EEVblog Electronics Community Forum

Electronics => PCB/EDA/CAD => KiCad => Topic started by: bentomo on April 03, 2017, 04:29:57 pm

Title: Easiest way to BOM jelly beans
Post by: bentomo on April 03, 2017, 04:29:57 pm

I've got a full schematic in kicad 4.0.4 on windows but I didn't bother to find all the parts for resistors and capacitors on digikey as I went. They all have a value and a footprint assigned but there's probably at least 12 different variations and multiples of those variations. It would be a pain to do them all so I wanted to use this opportunity to learn how to automize it.

My questions is: what's the current best way / script to find parts you need and import them from digikey into a bom just based on value and footprint?

Title: Re: Easiest way to BOM jelly beans
Post by: oldnewb on April 03, 2017, 07:03:38 pm

I don't know of any way to automate the process of finding actual part numbers.  I'd love to hear that there is a way; it's not a fun job.

There are a few tools that make the overall KiCAD BOM-creation workflow a lot easier.  Both are from a company called XESS (FPGAs and stuff).

• KiField (https://github.com/xesscorp/KiField (https://github.com/xesscorp/KiField)) creates a two-way link between eeschema component data fields and an Excel spreadsheet.  It makes the process of updating all the components so much easier.
• KiCost (https://github.com/xesscorp/KiCost (https://github.com/xesscorp/KiCost)) takes an eeschema BOM XML export, shops the major vendors, and puts the results into an Excel spreadsheet.  It's similar to Octopart's BOM tool.

Title: Re: Easiest way to BOM jelly beans
Post by: bentomo on April 04, 2017, 05:35:30 pm

Kifield sounds like what I'm looking for. Thanks!