The standard E10 Configurator has a limitation that it can’t ADD anything, it can only work with what is already there. So, if there are 10 materials inputs, the configurator can’t add an 11th. If even under rare circumstances you need an 11th material you have to have it there just in case and the configurator can change it or delete it.
For some clients I can figure out a maximum number of materials that are possible and put that many in. So, if they never need more than 50 then we would add 50 materials and selectively keep as many as are needed when they configure. Each material could be a configurable item.
One of my clients has another approach. They make a product where it can be made up of any number of “sections”. Each section can be unique for say color, size, etc.
Using a typical approach each section would be a line on the quote/order. An order for my client might have 20 or 30 sections. My client would like all the sections to be on one line. They don’t want to have to ship 30 lines nor use batching.
They built a configurator for a section which allows them to customize a section.
What they did was starting with a quote add a single line.
Then go to the manufacturing tab, click on the subassembly top level in the tree and right click, add subassembly and enter the part number for the “section” configurator. Then they right click on that just added subassembly and do a Get Details. This brings up the configurator tied to this part. They configure and save.
For each “section” they need the process is repeated.
The result is one line, one job, and as many sections as they need.
Yes, but that is standard for this client, the “sections” make up a completed product. Very much as a part that has subassemblies wouldn’t be invoiced until the finished product was shipped.
My understanding is they ship/invoice the finished product which is the top level part. When all the subassemblies have been completed they can ship/invoice the finished/top level part.
If they want to save some clicks, I would recommend creating that as a Template BOM and they select which “sections” they want to include. That way, if they have 20 “sections” they don’t have to add each one and then configure. They could add them all and configure at once.
We had a similar need, but up front we knew how many sections were in the product, but we didn’t know how many sub-sections we were going to need and we didn’t want customer service to trip up and choose the wrong sub-sections that weren’t available as an option.
We created sub configurators with a part-relationship UD table that would relate the sub-sections to each of their parent sections.
So if you selected Part 123 at the line level and it had options like Section 1 , 2 , or 3 (mutually exclusive) and sections 1, 2 , 3, also had their own sections, 1a, 1b , 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, it would launch each sub section as a configurator because these subsections were configurable parts nested in their parents’ bills of material. The method rules would add them as needed and bring up any other prompts needed.