I've been reading Frank B. Watts' book - Engineering Documentation Control Handbook, and in it he states that "the most prevalent mistake made on assembly drawings is to put the parts list on the body of the drawing...When the usage of computers became common, they brought a powerful capability to produce detached parts lists...The parts list should normally be on a separate detached list."

We currently DO put the parts lists on SHEET 1 of every assembly drawing, but Frank has got me thinking.  Our top assembly drawings are massive and take a considerable amount of time to open and revise.  By having a detached parts list, one advantage could be when all we are doing is replacing an item in the parts list with another, we could potentially keep our massive 'pictorial' top assembly untouched and then only have to revise a parts list document to show the ADDED/DELETED item.  This change would take minutes versus hours since we would basically be revising a simple parts list document rather than a large CAD assembly file.

I am curious as to how you handle parts lists.  Are they integrated on your pictorial assembly drawings or are they detached as Frank Watts is suggesting?  And how is it working for you?

Thank you in advance.