Defining substitute components

Substitute components are parts that are interchangeable with a particular component in an assembly. Substitutes are often defined for manufacturing purposes, allowing use of the substitute if the preferred part is unavailable, for example, due to a stock shortage. If the parts are interchangeable in all circumstances, regardless of where they are used in the product structure, consider creating a global alternate. You define a substitute for a single occurrence in an assembly and not for an item. In general, you control a change to an item of this nature by making the changes selectively for each assembly, using a where used search to identify each instance of the item. Do not use substitutes to address marketing variations of a product—use variants or modular variants for this purpose. You can define more than one substitute for each component. One of the substitutes is designated the preferred substitute and is displayed in the structure. You can see the other substitutes by clicking the List Substitutes button . You can change the preferred substitute at any time. When a primary part has one or more substitutes, you can display all the substitute parts as siblings of the preferred structure line directly below the primary part. You can then easily compare, edit, or remove the substitutes. You can enable the display of substitutes on separate lines by setting the PSEShowSubstitutesPref preference.

Note If you are working in NX and perform a rollup calculation (for example, cost or weight), the calculation uses the preferred substitute. If you add a substitute, you modify the BOM view revision and you consequently must have write access to the BOM view revision. You can change the preferred substitute any time during a session (for example, to view the change in NX), but you can only save the change if you have write access to the BOM view revision. Substitutes of one occurrence all share the same occurrence attributes, for example, find number, quantity, and notes, as specified for the substituted part. Substitute components are item revisions in a precise assembly and items for an imprecise assembly. In an imprecise assembly, the revision rule selects the correct revision of a substitute component. If you drag and drop BOM lines and there are substitutes in the selection, the drop operation ignores the substitutes and only copies the primary BOM lines. When you pack BOM lines with substitutes, the substitute lines associated with the pack master are displayed as its siblings. A group of BOM lines can be packed only if they have the same set of substitutes. The pack count for the preferred BOM line includes the substitutes. For example, if a packed BOM line contains three BOM lines and each of the BOM lines has one substitute part, the pack count is shown as six. If the primary BOM lines do not have the same substitutes, you cannot pack those BOM lines. When a BOM line is packed, adding a substitute to the packed line recursively add the same substitutes to all of the occurrences. Likewise, removing a substitute from the packed line recursively removes the substitute from all of the occurrences. You cannot add substitute BOM lines to substitute groups. BOM rollup report calculations exclude substitute lines. When BOM markup is enabled, added or removed substitute lines are marked.