ActiveBOM Properties Panel

Access

The ActiveBOM Properties panel can be accessed, when the active document is a BomDoc, by:

• Clicking the button at the bottom-right of the editor, and selecting Properties from the pop-up menu.
• Running the View » Panels » Properties command.

General

• Production Quantity - number of boards to be built. It is important to define the Production Quantity as this is used during supply chain searching, to check component availability from the suppliers.
• Currency - preferred currency to display component prices. Exchange rates for currency conversion are refreshed daily, provided you are signed in to your Altium account. When you disconnect from Altium (System - Account Management page of the Preferences dialog), access to these updated rates is lost. In this situation, there is an option in the BOM reports dialog to use cached data.
• Price Per Board / Order Price grid - Price per Board is the sum of the prices of each individual item detailed in the BOM Items grid, order price is this value times the Production Quantity. If target prices have been defined for each BOM Item, the Target column reflects these. To enter a target price for each BOM Item, enable the TargetPrice column in the BOM Data region of the panel.

Supply Chain

Supply Chain information is presented in the lower region of the ActiveBOM interface, showing a manufacturer component on the left, with one or more colored supplier tiles to the right of it. This region will display data when valid supply chain information can be identified for a BOM Item. Each of these Manufacturer & Supplier(s) Details rows is referred to as a Solution. The manufacturer details are abreviated to MPNs (Manufacturer Part Numbers), and the supplier details are abreviated to SPNs (Supplier Part Numbers).

• Solutions per Item - the number of manufacturer parts you would like to be located for each BOM Item.
• Suppliers per Solution - the number of suppliers you would like to be located for each manufacturer part.
• Solutions
  • Exclude Invalid SPNs - An SPN is invalid when?
  • Favorite Suppliers List - opens the Favorite Suppliers dialog, where the overall list of Suppliers can be configured for this BomDoc.
  • Manufacturer Link - opens the Define Manufacturer Link Fields dialog, where the schematic component parameters that hold the Manufacturer Name and Manufacturer Part Number, are identified. If there are unmanaged parts present in the design (parts not placed from a Vault, that also do not have supplier details), ActiveBOM can query the Altium Parts Provider and attempt to find that part.

BOM Checks

ActiveBOM performs comprehensive checking of each BOM Item, and any supply chain data that has been detected for that item.

Violation Type grid - displays a list of each type and quantity of violations currently present in the BomDoc. Click the filter icon to display only those BOM Items that fail that BOM Check. Note that a BOM Item can fail multipe BOM Checks.

BOM Checks  - click the icon to open the BOM Checks dialog, where the Report Mode can be configured for each possible Violation Type.

BOM Data

This region of the panel is used to configure what data is to be shown in the BOM Items grid.

• Items
  • Show not Fitted - if the PCB project includes variants and the chosen variant has parts set to Not Fitted, enable this to display the Not Fitted items in the BOM Items grid.
  • Designator Grouping - the Base and Consolidated view modes show common parts on a single row in the BOM Items grid. Use this option to configure if the designators are displayed individually, or in ranges, when a row displays multiple parts.
  • Component Grouping - opens the Component Grouping dialog. In Base view or Consolidated view, ActiveBOM identifes components as being the same when they shares the same ItemID (managed) or LibRef (unmanaged). Enable parameters in this dialog to further refine how components are to be grouped.
• Sources - the default data sources available in ActiveBOM are the schematic component parameters, and the vault component parameters for managed Items. From these sources, AciveBOM generates the main project BOM Item grid. The BOM can also include information taken from the following additional data sources:
  •  PCB - enable this to include PCB location / rotation / side of board data in the available Columns, for the each of the components.
  •  Database - enable this to load additional component parameters from an external database (via *.DbLib, *.SVNDbLib, or *.DbLink).
  •  Document - enable this to include all detected schematic document parameters, across all schematics in the PCB project, in the available Columns.
  •  Altium Cloud Services - enable this to access a broad range of additional component data, for those BOM Items that have been identified by the Altium Parts Provider and show a supply chain solution.

The Columns region can be sorted by any heading, including

• Columns - List of all available sources of part information available to ActiveBOM.
  • Visibility - each row has an eye icon, click to control the visibility of that column in the main BOM Items grid.
  • Column Name - the name of the property/parameter, as defined in the source document, or as entered for a user-created BomDoc column.
  • Alias - if required, an Alias can be defined to rename a column.