Ha, my old post. Well, I can tell you we've been doing this but not its not integrated. Cabling is an area where alignment between CAD and BOM just does not line up. Its complicated by a few factors.
- Our internal best practice of cabling works to make life easier for the engineering doing routing. BOMs are secondary thought.
- Often, cables are not unique. There may be multiple instances of a cable which from a BOM perspective are the same cable with just a different routing path. This leads to multiple CAD assemblies which are basically the same Part.
- In these cases, we've used Image links and not let CAD drive the BOM. What's the point.
- Top level assembly might have all cabling in a master model assembly to make it easier to work on all cable. They are not assembled at each level they might appear on the BOM structure. We have opted to denote where they actually tree up in the BOM with kit BOMs. This might comprise a few cables together and a simple drawing showing some notes and instructions of how to assemble. Again, loosely tied back to CAD.
No, this has not changed in Creo 4 or 7.
Last recommendation, lengths are great and I appreciate when they provide accurate information but consider your manufacturing process. If you are not producing hundreds of units, in our case its just a handful of units, exactly quantities on BOMS might be too much. As needed might work just fine. If its a very complicated system (like a space payload), get an accountant on your cabling team and don't forget about mass properties.
