Deep Costing Assemblies

This walkthrough describes how to analyze an assembly and its sub-components using deep costing.

Preparing to Deep Cost

  1. (Optional) change the default production inputs under Tools > User Preferences > Default Production Inputs to match the most commonly occurring inputs in your assembly, primarily Process Group, Digital Factory, and Material. This saves time when populating the production inputs in the parts table later. For example:

  2. Click File > Open CAD File to open the assembly CAD file.

  3. Click Cost to allow aPriori to parse the assembly model and extract the child parts and BOM structure.

Enter production inputs

  1. Select Cost > Deep Cost Scenario:

    The Bulk Cost & Analysis window appears, with the Deep Cost box checked for the top-level assembly and all sub-assemblies, to ensure that all child parts will be costed.

  2. (Optional) Align the order of display for both the Assembly UI and Bulk Costing & Analysis window – this makes it easier to enter production data:

    1. Assembly UI: in the Assembly Details tab, select Options > List (instead of Tree), then click on the Name column header to sort the names in alphabetical order.

    2. Bulk Costing & Analysis window: click on the File Name column header followed by the Component Type column header.

    Similarly, to make it easier to visualize the part for allocating the appropriate Process Group, in the Component Viewer on the Assembly UI set the Render Mode to Transparent and select the Show GCD Labels function from the Analysis menu:

    This means that when you click on a part in the assembly list, aP Pro highlights the part in the CAD assembly model in yellow and a leader line will show the component name in the Component Viewer.

  3. For each child part, review and update the Process Group, Digital Factory, and Material production inputs, referencing your organization’s engineering management system:

    Note: GCDs differ across process groups, to allow aP Pro to extract meaningful geometry for each manufacturing method. For example, a ‘hole’ in machining may be a ‘void’ in casting. So ensure that you allocate the correct process group to the part being analyzed.

    The Annual Volume and Production Life (Years) fields can be inherited from the assembly.

    Tip: Use the Bulk Loader to quickly upload this data from a spreadsheet. See Supply Bulk Costing Data from a Spreadsheet and Bulk Costing Using the UI.

Perform Analysis

  1. Click Cost in the Bulk Costing & Analysis window to run the deep cost analysis on your assembly:

    A ticker starts in the lower-right corner of the UI:

    The Status field indicates if a part is Processing and whether the costing status is Success or Failed:

  2. View the results in the pop-up Bulk Costing Complete window. This could indicate that some components have failed to cost, or have costed with warnings, for example:

    A component could fail to cost because the wrong Process Group was assigned to it. To correct this, open the part(s) individually, assign the correct Process Group, and re-cost. To handle uncosted GCDs, open the part(s) individually and follow the error messages for the specific GCDs to resolve or ignore the issues causing the GCD failures. For more details, see Cost failures during bulk costing.

    All the child parts within the assembly have now been costed.

  3. Push the individual Annual Volume requirement from the assembly level to the child part, by selecting Scenario > Copy Assembly Inputs to Children in the Assembly UI, then selecting the inputs to copy:

  4. Re-cost the assembly by clicking Cost.

    Note: Clicking Cost is critical to recalculate the cost with respect to the new annual volumes for the child parts.

Review results

You now have an initial calculated cost for all the parts in the assembly. From here, you could add additional depth to child parts (cleaning, coatings, heat treatments, inspection, and so forth). You could also add assembly processes, for example mechanical assembly, welding, labelling, and packaging.

See View Assembly Analysis Results.