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.

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 Substitutes button. You can change the preferred substitute at any time.

Note

If you are working in NX and perform a roll-up 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.