I am a new user of KiCAD in the last few weeks. I think I am having having an issue with outputting a BOM from PCBNEW. The output format is supposed to be .csv but the actual output is a semicolon. I can correctly output a BOM using EESCHEMA.
For ordering of components the .csv output from EESCHEMA works fine.
The issue I am having is both MacroFab and CircuitHub appear to scrub the .kicad_pcb file for the BOM items.
So my question is this: Is the output of a semicolon expected for a .csv file file out of PCBNEW? Is there a setting I can change? Is there plugin/patch I can install to make the ouput work with the board houses?
There are several different BOM tools which can be used with KiCad, and some (all?) are written in Python so you can generate any output you want with them.
But this is apparently not your problem, because
So it is not clear to me what your problem is.
Both MacroFab and CircuitHub appear to be websites of companies that place components on PCB’s, and they both claim to have integrated support for KiCad:
With PCBs created using KiCad, the MacroFab platform can automatically extract placement and bill of materials data from KiCad files. This article covers getting your KiCad designs into the MacroFab.
MacroFab has a nice page with what they want you to do for a KiCad design: https://macrofab.com/help/eda-tool-help/kicad/
Thanks for the fast response Paul. I did reach out to CircuitHub and they said they were going to look into it. Initially, I thought it was a bug on my end with KiCAD. What I did was a little troubleshooting and uploaded some example KiCAD files for quote with the same result.
It appears both companies “scrub” the PCB file for the BOM information as I suspected earlier. They are correctly reading the Reference Designators, Value and Footprint. After that the information I have inserted into the symbol properties doesn’t’ show up in their online tools.
Both MacroFab and CircuitHub have a way of manually reconciling the BOM for quote so I will go that route. It is simple albeit time consuming. As the Reference Designators and qty show up in the online quoting tool performing this task isn’t difficult. There could be worse things!
Thanks again and I am looking forward to being part of the community here.
The step from PCB design to PCB manufacturing is a bit messy.
Gerber files are getting unified, but with the old format there is still manual renaming of files going on, risk of accidentally swapping layers, drill files getting scaled wrong. Troubles with placement coordinates & rotation of components for P&P machines and who knows what.
All solvable, but it all takes time to first do it, and more if errors are made.
MacroFab, Circuithub, Aisler and other companies are writing scripts to extract data because there is no unified file format for PCB’s.
But if you give them your complete KiCad design, they should be able to use the same BOM scripts from github that you use with KiCad yourself.
What sort of extra information would they need?
What kind of information have you added?
Refeference, value & footprint should be enough I think.
The only “extra” information is the manufacturer part number. Because the placements, ref des and values pull in reconciling it manually isn’t hard as I just copy paste from my csv BOM into their online BOM tool.
As you stated there is likely an error in the import script. For now I have a way to get quotes so I am happy with that.
AFAIK, that is the only information that PCBNew knows. All the other information in your symbol properties are only in the schematic, or in a BOM generated by EESchema (and the associated xml file that is generated during the EESchema BOM generation process).
I argue that knowing a component’s value and the footprint used isn’t necessarly enough information to choose the component. Ceramic capacitors come in many different ceramic types, with different properties, all sharing the same footprint. On a previous project I ordered a half-watt THT resistor. I thought that Digikey had made an error because it was physically the same size as a regular quarter-watt resistor until I looked carefully at the datasheet and found that the part family that I ordered was supposed to be that size. (Some sort of black magic, being able to withstand twice the power of a similar sized part. I took advantage of that and used a quarter-watt footprint to save some board real estate.) While working with those vendors, maybe you can also provide them with the xml file from EESchema’s BOM process to see if they can better choose parts from you by linking the Ref’d from the board file to the xml file. A good python programmer can probably knock out (and test) a simple script to do that in an hour or two.
Edit: Oh, nevermind. You responded while I was writing.