How to Create Bill of Materials Templates

One of the great features of SOLIDWORKS is the ability to export a bill of materials to Excel but formatting the bill of materials can be tricky. Below we will go over what the default bill of material templates are and how to create new templates more suited to your needs.

The included SOLIDWORKS bill of materials templates are found in install_dire>\solidworks\lang\<language>. The default SOLIDWORKS bill of materials template is called Bomtemp.xls which contains the columns item number, part number, description, and quantity.

Aside from the default bill of materials template, SOLIDWORKS includes six other templates:

• Bomtemp-Material.xls – contains the item number, part number, description, quantity, and material.
• BomStockSize.xls – contains item number, part number, description, quantity, and stock size.
• Bomtemp-Vendor.xls – contains item number, part number, description, quantity, and vendor number.
• Bomtemp-Weight.xls – contains item number, part number, description, quantity, and weight.
• PipingBOMTemplate.xls – contains item number, part number, description, quantity, and cut length.
• Bomtemp-All.xls – contains item number, part number, description, quantity, vendor number, weight, stock size, and material.

While the above templates are great they may not encompass all the information a SOLIDWORKS user may want to include in their bill of materials.  To create a template, we can build upon one of the pre-existing templates. First make a copy of the default material.  Once a copy is created, open the file and insert a new column that is left of the column labeled $$END. In this newly created column enter in a property heading (this name appears in the formula bar but doesn’t need to match the corresponding custom property name).  Click the cell to select it and in the name box, type the name of the custom property desired to be linked (this name must match the custom property name). This can be done with as many columns as needed for adding in the desired custom property information. Once done save in the template folder.

While the default bill of material templates are a solid foundation, it can be useful to create custom bill of material templates to quickly format the exported excel bill of materials.