This article is a guest post by Jim Lucas
Find the rest of the exam solutions at the CSWP Drawing Overview
Making a BOM and extracting info from it… The way that “lazy, paranoid & beat-the-system” me does this question- Open up the assembly and count all the sub-trigger assemblies in the assembly. Make sure to open up subassemblies.
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| Feature Tree of different parts in a Solidworks assembly |
Looks like (2) Subtrigger’s.
This is a good time to perhaps discuss “beating-the-test”. If I were writing this test, I’d want to throw as many wrenches in alternative/”cheater” methods as a could…. So I’d probably do something like inserting different configurations (with different custom properties)… Or nest an extra one of these deep in a subassembly…. Or create some using pattern components or mirror components.
The right way of doing this is to insert the assembly into a drawing. Then go straight to inserting a BOM.
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| Insert from the “Tables” menu on the Annotation toolbar |
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| Select Bill of Materials |
Depending on your default BOM, you may need to add a column (it doesn’t matter where) and get the QTY of the “Sub Trigger Assy” and/or the PARTNO. If you don’t know how to do this- see question 6 on this sample exam- I’ve shown how to do that there…
Jim is a CSWP and on the road to getting his CSWE. He works for HawkRidge Systems, an authorized reseller of SolidWorks. Jim also runs i-elf, a product development consulting company. He can be reached at Jim.Lucas@i-elf.com.