The Cost menu is useful for costing parts with multiple scenarios and assemblies with multiple sub-components and multiple scenarios. The options on the Cost menu invoke the same interface as the separately licensed Bulk Costing and Analysis utility, but the features available from the Cost menu do not require a separate license.
The following is a summary of the options for the Cost menu:
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Cost Scenario: Cost the current scenario for the selected component.
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Cost All Scenarios: Cost all scenarios for the selected component.
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Deep Cost Scenario: Cost the current scenario for the selected component, and the scenarios of its children.
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Deep Cost All Scenarios: Cost all of the scenarios for the selected component, and all of their children.
Note: When you perform a deep cost, aPriori checks all the sub-components to check if any are open with unsaved changes in the user interface; if so, aPriori prompts whether you want to save and close that component, leave it unsaved, or cancel the deep cost operation.
Regardless of what you choose, the results of the deep cost are determined by the inputs on the Bulk Costing and Analysis table, or any user inputs file and not by the changes to the sub-component in the UI.
When deep costing assemblies, note the following:
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If a sub-component (scenario) with unsaved changes is open in the main UI, aPriori copies the sub-component scenario to the Bulk Cost Group. If a sub-component is not open in the main UI, the component state is read from the database.
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If a sub-component does not exist in the database (and therefore cannot be opened), a new component scenario is created with default values. However, the component must be associated with a CAD file (unless the component is being costed in the User Guided process group). If an assembly has been initialized, the immediate sub-components are automatically associated with CAD files even if they have not been initialized. For deeper level children, aPriori assumes that those sub-component CAD files are in the same directory as the root assembly. If that is not the case, you must ensure they are CAD-file associated prior to clicking on Deep Cost menu.
When you deep cost an assembly and view the Bulk Costing & Analysis UI, the scenario of the top-level assembly is the same as the one you selected in the main aPriori UI. The sub-components are set to whatever scenarios are associated with this assembly; this may have been switched by the user in the UI or may have been specified during BOM loading. If nothing else has been specified, the Official scenario is the default.
You can deep cost a roll-up or a cost comparison with Cost > Deep Cost Scenario, but only their sub-components appear in the Bulk Cost Group. The roll-up or cost comparison themselves do not associate with any cost and therefore, are not costed. However, if a roll-up contains a sub-roll-up, then the components from that sub-roll-up are also included in the costing.