NEW: OpenBOM Item In Context Editing User Experience

Oleg Shilovitsky
Oleg Shilovitsky
11 February, 2021 | 2 min for reading
NEW: OpenBOM Item In Context Editing User Experience

A great user experience is a big deal these days. PLM and other engineering and enterprise systems are famous for their complexity and clunky user experience. And this is the main reason why engineers and many other users in manufacturing companies are “still” using Excell. And this is what OpenBOM is changing every day. 

I’m sure you’re familiar with the basics of the OpenBOM reference-instance model. The product structure in OpenBOM is composed of two data objects – items (saved in a catalog) and instances (save in a BOM). The linkage between them is based on the Part Number and catalog settings. Check OpenBOM basics documentation for more information. 

Currently, you need to edit the information belonging to the item (catalog) separately either by accessing the Item Information panel or directly in the catalog. Both are sub-optimal when it comes to quick and efficient editing user experience. And this precisely what we are going to change in the coming release! 

In this video, we preview a new Item (catalog) properties editing user experience. Starting from the coming release (Feb 2021), item data in the BOM coming from the catalog will be seamlessly editable. It will simplify tremendously the editing process and allows seamless data entry in the catalog while editing BOM data. No more needs to navigate to the Item Master panel and catalog for a small data correction.

Conclusion 

We are super passionate about user experience. OpenBOM is the coolest replacement for your BOM spreadsheets and we want to keep you the same easy Excel experience, but to allow you to manage structured semantically connected Bill of Materials with a rich set of metadata – images, links, cost rollups, and many others. Stay tuned – the new release is coming… 

Meantime, create your FREE OpenBOM account to be ready. 

Best, Oleg

Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my Beyond PLM blog and PLM Book website. Read OpenBOM customer reviews on G2 Crowd to learn what customers are saying about OpenBOM. 

Related Posts

Also on OpenBOM

4 6
13 February, 2026

A few weeks ago, Martin Eigner published a thoughtful post discussing a deceptively simple question: Is a CAD model the...

12 February, 2026

Most teams do not fail because they lack data. They fail because the human part of the data is missing....

11 February, 2026

When teams begin a new hardware project, one of the most common assumptions I hear is this: we don’t need...

10 February, 2026

A Complete Guide to Managing CAD, BOM, Procurement, and ERP Data Getting started with product data management is rarely a...

9 February, 2026

After returning from 3DEXPERIENCE World 2026, I found myself having many variations of the same conversation I had with engineers...

6 February, 2026

Engineering work begins with design and… still with CAD files. Designs are created in CAD systems, simulations are performed in...

5 February, 2026

Getting started with engineering software should feel like starting work, not like starting a procurement process. Yet many teams still...

4 February, 2026

Most product teams collaborate all the time. Engineers work in CAD systems and exchange files. BOMs are exported to Excel...

3 February, 2026

When people talk about inventory management or purchase orders, the conversation usually starts in accounting or ERP systems. That is...

To the top