I’d like to get my BOM into Octopart for easy procurement and cost analysis. What’s the preferred way to do this?
I used bom2grouped_csv to export, then imported into Excel, resaved it, and imported it into Octopart. It did work but there were problems - The Excel file has all kind of empty, irrelevant columns (everything from “Symbol fields” which I guess I can ignore), but it filters everything that doesn’t have a part number. I figured octopart would help with that (?) but maybe not.
bom_csv_grouped_by_value_with_fp seems popular but creates a sheet that octopart can’t interpret. When I import to excel, it only includes the first two columns unless I delete all the headers manually before importing. And then it doesn’t include the custom part # field anyway. I haven’t been able to get much useful into excel this way.
How do people usually do their BOM’s? There must be an easy way to get a clean excel file, or something compatible with octopart or JLC?
Aside from the particulars ’Which’ BOM format to use, there are Two way’s: One in PCBnew, the other in Eeschema.
In Eeschema, it’s not straight forward and takes some head-scratching. But, once done and understood, it’s less of a hassle.
Nonetheless, I don’t like fussing with BOM’s in Eeschema so, here’s the way I do it:
#1 If I don’t build a schematic (and, I usually don’t), I export directly from PCBnew via; File>Fabrication_Outputs>BOM_File. It exports a CSV for spreadsheets.
#2 If I have a schematic, I Annotate, and make a Netlist, load the Netlist into PCBnew (no need to actually place items at desired location for just a BOM) then, I use #1 to get the BOM. Thus, avoiding the hassle… So, this is a Cheap-Trick to get BOM from Eeschema, even if not wanting a laid-out PCB.
Particulars of what items and format can be handled when loading CSV…
Images below show example using Eeschema, loading Net into PCBnew and the Import panel in LibreOffice’s LibreCalc spreadsheet…
