I am looking to carry out a stock management with image and link (PDF plan) of the room or the set.
I created in solidworks bills of materials for each assembly in excel format and passed my plans in PDF.
I would like to put all this in relation so as not to make a mistake when other people who do not have solidworks take care of the file.
In addition, the person in charge of the machining would like to have access to the PDF plan without having to search for it under several different folders because my assemblies include a lot of parts under different folders and folders.
From Excel, you can easily add hypertext links between the designation of the part or assembly and its PDF plan for example (provided that you are all on the same network).
For stock management, I think you have to start with macros but it seems less obvious to me. What is the basis of your initial stock to start with: dedicated or common with other projects?
For the image and link to the pdf it's indeed simple with Excel. You have to take a screenshot of the part, paste it into the nomenclature and create a hypertext link to the pdf file. If you want more details on how to create the link, don't hesitate to ask.
For stock management, it is easier to have a global bill of materials rather than a sub-assembly bill of materials. We can see directly the total quantity of parts that are used in several sub-assemblies.
The problem with putting links in the excel file is that I regularly update parts and together in solidworks and therefore the excel files I get from solidworks are new (redone each time).
I thought there was a little app to manage all this. Excel database according to my files (which is automatically updated in a mini software) and which could have done a stock management for me.
A priori, updating a part does not require you to redo your nomenclature. If you have an independent management file, there are no problems. At worst, you have to relink to the plan you modified.
Strictly speaking, if you evolve a part, it is a new reference in your stock, so you should add a line and not redo the whole list.
After that, we even start to integrate configuration management...
The manufacturing parts (SLDDRW plan) stored on the BE server were all converted into eDrawing (but it also works in PDF) via BATCHCONVERTER (every evening) and placed in a single directory on a server accessible to the Method/Manufacturing/Assembly services.
Attached is the "type" setting of the utility to do as described above.