Creo Parametric Tip: Information About Bill of Materials (BOM) Report Formats

In Creo Parametric, the Bill of Materials (BOM) is a list of all the components needed to build the assembly. The BOM also lists the total quantity of each component included in the assembly.

To create a Bill of Materials, open or activate an assembly model, then click the  (Bill of Materials) icon. This tool is in the Investigate group on both the Model tab and the Tools tab.  Clicking on this tool launches the Bill of Materials (BOM) dialog box.

An example of the BOM dialog box is shown here.

Once you click     in the Bill of Materials (BOM) dialog box, Creo Parametric automatically saves the file with a .bom extension. This .bom file contains the bill of materials in plain text format and can be opened and viewed in a text editor, such as NotePad or WordPad.

The following image shows the message displayed in the status bar area of the user interface.

In Creo Parametric, the config.pro file is the configuration file that controls the environment settings. The configuration file option that sets the BOM format file to be used for a customized bill of material report is bom_format. You can view a Bill of Materials Report in the following formats: HTML output or text output. The default output format is HTML.

The BOM HTML format provides hyperlinks to each member and sub-member in the current assembly. It also provides hyperlinks that allow you to highlight, open, or obtain additional information about the models in the assembly.

The BOM text format lists the quantity, type, and name of each member and sub-member in the current assembly.

Also, you can set the info_output_format configuration option to either text or html. This option sets the default format type for information presentation. Setting text option will output the information as simple text. Setting HTML option will output the information as html data.

Additionally, you can set the info_output_mode configuration option to set the default method for presenting information. The options are both, choose, screen, and file. The both option allows you to view information on the screen and Creo writes the information to a file that you can view outside of Creo. The choose option allows you to manually select the method of viewing the information from the Menu Manager under the INFO OUTPUT menu. The screen option allows you to view the information on the screen only. The file option writes the information to a file only.

The following image shows an example assembly named top_level-assm.asm.

After clicking on Tools tab > Bill of Materials, the following two images show the bill of materials of top_level-assm.asm in both HTML format and text format, respectively.

As shown in both BOM Reports, the model top_level-assm.asm currently contains three components, component1.prt, component2.prt, and sub-assm1.asm. These BOM Reports also show that the component sub-assm1.asm contains two part models, component3.prt and component4.prt.

More information about this topic can be found in our Creo Parametric Introduction to Solid Modeling course.

About the Author

Technical Training Engineer<br><br>Natasha joined the company in 2000 and has extensive experience sharing her CAD expertise through delivering webcasts, contributing to blog posts, and leading training classes. She trains end-users with all skill levels on Creo Parametric and CATIA, and she collaborates closely with the company’s technical writers on courseware development. Before joining Rand Worldwide, Natasha served as a mechanic in the U.S. Army National Guard and worked as a mechanical designer for a multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer. She has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, and she holds certification from Dassault Systèmes as a CATIA V5 Expert Mechanical Designer and Certified Surface Design Associate.

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