How to Generate a PCB BOM (Bill of Materials) | Sierra Circuits
This demo will show you how to generate a BOM in Cadence Allegro, Altium Designer and KiCad.
To generate BOM file in Cadence Allegro, go to your project file and select the required schematic.
Right-click and select “Edit Object Properties”.
A new window opens up with all the properties that need to be on the BOM file. You can add new properties and delete unnecessary ones here.
Once it is done, close the window.
Again, select the schematic and go to Tools, Bill of materials.
In the pop-up window, you have two options called “Headers” and “Combined property string”.
In the “Headers” option, you have to add all the columns that have been introduced in the “Edit Object Properties” earlier. The format to add a new column is \t followed by the name.
The same has to be added in the “Combined property string” option. In this case, however, the format is \t{new property}. Make sure that the names are exactly same as those given in the “Edit Object Properties” option earlier, including spaces and uppercase.
Make sure you check the “Open in Excel” box and click OK to generate BOM.
A BOM excel file will be generated that can be saved as required.
To generate a BOM in Altium Designer, go to the project file and open the required schematic.
Go to Reports, Bill of materials.
In the new window, select the “Columns” tab.
Here you can customize the BOM by adding or removing properties as per requirement.
Once it is done, click on “Export” to save the BOM file with the preferred name.
You can find the generated BOM in the project output folder.
Open the project in KiCad, then select and open the schematic file with extension “.sch”.
Click on the “Generate bill of materials” icon at the top.
In the pop-up window, you can see different options for BOM under the BOM plugins section. You can choose the one that suits your requirement.
Here we are choosing “bom_html_with_advanced_grouping”.
Once that is chosen, the format of the generated BOM can be given at the end of the command line. If you want an excel file add “.xls” at the end of the command line and click “Generate”.
The BOM is successfully generated and “Success” is displayed under the “Run command” section.
Click Close and the BOM will be saved in the project folder.
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