This document provides an overview and instructions for a webinar on using OpenBOM for Autodesk Inventor. The webinar will cover basic to advanced topics like creating bills of materials, organizing items into catalogs, assigning costs and vendors, creating order bills of materials and purchase orders. It also provides some tips and references for additional learning resources. The live session will walk through creating a bill of materials for a bike fork model in Inventor, assigning items to catalogs, adding costs and vendors, and generating purchase orders.

1. Basic to Advanced
Multi Level, Rollups, Catalogs, Orders, Planning, Purchase Orders
Steve Hess
Director of User Experience, OpenBOM
stevehess@openbom.com
September 2, 2020
© OpenBOM, 2020 (Newman Cloud Inc.)
OpenBOM for Autodesk Inventor

2. Webinar basics
You are all muted
Please type questions in the chat window or send to support@openbom.com
We will publish a video recording following the event
I will share this deck with the playback.
This is meant to be a casual event….. And maximise use of time
© OpenBOM, 2020 (Newman Cloud Inc.)

3. Definitions:
Bill of Materials: This refers to the OpenBOM Bill of Materials. Inventor has a “Bill of
Materials” function which we will visit as part of the configuration.
Catalog: A list of Items in OpenBOM used by your company to make your products. Often
called a Classification or Inventory or an Item Master, this is a list of parts and sub-assemblies
and associated information needed to put your final product together.
Vendor List: A list of Vendors in OpenBOM
Order BOM: Often called a Planning BOM this is where order calculations are done in
OpenBOM
© OpenBOM, 2020 (Newman Cloud Inc.)

4. OpenBOM for Inventor Basics
● OpenBOM requires the installation of an addin to create BOMs from Inventor
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGoFyCx4UG4
● BOMs are created from Inventor Assemblies only
● Individual Parts may be saved to OpenBOM using Save Item Command
● OpenBOM for Inventor integration requires a license
○ Free Trial or Professional User or above. www.openbom.com
○ Or, You may be a member of your Team or Company
● Inventor 2016 or later although some functionality works with earlier versions
● Upload from Folders, Excel, other CAD also supported in other webinars
© OpenBOM, 2020 (Newman Cloud Inc.)

5. About this webinar…..
I had planned to prepare several BOMs with all the features, etc, but last night
decided to simply make a real BOM and Purchase Orders, start to finish, with
nothing prepared….
So were just going to do it live today! If we don’t cover anything please email me
at support@openbom.com.

6. Lessons
Lesson #1 - OpenBOM and Inventor Settings
Lesson #2 - Make a BOM of the bike fork. Add a property in Inventor, Update
the OpenBOM
Lesson #3 - (Re) organizing items into Categories (Catalogs). Ex. Hardware
Lesson #4 - Assigning Costs, Rollups and Assigning Vendors
Lesson #5 - Creating an Order BOM and POs
Lesson #6 - BONUS - creating a Template for future BOMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsXOxtJXSFE
© OpenBOM, 2020 (Newman Cloud Inc.)

7. Live session….Lesson #1 Settings
1. Open the fork assy and visit the OpenBOM Settings
2. Review the default Catalog
3. Visit the Bill of Materials setting in Inventor
4. Be sure the BOM View is enabled
5. Discuss how properties are added
6. Click Locate to show no BOMs exist
Lesson #2 Make a BOM of the bike fork
1. Set the default catalog to Inventor Items
2. Click BOM
3. Open the bike fork BOM
4. Review. Where did properties come from, etc
5. Missing REV and some descriptions
6. Add Rev to the Inventor Bill of Materials page, add a value, add some Descriptions
7. Update the BOM settings in Inventor to include REV
8. See Rev showed up
9.
© OpenBOM, 2020 (Newman Cloud Inc.)

8. Live session….Lesson #3 Saving hardware to HARDWARE Catalog
1. Open the Inventor Items catalog, remove the screws
2. Go to OpenBOM Dashboard
3. Create a HARDWARE Catalog
4. Open the BikeFork BOM
5. Examine the screws, what Catalog are they in
6. We want them in HARDWARE
7. Open them in Inventor
8. Use Save Item and save to HARDWARE
9. Open Hardware
10. Remove unwanted properties - Material filepath, long property names, etc
11. I'm leaving this in because this is what really happens with old CAD data
12. Return to Inventor - click BOM
13. Open th BOM, Assign Hardware Catalog
14. Add costs and QOH
Lesson #4 Costs, Rollups and Vendors
1. Goto OpenBOM Vendor lists
2. Open Approved Vendor List
3. Review
4. Goto HARDWARE Catalog
5. Assign Cost, Set QOH, Set Vendors
6. Assign Vendors
7. Goto Inventor Items catalog
8. Assign Costs, Set QOH, Set vendors
9. Assign vendors
10. Set QOH
11. Goto BikFork BOM, add Extended Cost, Create formula
12. OK, BOM looks good
© OpenBOM, 2020 (Newman Cloud Inc.)

9. Live session….Lesson #5 Order BOM and POs
1. Open BikeFork BOM
2. Click Order BOM
3. Specify 33 units
4. Review Order BOM, QOH, Gap, etc
5. Click “Create Purchase Orders”
6. Review several PO’s
7. Export one to PDF
Lesson #6 - template
1. Once you have the BOM looking good use the Save As Template command
2. Now specify your template in the Inventor Settings
3. A quick one minute video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsXOxtJXSFE
© OpenBOM, 2020 (Newman Cloud Inc.)

10. Quick Tips
● OpenBOM gets part
number from filename
unless you override it in the
Inventor BOM settings
● Be sure to set Enable BOM
View to ON!!
● Learn how to use this
Inventor Bill of Materials
dialog. It holds the key to
successful OpenBOM
creation. OpenBOM reads
a lot of information from this
dialog.

11. More Tips
● Do Use “BOM” (one click BOM & Catalog) and “Save Item” (for
updating a catalog)
● Don’t use the “Catalog” command. It is being deprecated.
● Do be mindful of your “Default Catalog” when Creating BOM
(Inventor Items)
● If you add a property (like REV) in Inventor it must have a value
before we will bring it to OpenBOM
● Don’t duplicate Part Numbers.
● Don’t have an item in two catalogs.
● Do read the messages, they say what is going to happen

12. References
Inventor first 3 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGoFyCx4UG4
August 21 What’s New in Inventor:
https://openbom.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ddb915cdf7c53a7dbef4f9694&id=9a85ae4dd7&e=5d7527aed5
OpenBOM Webinars https://help.openbom.com/webinars/
OpenBOM Basics https://help.openbom.com/get-started/understand-openbom/
OpenBOM Help https://help.openbom.com/ - a great place to start
© OpenBOM, 2020 (Newman Cloud Inc.)

13. Questions / comments ?
Please send to support@openbom.com or use the Support feature in OpenBOM
© OpenBOM, 2020 (Newman Cloud Inc.)