Including Design Data in an Excel Bill of Materials
Design data can be passed from Altium Designer into an Excel Bill Of Materials, by including special statements in the Excel template used to create the BOM.
When creating the Bill of Materials template in Excel, a combination of Fields and Columns can be used to specify the desired layout. Several example templates are provided with Altium Designer, in the \Templates folder of the installation user-files. A full list of available fields is provided below:
Fields
Fields provide project-level information. These are not usually attached to each item in the BOM, but are often used in the header of the document. Fields are used in the format:
Field=FieldName
An example would be Field=Currency
The available fields are:
| Currency | DataSourceFileName |
| DataSourceFullPath | GeneratorDescription |
| GeneratorName | OutputName |
| OutputType | ProductionQuantity |
| ProjectFileName | ProjectFullPath |
| ReportDate | ReportDateTime |
| ReportTime | Title |
| TotalQuantity | VariantName |
Columns
Columns provide information that is supplied on a per-component basis, and would usually appear on each line in the BOM. Columns are used in the format:
Column=ColumnName
Column information can be taken from several sources, including custom parameters added to components, PCB data, and Supplier data. These are discussed separately below.
Default Parameters
These columns are provided for all components:
| Comment | ComponentKind |
| Description | Designator |
| DesignItemId | Footprint |
| LibRef | LogicalDesignator |
| PartType | PhysicalPath |
| Quantity | UniqueIdName |
| UniqueIdPath |
Document Parameters
These parameters are also available for all components by default. They are taken from the schematic document containing the component:
| Address1 | Address2 |
| Address3 | Address4 |
| ApprovedBy | Author |
| CheckedBy | CompanyName |
| ConfigurationParameters | CurrentDate |
| CurrentTime | Date |
| DocumentFullPathAndName | DocumentName |
| DocumentNumber | DrawnBy |
| Engineer | ImagePath |
| Index | ModifiedDate |
| Organization | Revision |
| Rule | SheetNumber |
| SheetTotal | Time |
PCB Parameters
Pick and Place information can also be included from the PCB. In order to use these columns, the checkbox Include Parameters From PCB must be ticked in the BOM Configuration dialog.
| Center-X(Mil) | Center-X(mm) |
| Center-Y(Mil) | Center-Y(mm) |
| Layer | Pad-X(Mil) |
| Pad-X(mm) | Pad-Y(Mil) |
| Pad-Y(mm) | Ref-X(Mil) |
| Ref-X(mm) | Ref-Y(Mil) |
| Ref-Y(mm) | Rotation |
Supplier Data
In Altium Designer Winter 08 and later releases, it is possible to retrieve online data from suppliers, and feed that into the BOM. Note that these are updated live, and are retrieved when the BOM is generated. Multiple suppliers can be set up for each component. In the table below, these have been described as Supplier Info x - replace x with the appropriate number.
| Manufacturer x | Manufacturer Part Number x |
| Supplier x | Supplier Currency x |
| Supplier Order Qty x | Supplier Part Number x |
| Supplier Stock x | Supplier Subtotal x |
| Supplier Unit Price x |
Custom Parameters
Extra information can also be imported from a database library, or from parameters added to components by the user. In these cases, simply use the parameter name as the column name.