Welcome to the August 2022 release of OpenBOM. This release brings a host of user experience improvements that we know you will love along with some key CAD integration features you have been asking for.
Grid Performance and Editing!
The simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Our inspiration comes from the desire to provide a very simple user experience inspired by everyone’s love to how Excel (and other spreadsheets) make the work simple. However, we want to combine the simplicity of a dumb spreadsheet with the intelligence and sophistication of complex product structure management supported by OpenBOM.
In this update, we made substantial improvements in the mechanism of grid editing, especially in all operations performed by a user in a single line, which is managing item-instance relationships (connecting item data from catalogs to item instances in BOM and performing various calculations). We significantly improved the experience of editing in the OpenBOM grid. Use the tab or arrows to move from cell to cell and you will find the experience significantly improved. Better and more reliable editing, faster calculations, and more.
We also improved the image save and retrieval process to improve performance. You will see a noticeable improvement in image retrieval!
Dashboard Improvement On-Click Multi-Level BOM
A small but very helpful feature has been added to the BOM dashboard, the “Open in Multi-Level” one-click icon.
Multi-Level BOM – Multiple Instances Expand
Another improvement of multi-level BOM product structure representation and editing. We removed the limitation of parallel expanding of the same sub-level in multiple sub-assemblies.
We add the ability to have the same sub-level BOM expanded multiple times in the grid. For example, say you have the SA123 in several places in your BOM, and you want to see it all expanded multi-level, well you can do that now. Just click the “+” next to each instance of SA123 and it will display expanded.
In the example below, I have both instances of the 4000-96-062 expanded.
Formula Editor: Multi-Level Rollup Is Set By Default
We realized the importance of calculations and the ability to have a seamless formula experience without making multiple clicks and miss settings. One of the greatest powers of OpenBOM is the ability to roll up properties like Cost and Weight or anything else you want to keep track of for an entire product.
The formula editor now (finally) defaults to “Multi-Level Rollup” which is ON by default. Just like you want it!
National Currency Support Expansion
For our customers in Ireland, we added the ability to set the default Currency to English (Ireland). It’s under your profile settings, Set Default Currency:
Some more important usability improvements:
We added “Compact mode” (on by default) and a few more lines to the Add Property dialog:
Deprecated “Release part” to Use Create Revisions
As we’ve been improving Revision and Change Management Mechanisms in OpenBOM, we realized that the old command “Release Item” can be confusing and decided to deprecate the command. There is no more “Release part” command in the Catalog right mouse menu. The “Create Revision” command will let you save that immutable version of the part as a Revision and give you so much more control over future updates, etc. To learn more about Revisions please visit https://help.openbom.com/my-openbom/managing-changes-and-revisions/
Other Improvements
Improved Import Messages
OpenBOM attempts to import Excels and Google Spreadsheets out of the box, however, sometimes, formatting and various old Excel formats cannot be recognized. We improved the mechanism of error identification and provide better spreadsheet importer messages in case something goes wrong.
Increase Import Limits
We increased the import limit to support 10,000 items imported from a single Excel or Google Spreadsheets at one time.
Bug fixes
We continue to find and squash those “refresh required” bugs. In this release, you will find that Vendor and other changes show in Catalog and BOM w/o refresh.
CAD and Enterprise Integrations Improvements
We are continuously updating OpenBOM CAD integrations. Existing integrations are getting new features and new integrations are coming. If you need to integrate OpenBOM with a specific CAD (or enterprise system), please contact support@openbom.com.
Altium Designer
We realize the importance of image support in OpenBOM allowing to extract images automatically and include them in the Bill of Materials and product structure. In the last update, we improved the mechanism Altium Designer Add-in to extract the image. The new logic will fetch thumbnails first from the Altium library (as we did it before) and then from the schematic if the library image is not available.
Dassault Systemes Solidworks
OpenBOM Reference Properties allows you to set up an easy link to other resources by adding URL and supporting “navigate click experience”. We made an improvement in OpenBOM Add-in for Solidworks to recognize existing URL properties in Solidworks and to allow to these properties to come as a proper URL to OpenBOM (instead of plain text).
In the example below, if you exported the data model with the McMaster catalog item from Solidworks, OpenBOM will make it as a properly formatted Reference Property URL in OpenBOM (note – you should define catalog property as a “Reference” before you import the data from Solidworks.
Click on the link will properly navigate you to the McMaster website.
Conclusion and What is Coming Next
We’re continuously improving and expanding OpenBOM with new features and functionalities. To give you some heads about what is coming in the near future.
We are coming with OpenBOM for Creo Add-in out of the box. Some initial previous can be found here – we are looking for early adopters to collaborate with us.
We are working on improvements and expansions of OpenBOM Electronic Catalogs Integrations. You will be able to bring more information from Octopart, DigiKey and other catalogs. Stay tuned for coming updates.
Review OpenBOM on G2 and get $25.00.
Would you like an extra $25.00 to spend on your vacation, your child’s back-to-school supplies, or anything else? If you review us on G2, we will provide you with a $25.00 gift card to Amazon. We offer this because we value your feedback as it helps us to grow our business. Thank you in advance for reviewing us on G2.
Feedback is very important for us. Therefore, we encourage you to contact support OpenBOM and tell us what is missing in OpenBOM and how we can make OpenBOM better.
Best, Oleg
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