BOM Director is new AutoCAD productivity software for creating and editing Bill of Materials and KISS files on shop drawings for the steel fabrication industries. Director uses the full power of today's best text editors. BOM Director automates the link between BOM files in your favorite editor and bill of materials in your drawings. BOM Director knows what drawing and layout tab you have active and handles all of the file naming, creation, and opening automatically.
 
Working on your bill of material in a powerful text editor allows you to work on your drawing and the bill of materials at the same time. This provides productivity and accuracy gains you just can't get using AutoCAD by its self. You don't have to change your current drawing view to work on your BOM. You can have your editor open with your bill of material ready to edit and AutoCAD running with your drawing up and work on the two simultaneously looking at your details and filling out the bill all at the same time. When you are ready, change your view to the bill and with a couple clicks your old bill is erased if present and your new bill is inserted. It is especially productive on duel monitor workstations.

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Your Text Editor:
When BOM Director is first started the text editor is set to Windows Notepad. Of course this is not the best choice for your text editor. At a minimum your editor should provide a tabbed multi-document interface and macros. This allows you to have several bill of materials open at once so you can copy, cut, and paste between them efficiently. This also allows for accelerated, review, cross referencing, and checking. Macros allow you to create standard parts and insert them into your BOM files to save keystrokes and prevent typos. The better the editor you use the faster you can create and edit your bills of materials. Below are links to a couple of very good text editors, one is free and one is not.
 
Notepad++ is a Free Open Source Text Editor.
 
UltraEdit is the #1 Best Selling Text Editor in the World.

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Kiss Files:
BOM Director supports the KISS public-domain standard created by FabTrol Systems. It's a standard Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)format used in the steel construction industries. With BOM Director it easy to setup your bill of materials to comply with the KISS standard and start producing KISS files automatically. Just like with bill of material files, BOM Director automates the interface to your KISS files. You can create KISS files from your BOM files and open them in your editor from the BOM Director dialog.
 
Sample KISS file created by BOM Director 2010:
KISS,1.1,BOM Director 2010
H,Job #,My Job Name, My Customer Name,17/11/10,19:09:33,0,
D,Drawing 1,,1A,,1,HR,HR GUARDRAIL,,0.00,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,a1,1,C,C 12x 25,A36,5638.80,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,b1,1,FB,FB 1/4x 6,A36,5638.80,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,c1,1,MC,MC 6x 12,A36,5638.80,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,d1,1,L,L 3x 2 1/2x 3/8,A36,914.40,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,e1,2,MC,MC 6x 12,A36,914.40,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,f1,2,PL,PL 3/8x 2 3/16,A36,134.94,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,g1,6,L,L 1 1/2x 1 1/2x 1/4,A36,1676.40,,M2E,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,h1,6,L,L 1 1/2x 1 1/2x 1/4,A36,863.60,,M2E,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,k1,3,PL,PL 10 GAx 34,,1676.40,,SEE NOTE 5,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,m1,12,PL,PL 3/8x 2 1/2,A36,63.50,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,n1,6,PL,PL 3/8x 2 1/2,A36,63.50,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,sb1,18,MB,MB 3/8 GALV BOLTS,A307,38.10,,W/NUT&FW,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,1B,,10,L,L 6x 4x 1/2,A36,304.80,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,,p1,20,WS,WS 1/2",A108,101.60,,,,,,,
D,Drawing 1,,1C,,4,PL,PL 1/2x 8,A36,304.80,,,,,,,

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The New BOM Director 2010 AutoCAD Commands:

Menus and toolbars are included for all AutoCAD versions.

• "BomDir" - Opens the BOM Director 2010 Command Dialog.
• "BomDiredit" - Opens the current tabs BOM file in your editor.
• "BomDirInsert" - Inserts the current tabs BOM into your drawing.
  

BOM Director 2010 Command Dialog:

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How BOM Director Works:
BOM Director supports one Bill of Material for Model Space and/or one BOM for each Layout Tab in your drawing. BOM Director works by inserting a block with attributes for each line in your BOM file that does not begin with the Skip Line Character.
 
You can use any predefined blocks in your drawing so you could have multiple BOM styles in the same drawing file. A scale feature is provided for inserting bill of materials in model space at any scale.
 
BOM Director is compatible with attribute extraction software like SoftScan & AutoCAD to KISS Conversion Utility. and other custom attribute extraction applications you or your customers may be using.
 
The BOM Director 2010 Settings Dialog.

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There are no restrictions on the design of your bill of material. There can be any number of columns at any width. You can use whatever layers, block names, attribute tags, prompts, text styles, & vertical line spacing that you want. The help documentation includes complete instructions on how to setup your attribute blocks and text file templates to match your bill of materials.
 
BOM Director saves all of the configuration settings in your drawings except for the name of the text editor. The name of the text editor is saved in AutoCAD. All Director settings and how they are used are documented in the help file.
 
You can configure bill of materials to match any customer or Job requirements. Whenever you open a drawing or create a new drawing from an existing one, all of the BOM Director dialog settings are automatically set from the settings stored in your drawing file.
 
If you are going to create KISS files from your Bill of Materials, there are some restrictions that you must consider to be compatible with the KISS specification. They are fully explained in the help documentation.
 
The BOM Director 2010 KISS File Settings Dialog.

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Sample bill of material text file.

Sample Bill of Material in Drawing: (click below for larger view)

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BOM Director Text Files:
The BOM files are simple ASCII text files. There can be any number of fields separated by the field character and the fields can be any length. There must be a closing field character at the end of each line as shown. The number of fields in the file must match the number of attributes in the BOM block that is being used. When a BOM is inserted, BOM Director will automatically determine the name of the correct BOM text file to use, the number of fields in the file, and the length of each field.
 
The first line must be a line of column headers separated by the Field Character which in this case is "|". This line is used to calculate field locations only. You will notice the asterisk character at the beginning of 4 of the lines. This is the Skip Character. If the skip character is present no block is inserted but a blank line will appear in your bill. The Field Character and the Skip Character can be set to whatever you like in the settings dialog. Accept for KISS files, BOM Director fully supports big fonts and lead in characters can be used for symbols just like any other block attributes.

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Features: 

• Written for Windows 7, Vista, XP, Both 32 Bit, and 64 Bit versions.
• Windows install and uninstall via control panel.
• Fully supports Windows User Account Control (UAC) Systems on 7 and Vista.
• Runs in full AutoCAD from 2000 through 2010 32-bit and 64-bit.
• Automatic AutoCAD menu and toolbar setup.
• Utilizes the full power of today's best text editors.
• Supports the KISS public-domain standard created by FabTrol Systems.
• Automates all file naming and handling.
• No design restrictions on your drawing bill of material.
• Work on drawing and bill of material simultaneously.
• Automates the link between BOM files, KISS files, and your drawing files.
• Allows for accelerated, review, cross referencing, and checking.
• Saves all configuration settings in your drawing.
• Complete help documentation including KISS file setup and requirements.
• Windows Start Button shortcuts to help and read me files.

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