Hello,

I have been on the design side for some time now working with the software. I have not really played with the data side of SW and need to ask a question about project management. We have had the responsibility of putting out material cut lists for the projects added to our workload . This would include a seperate cut list for the plasma machine and another seperate list for the saw.

In the past we would put out drawings to the shop floor, this included an excel based BOM in a electronic folder. The shop floor would then make up the cut lists for the plasma and the saw. This was done on their forms and included cut times, operator clock number and other data. I developed a new excel based cut list sheets similar in style and look to the old hand written forms. We have tried copying and pasting the information from the BOM to the cut lists, but this is rather tedious and can lead to errors as sometimes the base structure is a weldment so you have to copy and paste twice. Then we have to multiply the single part quantity by the actual number of commodities that the customer has ordered. The fact that a project may have 3 shelves and SW will list the sub assembly individually so the numbers can also get mixed up.

Some of the projects may contain other parts so they need to be eliminated from the original BOM (cleaned) to stop confusion. It is to the point where the designers actually prefer to do the cut lists by hand, rather than anything automatic.

I was wondering what other shops/people were doing in this situation. Is there some aftermarket software that is used for this purpose? Do I need to get an API written to sort info?

Mike