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SYNDAKIT15-Moonstone
15-Moonstone
February 12, 2014
Solved

B.O.M. balloons showing "ref"

  • February 12, 2014
  • 3 replies
  • 6481 views

Is there any possible way, or work-around, that would allow me to place more than 1 bom balloon without it showing up as a "REF"?

Suppose I have created piece 'f' balloon, now when I go to do that piece again in a detail, it shows up as "REF"?

I would like to be able to call out the piece in as many views as I would like without the balloon becoming a ref. Is this possible?

The goal here is to have both pieces look like "r" not the one with the circle and line below it.


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Best answer by neomechanikos

If you have more than one of the same component in an assembly drawing then you can redistribute the balloon quantity and add balloons for more instances of that part.

If you are calling out the same component more times than the quantity in your BOM, then you'll have to add a custom balloon symbol that matches your balloon scheme. It's usually frowned on to do this as the number of balloons is usually an indicator of quantity...hence the reference balloon. Furthermore, if the number changes in the BOM structure your symbol won't update.

3 replies

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neomechanikos1-VisitorAnswer
1-Visitor
February 12, 2014

If you have more than one of the same component in an assembly drawing then you can redistribute the balloon quantity and add balloons for more instances of that part.

If you are calling out the same component more times than the quantity in your BOM, then you'll have to add a custom balloon symbol that matches your balloon scheme. It's usually frowned on to do this as the number of balloons is usually an indicator of quantity...hence the reference balloon. Furthermore, if the number changes in the BOM structure your symbol won't update.

S
SYNDAKIT15-MoonstoneAuthor
15-Moonstone
February 12, 2014

thank you very much. I had a feeling that's why it wouldn't let me do more than the quantity. also the context is large weldment drawings. do those rules of quantity and actual number of piece marks hold true in the weldments?

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neomechanikos1-Visitor
1-Visitor
February 12, 2014

As far as the software is concerned, a strict relationship of part to balloon always holds true that I'm aware of. But what you consider as identical parts may differ from what the software considers is identical. For instance, if you have assembly cuts it may consider the part unique compared to it's identical "part" because it has been altered at the assembly level.

This has been a headache in the past on large weldments I've worked on. Consquently a two-tier approach to large weldments was developed to keep machining operations in a separate model from the weldment assembly. So, an assembly of large parts and weld features was merged into a single part file upon which machining operations were modeled in. It's both representative of the real world part and keeps the welding drawings separate from the post weld machining drawings, as it should be. Finally, BOM issues and assembly cut problems went away.


What do you hope to accomplish by having duplicate balloons?

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ptc-52320951-Visitor
1-Visitor
July 23, 2014

I'm suprised it's this complex.

A quantity balloon shows the quantity number of that component in a balloon, a standard balloon just shows the component. On any other CAD program you can have a standard balloon on a component as many times, anywhere. If using quantity balloons then they will be limited as you are counting them out on your structure. Reference balloons! In my ten years drafting - never heard of them!! Give me a break! Are we inventing drawing here?!!

Creo - needs to keep this in touch to stay ahead - same as the pathetic weld symbolds (unuseable since proe20), rendered section views,printer setup and not being able to take scale text of detail views (to name a few).

Rant over

nick

P
ptc-52320951-Visitor
1-Visitor
August 1, 2014

I found you can switch it off using the table properties/bom table and taking default ref off.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Nick

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