OpenBOM for Solidworks — bi-directional data exchange
Editing Bill of Materials and related information is not a simple tasks. OpenBOM helps you to capture information from CAD systems, share and communicating it with the team. But this is would be relatively simple — many systems can do it. You can do it with Excel or Google Sheet by exporting BOM and sending to your production planning and contractors.
OpenBOM can do it as seamless as Google Sheet, but OpenBOM can do more. Yesterday I shared some exciting news about coming OpenBOM enhancements to create Part Catalogs directly from OpenBOM. Check my yesterday article here — Early preview — OpenBOM Part Catalog Extractor for Solidworks.
Today, I want to show you feature that is already available in OpenBOM and Solidworks plug-in, but we are going to improve it in coming release. It is bi-directional data exchange between Solidworks and OpenBOM.
As we’ve heard from many our users and customers, to update tabular BOM data with properties such as Part Number, Cost, supplier information is hard. OpenBOM can help you to do so and calculate product cost.
But what if you would like to put this data back to Solidworks. This is where bi-drectional data exchange is useful. You can get data out of Solidworks, create BOM, do planning, share data, communicate with contractor supplier and then sync it back to Solidworks.
OpenBOM supports all types of Solidworks data — Part Numbers, Descriptions and custom properties. On the picture below you can see both custom property with supplier name as well as Part Number. OpenBOM helps you first to bring this data to OpenBOM to share and then to sync it back.
Check this video for more details how it works.
Conclusion.
I usually say simplicity is hard. We are working to make Solidworks — OpenBOM data exchange seamless and painless. It allows to get the best of both worlds — to keep value of your favorite CAD tool — Solidworks and at the same time, to use cloud services such as OpenBOM to communicate and collaborate outside of engineering environment to speed up production planning, procurement, buying parts and communications with contractors and suppliers.
Check OpenBOM today to learn more. Our user subscription together with Solidworks plug-in is free. If you have questions, contact me via oleg at openbom dot com.
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.
