When you open an assembly in aPriori, you have the ability to navigate the complete structure of the assembly in the Assembly Details Tab (the default view), or to see a summary of assembly costs via the Assembly Tracker tab.
The Assembly Details Tab
The Assembly Details tab supports two main layouts -- Tree (indented BOM structure) and List (component list view). You can toggle these views through the Options menu.
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Indented Structured Bill of Materials (BOM) View
The assembly is presented in a tree structure identical to the assembly structure as it is represented in the CAD application. You can expand and collapse the tree to any level.
The Tree view is not sortable because it is structured.
Each assembly and sub-assembly also includes an assembly processes line where you can expand to see the processes (i.e., welding, mechanical assembly, machining or surface treatment) that have been applied at the assembly level.
Always visible at the bottom of the table are the total costs of all components (Component Subtotal), the total costs of all assembly processes (Assembly Processes Subtotal) and the Grand Total for the entire assembly.
Unitialized assemblies and parts will show dashes for costs.
Each sub-assembly will provide a subtotal of its components
You can apply a functional group template to an assembly. See the Using functional groups section of the aPriori Professional User Guide for more information.
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Component List View
The component list view flattens the assembly structure and provides a complete grouped listing of parts, sub-assemblies and assembly processes within the top level assembly. For example, if a part occurs 10 times at 4 different levels in the assembly, it will show up 4 times in the Tree view, but only once in the List view with a quantity of 10.
This view is sortable within each category by selecting any of the table columns
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Other Assembly View Features
You can toggle between displaying the Full Cost of all parts in the assembly, or individual Per Part Costs with a selection in the Options menu. Note that in the ‘Per Part Cost’ mode, the component costs will not add up to the assembly totals as they represent only a single part instead of all parts in the assembly.
You can toggle between displaying Current Values (costs reflect all inputs selected in current session), Previous Values (costs do not include your last change) and Saved Values (cost values saved in the data base) from the options menu.
The table can be copied and pasted into an Excel spreadsheet. Use the Copy Table command in the Edit menu. Only the columns and rows displayed will be copied.
Both in the viewer and the assembly table you can Initialize or Open components through the right click menu.
Assembly Details Context Menu
Right-clicking on a row in the Assembly Details tab provides access to the follow commands:
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Menu Command |
Description |
|---|---|
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Copy |
Basic editing commands for selected components. For example, you could copy or cut a component from one assembly and paste it into another assembly. |
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Add |
When an assembly row is selected, Add provides the ability to add an existing component through the Search utility (see "Using the Search Tool" in the "aPriori Desktop Basics" chapter of the aPriori Professional User Guide), or to create and add a new virtual component (see ”Creating new components without CAD" in the "Using aPriori Desktop" chapter of the aPriori Professional User Guide). |
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Edit Quantity |
Specify the number of instances of the selected component. |
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Remove |
Remove the selected component form the assembly. |
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Switch Scenario |
If the currently selected component has more than one scenario, this command allows you to choose between them. |
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Show Formula Dependencies |
See the "Show Formula Dependencies" section in the aPriori Professional User Guide |
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Initialize |
If the selected row has a grey (uncosted) icon, use this command to populate the Cost Object Info window and cost the component. |
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Open |
Opens the selected component in its own tab. |
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Save |
Commits to the aPriori database any changes to the selected component. |
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Lock |
Allow or disallow changes to the currently selected part or assembly scenario. |
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Ignore |
If a component scenario is set to "ignore", the component scenario will not be costed even if it is a sub-component of a deep costing assembly. The component is removed from the display, and its row in Assembly details is greyed and crossed out. See the note following this table. |
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Hide |
If a component scenario is set to "hide", the component is removed from the display and its row in Assembly Details is greyed. However, hide status does not affect costing. Hide is useful for simply turning off the display of a component in an assembly view to view what is behind it. See the note following this table. |
About Ignore, Hide, and their effect on costing
When you Hide a component scenario, you simply remove its display from the component viewer. Hiding a component has no effect when costing. When you Ignore a component scenario, you not only remove its display from the component viewer, you also remove it from costing operations, even if the component is a member of a deep costing assembly. However, ignoring a part does not recompute any geometry and does not change the envelope dimensions of the parent assembly. Therefore, the cost of a component calculated on its own will not necessarily be the same (or even close to) the cost of its parent assembly with all other components ignored. For example, consider an assembly consisting of three parts: P1, P2, and P3. Costing P1 by itself might result in a labor time of 30 seconds. Costing the entire assembly might result in a total labor time of 120 seconds. If you ignore parts P2 and P3 and then cost the assembly, the labor time will probably not be the 30 seconds of the single remaining part (P1). It might be closer to the total assembly time, minus some amount for the ignored parts, since the envelope dimensions of the assembly have not been recalculated.
Configurable Views
The Assembly Details tab offers the following pre-configured views: All Data, Weight Analysis, Sourcing Summary ,Assembly Summary, Quota View, and Manufacturing Details. The Part Details tab offers the following pre-configured views, including: All Data, Cost Details, Part Summary, Quote View, Manufacturing Details, and Sourcing Summary.. Users can also make additional views containing just the information of interest, organized in a specific order. For more information, see the "Creating New Views" section of the aPriori Professional User Guide..
The Assembly Tracker Tab
The Assembly Tracker Tab provides a visual display of an assembly’s cost. The tab has eight charts: Summary of Assembly Costs, Summary of Component Costs, Status of Component Costs, Type of Costs, Manufacturing Locations (Digital Factory), Comparison of Alternatives, Finish Mass Target Analysis and Cost Target Analysis. You can choose which graphs to display from the Assembly Tracker menu bar by selecting Select Charts and checking or unchecking the graph titles.