Model machines, BOMs and options

Structure it once, properly. The decisions here are the expensive ones to change later — an association type that should have been quantified, a machine modelled as a description instead of a record, a drawing overwritten rather than revised. Each of those is a re-entry of every affected position, not a setting.

Take one machine series or one configurable model and do all five of these for it completely before you scale. Narrow and complete beats broad and approximate in this area, because the failure mode is not a gap — it is a confident wrong answer delivered to a stopped machine.

• Build a configurator — Option groups, options, rules, pricing.
• Model a bill of material — Assemblies, positions, quantities.
• Exploded drawings and hotspots — Click the drawing, get the part.
• Compatibility and fits-with — Which part fits which machine.
• The customer's installed base — Let a buyer register their machines and shop from them.