Bill of Materials - Inserting

Applies to Excel-based Bills of Materials.

You can insert a bill of materials into the drawing of an assembly. If you add or delete components in the assembly, the bill of materials automatically updates if you have selected the Automatic update of BOM option in Document Properties - Bill of Materials.

To insert a bill of materials into a drawing, you must have Microsoft Excel installed on your computer. See SOLIDWORKS System Requirements for the supported versions of Microsoft Excel.

To insert a bill of materials:

  1. With a drawing view selected, click Insert > Tables > Excel Based Bill of Materials.
  2. In the dialog box, select an Excel template for the BOM and click Open.
    The default BOM template is in <install_dir>\solidworks\lang\<language>\bomtemp.xls. Several other BOM templates are available in the same directory. You can customize the templates by adding columns or changing the text formatting. You can also create new templates to meet your company’s standards.
  3. In the Bill of Materials Properties dialog box, select properties from the Configuration, Contents, and Control tabs.
  4. Click OK.
To hide a bill of materials, right-click the bill of materials in the graphics area or in the FeatureManager design tree and select Hide.
To show the bill of materials again, right-click the bill of materials in the FeatureManager design tree and select Show.