Catalogs and BOM

Working with BOM and Part Catalogs is one of the topics that often raises questions. OpenBOM provides a very flexible mechanism allow to define Bill of Materials, Part, and connects information about how Parts are used in different Bill of Materials.

The idea of Part Catalog in OpenBOM is to provide a centralized storage for all information about Parts (both standard and custom), so this information can be used in different BOMs.

But you can have more than one part catalogs in OpenBOM. The structure of catalogs can be defined by you based on variety of factors — classification, contractors, product groups. Once catalogs are created you can create custom bill of materials from parts.

This is a moment where I’m getting very much excited about new integrated search in BOM because it gives you way to search not only by matching part numbers, but also by full text search on all part properties with filters individually set to a specific properties.

Integrated search is derived from OpenBOM Part Search dashboard you can see today.

To bring this search in Add Item BOM function will make BOM really powerful — you will be able to find and reuse part, which was hard to do before.

Check this video, which will give you a better idea what I’m talking about.

Conclusion.

OpenBOM integrated search serves as a bridge between catalogs and BOMs. It will make your work of editing and assembly of BOMs much easier. However, there is a thing beyond that… because of the way OpenBOM can share part catalogs, you can alway ask your contractor or supplier to share it with you, so you can strart using it BOM right away.

If you have questions, let me know. Otherwise, please check OpenBOM today and see how you can literally leave your BOM and Part List excels behind.

Best, Oleg

PS. Let’s get to know each other better. If you live in the Greater Boston area, I invite you for a coffee together (coffee is on me). If not nearby, let’s have a virtual coffee session — I will figure out how to send you a real coffee.

Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my Beyond PLM blog and PLM Book website.

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