BIW-AP is a software aimed to assist in planning the assembly process in Body-in-White (BiW) production lines. It helps to visualize the product family tree and parts assembly sequence, modify assembly sequence, automatically create assembly Catia® product files, plan production processes, add defined processes to Catia® files, and automatically generates workshop drawings.

To create a new project, you can either read the plant BOM structure from CAD files of plant BOM (if they already exist), or let BiW-AP program to read the plant BOM from Excel® tables and automatically create CAD files according to the planned assembly sequence of BOM.

The process definitions can be imported from process data banks in Excel® sheets, or can be imported from BiW Fastening entities in Catia® CAD files.

The program provides a dialog box with options of choosing the view point of the drawing (i.e. isometric view, front view etc.) and provides tools to choose the intended processes. Then the program creates the drawing in a few seconds in MS-Excel®.

Creation of process sheet drawings in Excel® is a common practice for BiW lines. So the project enjoys the advantages of publishing drawings in MS-Excel® format:

• Availability to Robot Teachers and Maintenance Staff: MS-Excel program is available to BiW line technicians that allows them to open and edit drawings without need to expensive CAD software.
• Editable Without CAD Knowledge: The drawings in Excel can be editted by project executing technicians without knowledge of special CAD software. So As Built drawings are easily created in workshop level.
• Cost-Effective: Excel is a cost-effective alternative to specialized drawing software, reducing the need for additional investments.
• Easy Access and Familiarity: Most users are already familiar with Excel, making it easier to create and share drawings without needing specialized software.
• Customizability: The drawing sheet formats are easily customizable by the user.

Once the plant BOM is defined in the program, you can visualize the family tree of the product and accordingly the image and information of each assembly station. The important information of each station are easily seen and can be used or manipulated directly by clicking on. The images are automatically craeted by BiW-AP program.

The program continuously whatches the consistency of the drawings with plant BOM and process definitions and warns of any changes that invalidate a drawing. The user can decide to eliminate the invalidated drawing, make it obsolete or regenerate it. This ensures that your drawings remain consistent and up-to-date.

The BiW-AP is a specialized software that cares about process definitions in the drawings and assembly sequence. PLM systems do not care about such content validations.

The main focus of the BiW-AP is on automatic creation of the process sheet drawings and sequence charts and validation of them. This job is not done in Delmia® or similar software.

PLM systems usually mange the design BOM (DBOM), engineering BOM (EBOM), manufacturing BOM (MBOM), sales BOM (SBOM). The assembly sequence of a BiW plant or plant BOM is usually not created automatically by PLM systems. Nevertheless, if the plant BOM is already created in the PLM system, BiW-AP can read the plant BOM from the existing CAD files, and if not, BiW-AP creates the corresponding CAD files automatically.

The BiW-AP runs on computers with Windows 10 and 11 operation system. For creation of drawings, MS-Excel® and Catia® should be also installed on the system.

The hardware of the computer depends rather on the requirements of the project size and Catia® on the system. The computer should be able to laod the entire project CAD files in fully loaded mode (not in cache mode), while also running Excel®.

BIW-AP has been tested with large BIW assemblies and can handle complex projects. However, performance may vary depending on your hardware and Catia®’s ability to load large CAD models. For optimal performance, we recommend using a high-performance workstation with sufficient memory and processing power.

The standard release of BiW-AP can be used with Catia® V5-6 revisions of 2018 or later. For other revisions of Catia® customized releases are available. Please contact RATA for more information.

The BiW-AP has been tested on systems with MS-Excel® revisions of MS-Office® 2013 and later.