Data Management - Suppliers

Modified by Susan Riege on Apr 11, 2017

Contents

Summary
Access
Options/Controls

Parent page: Data Management Preferences

The Data Management - Suppliers page of the Preferences dialog.

Summary

The Data Management – Suppliers page of the Preferences dialog provides controls to configure the Suppliers made available when using the Live Links to Supplier Data feature.

Access

The Data Management – Suppliers page is part of the main Preferences dialog (DXP » Preferences) and is accessed by clicking the Suppliers entry under the Data Management folder, in the left hand pane of the dialog.

Options/Controls

Available Suppliers

This region of the page lists all Suppliers that can be used as part of design data management to access and integrate supply chain intelligence. Altium currently has agreements with the following Suppliers:

Allied Electronics
Arrow Electronics
Digi-Key Corporation
Farnell
Mouser Electronics
Newark
R-S Components
TME

These agreements enable designers to access and search these Suppliers' web-databases directly from within Altium Designer.

Note that a Supplier will only appear in the list, provided the corresponding extension for it is currently installed. Within Altium Designer, management of extensions for the software is performed from within the dedicated Extensions & Updates area (DXP » Extensions & Updates).

In the dialog, you will notice an ODBC supplier. If you are signed in, and connected to, a licensed Altium Vault, you can additionally opt to source data directly from your company's own internal parts database. This is done by linking the Altium Vault's local Part Catalog to an ODBC source, through a Database Link file (*.DbLink). For more information, see Setting up an ODBC Source as an Internal Supplier.

Check the Enable option for a Supplier to be able to search that Supplier's database from within Altium Designer, and link Altium Designer components to matching supplier items. You can choose to enable any combination of these Suppliers, for use with the Live Links to Supplier Data feature. By including more Suppliers for use with the feature, you are able to compare and shop for the best deals on the components required by your design.

Moving forward, Altium continues to drive the expansion of its Supplier support. As agreements arise with additional electronic component Suppliers this list will grow, giving you an ever-wider choice of where to source your required design 'building blocks.'

Use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to move a selected Supplier up or down in the list respectively. The order determines the priority given to each Supplier when returning matching real-world parts in a parts search.

Supplier Options

If you have an account with a particular Supplier, you may be entitled to special pricing or products that are not available in these suppliers' public catalogs. If this applies to you, you should ask your supplier's sales representative for the requisite credentials that can be used with their Web Service. Once you have this information, enter it into the additional fields for that particular Supplier. The following is a summary of the additional fields presented in this region when selecting, in turn, each of the various Suppliers (in the Available Suppliers region):

Allied - User Name and Password.
Arrow - User Name, Password, Country (or region).
Digi-Key - User Name, Password, Region, Language.
Farnell - Customer Id, Secret key, Country (or region).
Mouser - User Name, Password, Region, Currency, Language.
Newark - Customer Id, Secret key, Country (or region).
RS-Components - Region.
TME - API Key, Country (or region), Currency. Obtain a temporary TME token from the TME website. Once you have this information, click the ... button to access the Temporary token to API key dialog. Enter your TME token and click OK – the token will be transformed to the required API key.

If using these additional options, don't forget to select a country or region that applies to you, where applicable, so that products available for that locale are made available to you.

Making use of these additional supplier options is a wholly optional exercise. You are not required to fill out these details in order to use a Supplier, they simply offer additional benefits for those users that are existing customers of that Supplier, should they wish to access them.

For the ODBC supplier, the region simply reflects connectivity to the source database, in terms of Connection String, Table Name, and Datasource Fields Mapping.

Suggested Keywords

To make searching for parts in Suppliers' databases more efficient, the software fills a suggested keyword into the Keywords field at the top of the Add Supplier Links dialog, based on the parameters from the source Altium Designer design component. The following following fields/parameters are used by default: Comment, Description, and Name. Parameter Names are listed in order of priority.

Add - Click to create additional parameters.
Edit - Click to edit a Parameter Name. Alternatively, you can double click on the Parameter Name itself to enable editing.
Remove - Click to remove a selected parameter(s).
Move Up - Move a selected parameter up in the priority order.
Move Down - Move a selected parameter down in the priority order.

By default, the Comment will be used as the search criteria first. If the source component has no comment, then the next attempt uses its Description. If this is also blank, the component's Name will be used.

Further refine this initial Keywords entry as required, in the Add Supplier Links dialog, to better target the desired Supplier Item(s).

Parameter Import Options

Add any parameter names here that you would like a renamed on import or made visible. Parameters imported along with supplier links or for new components can also be excluded or suffixed. To edit a Supplier Parameter Name or an Imported Parameter Name, simply click in the text box. Note that only black text is editable: any parameter names displayed in grey are not editable.

Add - Add a parameter.
Remove - Remove a selected parameter.

For more information on Parameter Import Options, see Linking to Supplier Data.

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