User inputs files

Bulk costing accepts an optional user inputs file in either Excel or CSV (comma-separated values) format files. This allows you to specify parts, production information, overrides for CSL values, and other cost inputs from a spreadsheet.

Production input values provided in this file take precedence over values from other sources. See Precedence of production input overrides for more information.

NOTES:

1) For Bulk Costing inputs, aPriori supports only BMP Unicode characters (0000 to FFFF). Although some SMP Characters may process correctly, aPriori does not support SMP Characters (10000 to 1FFFF).
Therefore, as a best practice, use only BMP Unicode characters.

2) aPriori strongly advises against manually creating input columns. Instead, generate the input spreadsheet as described in this section.

One way to get started with an inputs file is to create a new bulk cost group, edit its values in the Bulk Costing & Analysis UI, and then save the data with File > Export User Inputs Spreadsheet. This will create a user inputs file in Excel spreadsheet format. If you wish to create a CSV file, you can Save As .csv from Excel.

The columns in the spreadsheet files map to the columns in the Bulk Costing & Analysis UI in a fairly obvious manner.

Some of the less obvious mappings are covered in the following sections.