Projects often have “parts” that do not appear explicitly on a schematic - screws and nuts, enclosures, cable glands that mount on the enclosure, board-board cables, and such.
Is there any way to include such parts so that they appear in a board BOM and do not need to be manually re-entered on a project BOM every time a new BOM is created?
Yes, I know that, logically, a board will be a component of a larger project BOM but sometimes, assigning such parts to a board instead of a finished product is just easier. Other times, these parts really are part of a board, such as screws to attach a battery clip (that IS a board BOM component) to a board.
In my schematic I even add the mounting holes. They are real parts to me (I had to get used to that concept), but these appear on the PCB too.
I do not like the idea of hiding parts on the schematic. A quite easy solution / workaround for you is to create an hierarchical page with for example the name “miscellaneous” or “Hardware” and then collect all those extra parts there. It’s quite easy to make custom schematic symbols and making some for screws, washers and other mounting hardware is not so difficult.
You could exclude those parts from the PCB, but leave them in the BOM.
Or even include them in the PCB too, assign 3D models and put them at the right coordinates.
I didn’t quite mean hidden in that sense - they are hidden compared to circuit components. I do like your idea of a second page with hardware. Will give that a try. I assume that if you define those hardware parts without any pins, the DRC and ERC won’t consider them?
When I used FFC cable I just made a symbol for it (rectangle) and placed it at schematic in front of FFC socket. At PCB its footprint just had a CtrYd rectangle.
The ferrite to be put on that cable also had a rectangle symbol (at schematic placed at cable symbol) and its footprint had a Silk rectangle showing the place at PCB where I assumed it will be located at cable.
When I used shielding box its top part got a symbol with a little bigger rectangle as its bottom part and I placed them both centered at schematic. The top part footprint had only CrtYd rectangle.
Round ferrite I use for RFID antenna has a circle as its symbol. When I used E ferrite laying with its back at PCB (the small second PCB was placed at its 3 legs) I made a symbol looking like E and footprint having Silk showing its position.
I have just moved from V5. Didn’t looked through my libraries converted to V6 yet. In V5 I didn’t had ‘Exclude from board’ flag. I think that with V6 I will use it for elements that don’t have their position at PCB but for those located at PCB I will do as till now, I think.
