Mastering Items and BOMs with Autodesk Vault Professional

[@johandegreef3846]

Judd, If we use file based lifecycle right now, but we want to start using Items. What do we do with the file based lifecycle? How to disable it?

[@terry7342]

Well this video is 5 years old but this system of item assignment seems to be way more work going from inventor to vault pro than I anticipated. I do not want to assign items "in a separate environment" after checking parts in. I'd like for Vault to automatically recognize assemblies as the files come in from inventor while implementing BOM states. To manually have to do all of this is mind blowing. Perhaps I am naive in thinking this needs to be manual input for every assembly you put into vault from inventor or it is truly that bad that the program requires such work.

[@rogu31sh]

Vault does recognize that Inventor assemblies are in fact assemblies. You do have to take the action to 'Assign Item', but it will read the Inventor BOM based on the structure you've assigned in Inventor. The idea of having a separate record for the Item is because the Item represents the 'part number', not just the CAD file. In the overall context of the environment, the Inventor Assembly document is just a CAD file. The Part Number often carries more information that is completely irrelevant to the CAD document. There may also be additional documents related to that Part Number - work instructions, spec sheets, etc. From a BOM perspective, the Inventor BOM is just the CAD BOM. Unless you're using Virtual Components or other methods (which all have drawbacks), your CAD BOM typically isn't the complete Engineering BOM. The Item behavior allows you to more easily add things to the BOM that you didn't/couldn't model, like paint, grease, etc. In short, the Item record gives you a way to completely define that Part Number from an engineering perspective, beyond just the CAD model. Yes, there's a bit of effort involved, but the alternatives are usually at least as much work and more prone to error. All of that said, if your Inventor Assembly BOMs are a 1:1 match for your Engineering BOMs, and you don't need to maintain additional non-CAD metadata, then it's probably not worth using the Item Master behavior in Vault. You can attach related documents directly to the Inventor assembly and export the BOM directly from Inventor for sharing downstream. However, if you need to directly integrate with other business systems (PLM, ERP/MRP), using the Item Master gives you more options, because Vault is always on and can take requests from integration software, and the BOM is easily accessible via the API. Getting at the CAD BOM via Vault without using Items is still possible, just a lot more difficult.

[@terry7342]

@@rogu31sh thank you for the reply, Our inventor BOMs are close to 1:1. At the very least we are trying to hide or remove phantom parts (ie: frame or skeletal parts that help dictate our frame assembly parameters). I have a few work arounds using iproperties but the attempt is more or less trying to reduce having to manage the BOM 2x. The current BOM also coming from inventor doesn’t feel very user friendly to me currently but could be my lack of experience. The process would be much easier if part occurrences understood which assemblies they belong to imo. Bottom up rather top down.

[@devinlwoods]

I don't want to be in listen only mode....