ActiveBOM receives a couple of key enhancements in Altium Designer 14.3. The first is the arrival of support for variants, enabling you to truly track the costing and availability not only of the core base product, but of the various assembly variants of that product. And the second enhancement is the support for the old-style approach to passive components, where the same library item is used, with different parametric values to determine uniqueness (e.g. a single resistor component placed three times, but with 100Ohm, 1K, and 10K values parametrically used to distinguish three 'different' design items).
Variant Support
To support variants, the BOM Editor receives a Variants toolbar. Select which variant of the design to use with the BOM, using the drop-down field at the left. This provides a listing of all currently defined variants for the design. To use the ActiveBOM feature with the core base design, ensure that the entry is set to [No Variations].
button, on the Variants toolbar.
Switch to costing a variant of your design, using the BOM Editor's Variants toolbar.
Support for Old-Style Component Approach
Many designers still employ old-style component methodologies. For passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors), it is common to see libraries of schematic components, where those components share a common symbol, but when placed on the schematic, are given different values parametrically. So a group of capacitors might share the one symbol, and therefore have the same Design Item ID, but through a differentiating parameter they are given different values of capacitance, and are therefore unique - in terms of distinct physical components that are required when the board is manufactured and assembled.
In previous versions of Altium Designer, ActiveBOM had no way of distinguishing these ambiguous components, resulting in the BOM Catalog presenting a single entry, irrespective of how many unique components there actually were. And while the separation could be seen from the BOM Components tab, it meant that uniquely distinct supply chain solutions could not be configured for each unique component. In Altium Designer 14.3, ActiveBOM has been given functionality to detect and separate any components in a design that share a common-Design Item ID - presenting them as unique entries in the BOM Catalog, and allowing the designer to correctly assign solutions for them, independently.
Flagging Ambiguity
Within the BOM Catalog, the Status Ambiguous Component is used to reflect the situation where multiple components exist in the design with the same Design Item ID, but differ in their parametric information.
Components that share a common Design Item ID are highlighted in the BOM Catalog using the status Ambiguous Component.
Facilitating Differentiation
While several components in a design can use the same symbol/design item ID, it is their parametric data that distinguishes them - typically a different value in their Comment field. For ActiveBOM to be able to essentially compare, detect, and separate these common items, there needs to be some way to define the distinguishing parameter to be used. For unmanaged components (non-vault or DBLib-based), identification is extended through the use of a customizable set of parameters. This set is determined through the Document Options dialog (with the BOM document active, use the Document Options command from the main Design menu).
Specify component parameters by which to differentiate components that possess
the same design item ID.
Simply add parameters with which to differentiate the common design items. Controls are available to add new parameters to the list, edit existing parameters, or remove parameters, as required. For each parameter, use its associated Parameter State field to specify whether it is included as a variable for differentiation (Check) or excluded (Ignore).
Determine whether a parameter is used in component differentiation.
With the required parameters specified, click OK. The ambiguous components will be 're-assessed' for uniqueness based on the parameters enabled for checking. The BOM Catalog will be refreshed and the results presented. If components were able to be successfully differentiated, based on the supplied parameters, they will be listed as their own distinct entries, and their status will change to Up to Date. If differentiation could not be proven, the condensed component entry will remain, along with the status Ambiguous Component. In this case, add another parameter through the Document Options dialog, that differs between the affected components.
An example of successful differentiation. Three unique capacitor components share the same Design Item ID - CAP - but differ in their capacitance values, specified through their respective Comment parameters. By specifying the Comment parameter be used for checking, the single condensed entry in the BOM Catalog correctly becomes three distinctly unique entries.
With ambiguity resolved, you can proceed to define separate and distinct supply chain solutions for the components.