BOM software

Parts & Vendors from

I don't think you can beat the value for the money!

It's been a handful of years since I've used it, so I'm not certain how many "arbitrary data" fields there are, but they have a free trial download, so I'd suggest checking it out yourself and seeing if it'll work for your needs.

It definitely does a good job of storing hierarchical BOMs and rolling up costs.

---Joel

I use Parts and Vendors

for that. It's not trying to be an MRP system but for building BOMs it's a nice tool.

Robert

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If you are doing PC boards there is a free download of a program called BOMbuilder at

It has many good features to assure reliable manufacturability of PCBs, especially SMT designs. The software works with PartsAndVendors, which seems to be a good inventory control package.

I use MS Access for some of my inventory and BOM, but it requires some tricky VB programming to make it work for everything. I find that adding a hyperlink is a good way to integrate datasheets into a part number database, as long as the file is always available. A simplified data sheet could be stored within the database as a memo. I have separate tables for vendor information, and I can even generate POs with line items from my parts database. But I may still get P&V if I expand my operations.

Paul

I know I could download the software and try it, but a few quick answers could save me a bunch of time...

Does P&V allow me to track multiple quantity price break levels and multiple vendors for each part? A nice feature would be to tell the BOM software how many I wanted to build and have it return a number based on the quantity price break values.

Is there a way to feed P&V a BOM that was created by my schematic software and get a cost in return?

Thanks, David

RST Eng> I've been using Parts & Vendors since its original beta version some

Yes

Also does this. It doesn't automatically switch vendors to get the best price break though.

It does have an import facility but I've not used it yet.

Robert

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Yes and yes; see their "features" page at

It will do this.

Absolutely, although it requires that you use "accurate" parts (full names) in your schematic. In practice I've seen this turn into one of three approaches:

1) You actually keep hundreds of different, e.g., resistor parts in your schematic libraries. 100 ohms, 1k, 100k, etc., and can export a BOM directly and use it. Requires the most effort in library maintenance, but arguably is the fastest and most accurate approach if you're doing a lot of boards. 2) You use generic parts in your schematic (e.g., "Res 0603") and enter a BOM manually into P&V or a similar package. For companies making a relatively small number of different boards, this may be fastest overall. 3) You use generic parts in your schematic initially, and then manually modify each one -- after you've tweaked and finalized component values -- so that their part number fields reflect what you have setup in P&V. The idea is to get a little more accuracy than approach #2 (since you have a permanent link in the schematic to the part number) while not being quite so time consuming as approach #1 if you're only doing a few boards.

---Joel