Up to now, a total table has been made manually. BOM (Bill of Materials) of the overall assembly drawing had to be stored as an Excel workbook file after design on SolidWorks before it was processed by various arrays and calculation functions in Excel. This method is laborious and has a high probability of error, thus making it difficult to guarantee the accuracy of calculation results.
A research team led by Kim Kuk Jin, a researcher at the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Technology, has developed a program for automatic generation of total tables, thus saving time and labor for making total tables and increasing the accuracy of calculation.
The program works in the following steps.
First, using the SolidWorks API function, the program reads the data of all parts, standards and subassemblies from the general assembly BOM.
Next, based on the tree root structure and the identity evaluation criteria of the data, the actual number of parts, purchases and standards used in equipment is calculated.
Then, calculation on parts material is performed.
A total table is generated by filling corresponding contents in existing template files.
Some of the problems arising during the generation of a total table are handled in real time and others are displayed in the form of report.
The program can reduce the time for generating a total table from 4~8 hours to 1~2 minutes and guarantee the accuracy of calculation.
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