We need to make a total list of many assemblies, so we can see how much of each part and assembly is needed to order or manufacture.
We put all those assemblies of one batch in one big assembly, so we can export the BOM. There are 3 options, top level, indented and parts only.

Top level works fine, we get a list of the assemblies (see them as different machines of the same kind) we need to built in this batch.

Parts only works fine also, we get the numbers of all the parts we need to make. But not assemblies of course.

As we need parts and all (sub)assemblies, we use indented. I printed the list and saw there are 60 machines (that's right) but only 66 O-rings instead of 120 for example. Now I see how PDM/SW counts the parts/subassemblies:
It sees for example 6 times the same machine, next row in the list is a subassy in that machine, one per machine. In the BOM, quantity is 1, because it's one time in that machine. That's right, but of course I need to make 6 of them.

So this goes wrong every time you have a (sub)assy or part where the assy one level up is more than ones in the main assy.

Some companies use ERP, we don't. How can we make a BOM table with the right counts? The helpdesk says it's not possible and needs to design an extra piece of software to do it. I think it should be a standard feature of PDM?

How do you make such lists? By hand? We did before we use PDM and SW, but had to make an excel sheet with 10.000 rows for 60 machines. Now we are making 1200 of them (of course there are a few which are not unique)