Managing the Bill of Material (BOM)

This task shows you how to customize the Bill of Material window. You can change the name of the buttons, the titles and the size of the columns. It also shows you how to save this data.
You can modify the structure of the Bill of Material window in the CATAsmBom.CATNls file and the size of the columns in the CATAsmBom.CATRsc file.

On Windows, both files are under your CATIA installation directory: ("n" is the number of the release level)
...\DownloadofCXRnrel\intel_a\resources\msgcatalog\CATAsmBom.CATNls (on Windows)

On UNIX, the location of these files is under your CATIA installation directory as well :
...\DownloadofCXRnrel\solaris_a\resources\msgcatalog\CATAsmBom.CATNls (for SUN)
...\DownloadofCXRnrel\irix_a\resources\msgcatalog\CATAsmBom.CATNls (for SGI)
...\DownloadofCXRnrel\aix_a\resources\msgcatalog\CATAsmBom.CATNls (for AIX)

  1. In CATIA contextual menu, click on Analyze > Bill of Material...:

    The BOM dialog box appears:

  2. Open  the CATAsmBom.CATNls file in WORDPAD or NOTEPAD.

    For instance, you can replace :

    • the title name "Bill of Material:" by "BOM:"

    • the title name "Total parts:" by "TOTAL:"

    • the title name "Quantity" by "Number"

    • the button name "Define formats" by "FORMATS"

    Save the CATAsmBom.CATNls file with the same name and under the same directories.

    Close the CATIA session in order to synchronize the last modifications and re-open it.

    In CATIA contextual menu, click on Analyze > Bill of Material... :

    In the BOM dialog box, you can visualize the changes:

    The modifications are saved in the CATAsmBom.CATNls file and they are visible in the BOM window.
  1. Open the CATAsmBom.CATRsc file.

This file allows you to change the size of the columns (the number of characters per column) in the document (.txt document, for instance) generated by the Save as operation in the BOM window. It has no impact on the BOM window.
  1. For instance, change the characters' number in the Part Number column: from 20 to 10. And reduce the size of the Type column : from 10 to 5 characters.

  1. Save the CATAsmBom.CATRsc file with the same name and under the same directories.

  2. Click on the Save as button in the BOM window in order to be able to read the information in a .txt document for example.

  3. Open the .txt document in which the last modifications are visible:

    You can compare the size of the columns with the original document in Displaying the Bill of Material.

    This operation allows you to adapt the table to the length of the data and to keep the information on a single line.