Our small engineering department of 2 people recently switched from AutoCAD 3D to Solidworks 2012.  In practice, we weld many things in sequence.  For example; the frames of some of our larger conveyors, we first weld all of the legs then we line them up at their set spacing distance and weld all of the members length wise.  I designed this conveyor in Solidworks; the legs as sub-weldments, and the frame as the main or "top weldment".  The issue I ran into when I went to do the cut list was that the quantities were cryptic and based upon the way Solidworks grouped similar parts and I wanted the cut list to reflect the way it was welded in real life.

     Attached is a file that shows this problem at a micro level.  If you open the "main frame", any person with any real life experience would see that the legs would be welded together individually then the "main frame" would be welded together.  I have tried deleting the folders in the cutlist then control-select-right click and select "create sub-weldment" to arrange it an a way that the software would see 2 entities to no avail.  I'm sure our company isn't the only one struggling with this, have you found a solution short of having to go in and enter all of this data by hand and thereby making using automated design software pointless anyways?

Thanks,

Cliff