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OK, so that first message was blank, apparently this site doesn't like me using Mozilla.  Gotta say, I don't like that because I hate IE, and I especially hate being limited to using IE.  Or maybe it's just a setting on my end.  Anyway, on to the post:

Looking to leech as much free information as I can here.  We're a smallish Canadian shop using KC3 and XMD and I'm looking for a way to improve our BOM's.  Currently XMD can generate a BOM in a somewhat pretty graphical format but that doesn't allow me to copy individual lines from it and paste those into an excel workbook.  We can generate the BOM as an Excel file, but it's really not very pretty, just colums, with no headings, which makes it somewhat difficult for purchasing to interpret. 

I'm just the IT contact here, not the designer, so my knowledge of KC3 is pretty limited.  What I'd like to know is if this Excel sheet that KC3 and XMD generate is done from a template that I can modify (I haven't been able to find one), or if someone out there has created a really nice BOM that they'd be willing to share, or if anyone knows of a nice BOM generator that works with KC3.

Les Kerekes
Lamko Tool & Mold Inc.

Les,

KC3 has a built-in BoM generator.  Look under the Challenge menu.  To create a bill, you'll need to Configure the table format first to the style that you want.  The attributes of text, line spacing, etc. will be picked up from the Detail > Settings menu for dimension and note text.  After creating the table format, you will need to apply Associations to your table entries in the Create a BoM function.

If your company has now moved on to KC4, you will find that this functionality has moved to the program core under the Tools menu.  You can also now configure your external database links.  You can use not only Excel, but other ODBC databases.

Have fun!