AP OPIM - Bolt length in BOM

It looks like the bolt length has some length sensitive, some length can output as inches, and some not - remaining in mm. Anything I can do on this?

Thanks,

Maggie

  • Hi Maggie,

    By design OPIM can handle metric and imperial (diameter and/or length) bolts in the same project/isometric. The diameter and lengths are then displayed in the correct format in the BOM.The basic requirement for this to work is to have accurate spec data and that's where it often fails.

    Roughly stated the BOLT_LENGTH property is converted to millimeters and when the mm value is an exact multiple of 5 the bolt is assumed to be a metric bolt. In all oher cases it is assumed an imperial bolt. The standard bolt lengths in the spec are in most cases correct (inch values) but is may go wrong when a wafer element is inserted in the equation. Then OPM needs to calculate an alternative bolt length and does this by increasing the standard bolt length using spec data BOLT_INC and maybe a few other. When this data is incorrect a bolt length may be calculated that is not a regular off the shelf bolt.


    You can always send TSG a sample L00 file for further analysis

    Regards,

    Frank

  • Thanks for the reply, Frank. This issue can be reproduced by adding a spacer between two flanges.
    I was supprised that the bolt length conversion between metric and imperial is a simply mapping method instead of calculation and round up. In most case, at least in AutoPLANT catalogs, BOLT_INC is set to 6.35 which is not multiple of 5. And it is difficult to control all bolted component are in standard size and no spacer is needed in a project.
    Thanks,
    Maggie
  • Hi Maggie,

    When metric length bolts an increment of 5 mm should be used. When 6.45mm is specified in the spec you're using quarter inch increments which is a bit strange for a metric length bolt. When you are using imperial length bolts (even in a mixed metric project) the increment should however be specified as 6.45 instead of 6.4 as in most specs

    Regards,
    Frank

  • we are always doing in mix-metric, and 6.35 is using in increment.

    In some cases, spec databases are provided by client and we have no control on them. In old projects, I did some codes to control pcf output. However, in this OPIM, it did not look like reading xchg/pcf scripts and I lost the control.

    Maggie