Altium Designer / Multiple Daughter Boards / BOM Generation & 3D View

[shakaibsafvi@gmail.com]

Hi,

I've been using Altium Designer for a good 5 years. However due to my busy schedule I am usually unable to explore Altium for new features. However, lately I am stuck with a problem of generation of a Bill of Material and 3D view for a multi-board designs. To check the 3D of the complete multi-board assembly, I generate step file(s) of the daughter board(s) and use them as component 3D on the Main-Board. This is a tedious process and not very efficient. If I make changes in any of the daughter boards, I have to regenerate the 3D step file and change the component etc. Secondly, It is impossible to generate auto generate a BOM. If there is any feature in Altium that anyone know about that can solve this problem kindly let me know. Thanks.

Cheers !

[mengfei]

I usually get my 3D Step file from "http://www.3dcontentcentral.com", lots of material here & their fairly accurate & Free

Creating BOM in SCH or PCB is easy in Altium.
http://techdocs.altium.com/display/ADOH/Generating+a+Custom+Bill+of+Materials

http://www.fedevel.com/welldoneblog/2012/02/altium-designer-create-bom-library-with-live-links-to-supplier-data/

[T3sl4co1l]

I don't think you can link/embed a PcbDoc file from another one.

It perhaps sounds like you want all the boards panelized in a single common project (all SCH + PCB).  You might be able to use the flex functionality to "assemble" the 3D design.  I haven't used it so I don't know.

The best way, that I do know of, is to proceed as you have been doing: create separate projects, and link the outputs from others into a given project.

Why do you need a total BOM for all PCBs?  That doesn't make sense; the BOM represents what belongs on that PCB, what the assembler needs to buy and assemble to complete one unit of that assembly.

Tim

[shakaibsafvi@gmail.com]

Thanks for your replies:
Let me clarify
I don't want all the boards in a Panel. I have a Product that has multiple boards. Meaning that there is a Mother Board and a few Daughter Boards that are attached on top of the Mother Board in the finished Product. These Daughter Boards are linked to the Mother Board Via Connectors. Each Daughter Board is designed as a separate project in Altium. All 3D parts are populated on the Mother Board and all the Daughter Boards, meaning that I can view 3D of each board separately without a problem. What I would like:

1. To assemble the 3D of the entire product so that I can export it to the mechanical software tool for viewing and Mechanical Designing. Currently, what I do is that I export a 3D step file of each of the Daughter Boards and use the Step file as a component 3D to be accurately placed on the Mother Board in place of the respective Connector which connects that particular Daughter Board. Unfortunately, if I have to move a component in a Daughter Board, I have to repeat this whole process. I would like it to be dynamic, meaning if I change the board design of any of the Daughter Boards the change should automatically propagate up to the complete 3D product assembly.

2. The reason of the BOM is that if I have common components in the Mother Board & the Daughter Boards Merging BOMs to Place an order to my supplier is a tedious manual task which is also prone to errors.

Hope I made my problem clearer.

Thanks again.

[sacherjj]

You can generate STEP output with the Output processor.  This would update the models.  Then your 3D CAD software would reference those models.  That should get you a full up 3D model.  As long as your references don't change then the STEP file will stay the same in reference to others.

For combining BOMs, I would expect the easiest method would be to use an Excel template for the BOM and script (VBA) in Excel to join to a complete BOM.  The toughest part of this would be to combine shared components to multiple counts.

[ajb]

If your BOMs are in Excel, then Pivot Tables would be a good way to merge them.  These are a native Excel tool, no VBA needed.  You can create a master BOM Excel file, and set up a Pivot Table with the individual board-specific BOM files defined as its data sources.  You can then format the table to group and sum the BOM lines however you want, and use the result to place your orders.  Once it's setup, if you modify a board you should be able to have Altium generate a new BOM, and then simply refresh the Pivot Table to have it reflect those changes in your master BOM.

[daedalus]

+1 on the pivot tables. Another approach is to create a new pcb project, then add all schematics from the other projects by reference. That way you can generate a single bom from this superproject, that reflects any changes in the board project schematics, and should sum shared components correctly.

[shakaibsafvi@gmail.com]

Hi All,

Thanks for your responses. However my initial question was to have all this done in Altium itself and not in another 3D CAD tool or Excel.
I personally think that there should be a feature in Altium where both points are addressed. Thanks for all the help.