Hello all SolidWorks members,
I seek help with regards to piping & its BOM, currently I am working on piping project which contains Stainless Steel piping/tubing for Dairy & Pharma industry.
We ustilize SS-316 & SS-304 (stainless steel) sometimes SS-304L & SS-316L (lower grade), and the standards we use is different from other industrial piping, so I created custom pipes, elbows, tees, crosses for our requirement and sucessfully included it in Routing Library Manager & made the complete 3D piping project model.
Now it is time for detailing, I have not done many experiments yet, currently I manually create the BOM, as I still find the problem with material.
My queries are
1) Do I have to duplicate all the part as per material ?
Example: I have a part "Pipe Elbow" which has same shape but different sizes, so I created a part & made configurations according to sizes, now if I apply material SS-304 to this part, do I have to create a duplicate with material SS-316, save them according to material (eg. "Elbow-SS304" & "Elbow-SS316") & similarly for the pipe, then create a routing templete which is according to material ?
Will that help me get right material in BOM ? what if the customer asks to change the pipe material, after the whole piping is done (just for material, don't wanna start from scratch)
2) Or do I create material configurations in the same part
Example: Part is Elbow, sizes are 1,2,3,4 & material are SS-304 & SS-316
then my configurations are SS-304_1inch, SS-304_2inch, SS-304_3inch, SS-304_4inch, SS-316_1inch, SS-316_2inch, SS-316_3inch, SS-316_4inch,
Will that be any issue while creating routing templete in Routing Library Manager, or while creating a piping assembly ? And again what if the customer asks to change the pipe material, after the whole piping is done ?
3) I saw that when you right click on a part or parts from the Feature tree, an option to change the material is available, as shown in attached picture. But I believe all iterations of the parts are applied the same material, so this is not useful
