The Woodwork for Inventor add-on allows the user to replace the values contained in the descriptions of colors, materials and purchased components with own values. This is achieved by entering values in cells in front of each item presented in the replacement dialog box. However, such a renaming method is not convenient and can result in errors when handling large amounts of materials or if there is a need to enter material names from a different system. Therefore, the Woodwork for Inventor add-on additionally allows the user to enter the replacement values by selecting them from the table which is created by using the data contained in the MS Excel worksheet. Each configuration can be linked to different MS Excel files.
To obtain replacement item data, material/color replacement configuration has to be linked to MS Excel worksheet of your choice. To do this, you will first have to open the item replacement window. This is achieved by clicking on MS Excel file icon in any cell.
A dialog box is opened. You can use it to make item replacements by selecting the desired replacement item from the table. If the configuration has no MS Excel source, the table will be empty.
The user can create their own fields that facilitate navigation or are used as additional fields describing materials. For example, a producer field or a field defining fire resistance of the material, or a field indicating that the material is in stock, etc. If necessary, these additional fields can be exported to BOMs. To this end, the appropriate keywords can be used in BOMs. For example, if you want to export Producer characteristic, enter Material.AddedProperty.Producer keyword in the BOM. Click here for more information.
Linking color replacements
Color replacements are linked to configurations in the same way as materials; only material types for which color replacements can be specified differ. Color replacement sources can only be specified for the following material types:
Important! If color and material replacements are linked to the same MS Excel worksheet, color replacement automatically leads to material replacement and vice versa.
Linking purchased product replacements
Replacement items can also be provided for purchased products (Hardware). In this case, the difference from material and color replacement is that only one MS Excel and one MS Excel worksheet can be specified as the source of replacement items.
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To open the item replacement window, click on MS Excel file icon in the item cell.
Data replacement dialog box will open.
If a replacement configuration has just been created and has not yet been linked to the MS Excel data source, the windows representing the data will be empty. To see the content, click the Setup button to go to the source setting (selection).
Based on the search phrase entered in the search (filter) window, the items shown in the selection window will be selected and classified. You may enter several criteria in a single phrase, for example, the phrase Oak Bolderaja will mean that all items in any field containing Oak and having Bolderaja line fragments will be searched. A space character will be treated as a separator between phrases. If a search phrase contains a space character, it should be placed in quotation marks, e. g. "Milky Oak". This will help to narrow down the item search.
An item selection for replacement is performed by double-clicking the right mouse button after placing the cursor on a selected row.
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Data in the MS Excel file must start from the A1 cell. The number of columns in the file is unlimited.
If one of the file columns displays image names illustrating a row item, and this column is linked to the image (..image) column, then by selecting a replacement item in the replacement window, this image will be displayed in the image illustrating the item. Images must be placed in the same catalogue that contains the MS Excel file, or in deeper catalogues. If images are in a deeper catalogue, the image name must have the name of that catalogue. For example:
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