We’d like to use the ECOMtl.FindNum field as a way for engineering to logically group parts(e.g. these six parts are all apart of the enclosure-x-y-z). Anyway, we were thinking this field could be repurposed. The problem is it appears to only support 10 characters. It looks like in the database it’s an nvarchar and the Format is x(10). I was hoping if I went into the customization screen I could simply change the format, but the Format field that defines x(10) is greyed out. Is there a simple way to extend the size of this field?
Sorry I should step back from the implementation to the problem, maybe there is a better approach…
From a BOM maintenance standpoint engineering wants to logically group parts(e.g. these 6 components make up the enclosure, and these 20 make up the widget). We started using sub-assemblies to accomplish this which engineering loved, and production was very unhappy with(e.g. why do I have 15 jobs / travelers to ship 1 product…). We regrouped and decided a custom field is needed so we can have a single job / traveler per product(unless it makes sense from a production standpoint to have multiple jobs) and yet engineering can logically group parts on a BOM to simplify BOM maintenance. We came across the Find Number in Engineering Workbench and it sounded similiar to what we were trying to achieve so thought it would be a good candidate. At the DB level it’s an nvarchar. In looking at the customization it looks like the format is x(10). I may be incorrect but I thought that meant it was 10 characters long, but was configurable as at the database level I thought an nvarchar could be many more than 10 characters.
It would be a lot easier to just add a UD field at whatever length you wanted and/or look at phantom BOM’s. Flattening BOM’s is exactly what phantom BOM is for.
And find number, is for balloon numbers on a print BOM
