BOM setting presets in 8.0

Schematic
1

I’m trying to use the new “Generate Bill of Materials” feature in version 8.0. After adjusting the BOM settings, I save them as a preset. But when I create a new project, my saved preset is not available. It looks like the BOM setting presets are saved with the project and can’t be used in other projects.

That doesn’t seem right to me - I don’t need a bunch of different BOM presets for a single project, but I do want to use my custom settings in all my projects. Am I missing something?

2

It looks like the BOM setting presets are saved with the project and can’t be used in other projects.

Yes (for save inside project). No (for last half of sentence).

Am I missing something?

Yes. Try to execute the following steps:

  1. save the BOM preset in your first project
  2. open the next project, open the schematic
  3. in schematic editor: File–>schematic setup
  4. in bottom left of schematic setup dialog: click on import settings from another project
  5. in the import dialog enable the BOM presets
3

That works, thanks for the tip!

Still, it seems like a bit of a long way round to do that every time instead of making it a global setting. If I had designed KiCad… :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

Fully agree.
Also from my side, thanks for the tip @mf_ibfeew, but it really feels like an ugly workaround. If not as a global setting, at least there should be an option to export it to some .py or .xml file…

5

It’s not as ugly as you make it seem.
When you export it, you will still have to save it in some kind of file.

With the Import Settings from Another Project you get this dialog:

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… and you can choose which settings you import. With a little bit of organization you can make a few small projects which have no other use then to be a source for your preferred own settings. You can name those projects to the settings they have and put them together in some separate directory.

KiCad also has a mechanism in which projects can be saved as a template, and re-used to create new projects from. These templates can have a partial schematic, PCB outline or layout or anything else that can be in a regular project.

Copying data by extracting it directly from another project is maybe a bit unusual, but it’s also straight forward.

1 Like