Cut-List

You’ve spent an hour adding custom properties to each cut list item — part numbers, supplier codes, cost-per-unit. You modify a structural member, hit Rebuild, and they’re gone. Not obviously corrupted. Just attached to the wrong items, or pointing at stale folders that no longer exist in the tree. This is the cut list auto-update problem, and it’s not a bug. It’s the expected behavior of a consolidation system that doesn’t know you cared about those specific folders. ...

You have a sheet metal weldment with properly named cut list folders: meaningful names built from profile paths and custom properties, properly rolled up into your BOM. Then someone inserts that part into a parent weldment using Insert > Part, or you create a derived configuration that dissolves the cut list context — and every folder name silently reverts to “Sheet” or “Structural Member 1”. This is not a bug. It is a consequence of how SolidWorks tracks cut list folder identity, and understanding the mechanism tells you exactly which fix to apply in which scenario. ...

You build a steel frame as a weldment in one part file. Twelve identical 1500 mm long pieces of 50x50x3 square tube, plus eight 800 mm cross braces of the same profile. The cut list folder shows the right rollups: the long pieces grouped under one folder, the short pieces under another. The properties match. Then you drop the part into a parent assembly with a few other weldments, drop a BOM on the drawing, and the cut list items from the second weldment refuse to combine with the matching items from the first. Same profile. Same length. Same description. Different rows. ...