The Updated Bill of Materials and Stock Management Tool
By limpkin on Thursday, January 9 2014, 22:38 - My Projects - Permalink
Stock management and Bill of Materials generation are usually neglected when it comes to making projects, so I updated a tool I made a while back...
Unfortunately for Linux users, this utility is made using Visual Basic functions in an Excel file!
It works fairly simply: just enter your schematics’ components references in the excel sheet, along with the corresponding Digikey webpage address. Click on the “fetch” button and the script will automatically get all your components characteristics from the internet and tell you the components costs depending on the number of prototypes you want to make. Then click the “sort BoM” button and your BoM will automatically be sorted by component type and value.
Another functionality allows you to check that all the components present in your BoM are also present on the (very simple) Kicad generated one. Finally, using another Excel sheet containing your current stock, the Bill of Materials will let you know if you have enough components for the assembly stage. You can download the BoM template here and the corresponding stock file there. Here is the video of the tool in action:
Comments
Very Cool. You are right about the BOM often being neglected in smaller projects. Bigger CAD packages such as OrCad include some part controls but it is harder to find for DIY. I downloaded about a dozen packages a few months ago and ended up with Partkeepr, but like most things this size it's a love/hate relationship.
I will try this on my next small project.
@BilHerd : Thanks Bill! That's an honor having you here on my website.
Hi Limpkin,
Cool, thanks for the inspiration! I took the liberty of attempting a port to Google Spreadsheets (for those of us without Excel). It's still pretty rough, but I think I got the basic functionality done:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...
@Kevin : sweet! don't hesitate to ping me when everything is working well... many people will be interested in it!