This is trusted by most of the electrical engineers, PCB designers, and mechanical engineers. Active BOM is nothing more than a feature that has been designed, making their software used and believed into throughout the globe. Starting from regulating and keeping an eye on the cost of PCB to maintaining surveillance on the availability and use of items, it comes handy to your help. Hence, there would not be any last minute changes to bother you or budgets that you cannot control. The BOM upgradation actually simplifies the complex looking engineering design making it easier for mass public use. Be it opening a BOM or creating a new one, you can do that easily and add all the necessary parts faster than you need in order to give your design finesse.
How far is it worth it?
For any electronic product to become a trend in the market, the components necessary for making it must be chosen wisely and considering the far-reaching propaganda in mind. Besides the technical need, there are few other demands from the product – like covering the price, passing the testing phase where most of the products breakdown etc. The final result is given not by the makers but the users, i.e., in this case, the market. And that is where Active BOM has nailed it so far. It is way more than just a compilation of components that have been fitted on the board ready to use. To every challenge that it has been tested to, BOM passed with good remarks by the critics.
How to create the BOM document?
The BOM document of Active BOM is referred to as BOMDoc. Now each PCB project can include not more than a single BOMDoc file. In order to create that file, you can simply right-click on the panel labeled as Projects or add a new BOM by going to “File” and then “New” in the submenu. Just after you have created a new BOMDoc, automatically all the files would come under the umbrella of compilation. In case there is any supply chain data that is there, required manufacturer parts are made into a list in the last section of the interface. Any surplus components that are made into the schematic list automatically get added to the newly created BOMDoc.
Item list of BOMDoc
At the top of any BOMDoc, what you find is a list of all the components taken into account by the PCB design. Next are the components that have been added to the list directly under BOMDoc. That is why this is called the BOM items list. Now, to add to your convenience, you can also choose the way you want to see the items on your BOMDoc list. Following are the types:
- Consolidated view – Sometimes, the projects include several variants. That is when you need the consolidated view so that you can see all the variants.
- Flat view – In this type, there is a row for every component so that there is a distinction between the files.
- Base view – This provides a separate row for each component in the project that is different from the other. For it to be made even easier, there are many options available in the presentation which you can find under the “Properties” panel, under subhead “designator grouping”.
Therefore, all these are there to make your BOMDoc handy for your use.
Giving a personal touch to BOM rows and columns
Active BOM supports and encourages the surplus addition of items into the list.
- Custom rows are not handled by it. In fact, all the items under custom row work according to the purpose of the user behind using it. Therefore, changes or so can be made easily.
- Custom columns can be added in a similar way as the custom rows.
- Custom items are those that do not really have an existence in the library. However, these are some of the certain items that are needed.
- Vault items are something that is manually handled under BOMDoc. In the initial stage, Vault item is selected beforehand to make itself to the BOMDoc list. Now, that is tentative since it can be altered whenever required or needed.
This is how you can customize your BOMDoc rows and columns according to your needs and requirements.
Renowned data sources
Maintaining the parameters of schematic components of the software, there are certain data sources that are actively present under BOM. After the users have turned on the “Sources”, additional sources for data can be added under BOM. Following is the list:
- You can add surplus information from a database that is external to the system.
- For all the available components, that are available under the label of “Columns”, any location of PCB or side of the board can be included.
- The Cloud services let you make an addition of an unexceptionally wide range of data that is recognized by the Provider. This also exhibits a solution for the supply chain.
- In the “Columns”, you can add all the schematic document parameters that you want.
Thus, these are all the available data sources that you can add.
The great BOM status
No each of the BOM items goes through a thorough check before getting added to the list of items. In the “BOM Status” column, the status then gets visible. Following is a list of the status items under BOM:
- Clear
- Warning
- Error
- Fatal error
Thus, there is no way any virus or interruption can damage or corrupt your system.
Conclusion
BOM is a very well sorted system that keeps your work safe and organized. Since its initiation, the software has been well recognized in the market field. With all the possible customizations, security checks, separation of documents – it is well approved and widely used throughout. Hence, several critics and experts prefer to use this on a daily basis of their work.