Additional Windchill Capabilities > Manufacturing Process Management > Transforming an eBOM into an mBOM > Maintaining an mBOM > About Smart Collection
  
About Smart Collection
The Smart Collection feature provides the ability to break a complex structure into cohesive or workable chunks from which manufacturing planning can be executed. You can collect all the subassemblies of your interest and make a list of them in a smart collection. This allows all the stakeholders involved in the planning phase of a product to collaborate on a small or focused part of a product, and ensures that not a single part in a complex structure is missed out. It allows you to work on sub-assemblies and components of a known product configuration that are relevant to a specific subsystem of a product.
Additional information about using smart collection is as follows:
A smart collection contains selected paths of one or more structures from upstream and downstream views in BOM Transformer.
You can launch Department Data Editor from a smart collection.
You can create and edit a smart collection. The New Smart Collection and Edit Smart Collection actions are available only in usage mode.
You can open a smart collection in BOM Transformer from the information page of the smart collection.
You can customize the table view in BOM Transformer to view the Smart Collection column. The column displays the identity of the smart collection and the quantity assigned to the smart collection associated with a part in the structure. This information appears only in the Usage mode. An Administrator can customize the Smart Collection column to display smart collections only for a specific type using the com.ptc.windchill.associativity.accountabilityMap.validDisplayTypes property. The internal name of the required smart collection type can be added as the default value for this property. You can enter multiple values using commas as separators.
In the Smart Collection column, the latest configuration specification is applied on the part structure to display smart collection revision. If this specification is not available, the latest configuration specification available by default is used. Smart collection for a child part is resolved irrespective of the context or root part defined in the smart collection.
You can search a smart collection in Windchill global search and advanced search.
In an upgraded version of Windchill, specific configurations are required to make the smart collection items available in folder browser and search results pages. For more information, see View Smart Collection After Upgrade.
You can apply a path filter on a smart collection and then save the smart collection.
You can revise a smart collection. The latest revision of the smart collection is visible in the smart collection information page and folder browser page.
When you revise a smart collection, the smart collection content is copied from previous to new revision of the smart collection.