Using the Settings command

James Ray
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Bommer is designed to be adaptable to almost any bill of materials workflow out there.  A large part of adapting Bommer is defining the properties you want to include in your bill of materials.  The Bommer Settings command lets you see what properties are configured, add new properties, change existing properties, and delete unused properties; you can also import and export your configuration to share with colleagues or back up your Bommer system.  Read on to learn how to use the Settings command.

Launching the Settings command

To launch the Settings command, navigate over to your Bommer tab, click the dropdown, and click on the 16x16.png Settings button:

 
Once the command launches, you will see a window in which you can view and change the properties currently configured in Bommer:
 
 

Configuring Bommer properties

Bommer ships with a default set of properties, such as part name, part number, description, make/buy indicator, etc; these are the basics for what we believe constitutes a Bill of Materials. Chances are, though, you will need to tweak these properties to match how you and your team work.  You can do this by adding, changing, deleting, or reordering properties. Once you are happy with your changes, press the OK button to save them; no changes are made permanent until you press OK, so if you make a mistake or accidentally click the wrong button, click Cancel to abort.
 

Adding properties

To add a property to Bommer, press the +  button on the toolbar; this will add a new blank row to the table.  There are a few required pieces of information you must provide for a new property:
  • Order - This defines the sort position of each property, which is used when displaying properties in order (e.g. in the Edit bill of materials command, Edit part properties, and Export commands). It is automatically populated for new properties with the next available number.
  • Category - This denotes what category this property belongs to.  Categories are groupings of properties and correspond with the buttons that switch your table view in the Edit bill of materials command, and the tabs in the Edit part properties command.
  • Name - The name of the property.  This also becomes the column header for this property in the Edit bill of materials table, and in the Export command (and exported file).  Properties names must be unique within a category.
  • Type - The data type of the property.  Properties can be true/false (boolean), multiple-choice, decimal, number (integer), plain text, or builtin.  A builtin property references a pre-defined piece of data that Bommer uses internally or exposes from Fusion, such as part name, description, mass, or the longest dimension of the bounding box; these properties pull their real data type (the above list) from that pre-defined piece of data.
In addition, Bommer provides a submenu accessible by clicking on the "..." under the More column for a row in the table.  This submenu contains additional configuration options (e.g. an allowable value list for multiple-choice fields; a pick list of built-in properties for Builtin typed fields, etc).  For non-builtin properties, you can change the scope of the property from the default Component (which means properties are stored within the component they are associated with) to Top Level, in order to create assembly-specific properties.  You can read more about Top Level properties here.  The submenu also lets you configure the storage key for the property, to change where Bommer stores the data inside the component metadata saved in Fusion (unless you have a reason to change these, we suggest you leave them as the default).  You can also set a default value or a property from which to pull a default value; default values are used if a component does not have a value set for that property.
 
You can expand the submenus for all rows by pressing the Expand All button in the toolbar (press the Collapse All button to collapse all submenus into their rows).
 

Changing properties

To change a property's name, category, type, or other attributes, simply find that row in the table and edit the values in the table row.  You can press the Filter button to expand filters for each column in the table, to easily find and focus on properties you need to change.  There are a couple of things to keep in mind when changing an existing property:

  • By default, the storage key for a property is computed from the category and name of that property.  That said, you can rename properties without losing access to existing data.  If you change a property name or category, Bommer maintains the old storage key unless you change it as well.
  • If you change the storage key or scope for an existing property, you will lose access to the data that was previously entered for the property.  The data will still be there; this property will just not be pointing towards it.  You can always add a new property with that storage key and scope, or change another property to use that storage key and scope, and retrieve the previously entered data for that property. 

Deleting properties

To delete specific properties, check the checkbox on the row corresponding to the properties to delete, and press the - button in the toolbar.  The selected rows will disappear from the table.  Bommer is designed to be as flexible as you need it to be; feel free to delete all of the default properties to tailor it to your needs!

Reordering properties

You can change the order of the properties in the table by changing the values in the order column; to update the table, use the Reorder Rows button in the toolbar after modifying these values.  If you have duplicate Order values (e.g. two rows with an order of "1"), the first row will be "1" and the second row will be renumbered to be "2", and so forth.  Bommer will ensure the order numbers are unique and increasing. 

 

 

 
 

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