SW BOM & balloon *

The new SW BOM allows you to link a drawing view's balloons to an existing
BOM. This means that you can have a drawing view of a particular
configuration of the model, and then a view of another config (such as
without the covers, belt guards, etc.) and still have the balloons match.
The Excel based BOM had difficulties with that scenario.

Here is what the SW help file says about this under the Drawing View
Properties category.

"Bill of Materials (BOM). Keep linked to BOM. Overrides the automatic
linking of a BOM to a drawing view. As long as the BOM exists and Keep
linked to BOM is selected, the SolidWorks software uses the selected BOM to
assign balloon numbers. If you attach a balloon to a component that is not
in the BOM configuration, the balloon appears with an asterisk (*)."

This means that if your "secondary" view assy config has a part in it that
is not the same config as the part in the "main" view, you will get an
asterisk in your balloon. You then have 2 choices - either change the config
of the piece part to match the "main" config piece part config, or don't
balloon it in that view.

WT

 

I have become a convert to the new BOM. At first, the unknown vs. the
comfortable was keeping me from it. But the more I use it, the better I
like it for just such reasons as this. Being able to resize it and wrap
text dynamically is a big plus for us. Also being able to reorder at will
helps.

WT