Pick and Place

[JohnsonMiller]

Hi,

Altium's Pick and Place exporter uses Comment field, to distinguish components, Is there any possibility to replace it with other fields? for example Part Number.

BR,

[JohnsonMiller]

In this direction, is there any short cut to replace value of the comment field for all component as "=Part Number", I would to change it in batch mode without clicking and editing component by component.

[mairomaster]

I am not sure what do you mean by "Altium's Pick and Place exporter uses Comment field, to distinguish components."

I don't think Altium uses the comment field for anything else, rather than just including it in the Pick and Place file.

You can replace the comments of all components in the project at once, using the Schematic Filter (or Find Similar option) to select all symbols and change the comment field of all of them by using the Schematic Inspector. I have most of the components in my libraries with comment field "=Part Number" and parameter Part Number, so I don't need to replace it every time. Also with some components (resistors, capacitors, NoBOM) I have different comments which are more useful in that case.

[JohnsonMiller]

Mariomaster, thank you!
Problem is that we have an old design with very high number of components, now need to prepare it for pick&place machine, so have to properly edit the Comment field, I will do your suggestion and return if face trouble.

[JohnsonMiller]

Got it working, thank you!

However I have a puzzle which do not fit!

Schematic designer prefer to use comment field to insert component value and make it visible to follow the design, however manufacturer ask to put PartNumber in comment for pick&place machine, which display in schematic page as string of alpha-numeric and dose not help designer,
In case I add distributor link things goes much more complicated, since different components has different fields, for example Resistance and Capacitance; otherwise I have to edit it item by item,

Any comment? What is common in industry?

[JohnsonMiller]

I checked same issue with OpenREX design, in some component I see comment field is part number but in others it is component value, either capacitance or resistance; In this case question is how you generated pick&place data? Are you providing BOM along pick&place file?

[robertferanec]

Yes, we provide BOMs. Go to Downloads and have a look inside: Released Files -> OpenRex -> V1I1 -> Board Assembly. There you will find all the files which we provide to the assembly house. I think, the one they may use for this is BOM Reference - OpenRex V1I1 - Production, but it may depend on the assembly house (that is why we provide several types of BOM files).

[mairomaster]

I also always provide the BOM and they don't have any issues. It is kind of strange for the assembler to require from you providing all this information in the pick and place files.

[robertferanec]

Altium's Pick and Place exporter uses Comment field, to distinguish components, Is there any possibility to replace it with other fields? for example Part Number.

I believe, in the assembly house they use Designator as the main identificator. That is why we also provide BOM with Designators. But to answer your question, you could probably fill out Comment with Manufacturer PN in your library (I am not sure if you would like to do this) or you could try to adjust the Pick & Place file to add one more column with Manufacturer PN (again, I am not sure if this is possible) or you can combine BOM and Pick and place (may be an additional of work) ...

However, what could work, you could make a custom Template and generate a BOM (the standard way) and include position information about the component. For this, you have to go into your PCB: Reports -> Bill of Materials and then you will be able to select position of the component (we use manufacturer part number as libref, if you do it different way, you may not be able to do it, as manufacturer PN doesn't seems to be available in the PCB BOM):

[JohnsonMiller]

Thank you Robert and Mariomaster,
For assembly house I wish to regenerate the Mouser P/N barcarole, I have almost tried all standard format (Code39, Code128, UCP, and I 2 of 5), but no success, do you know which format they are using?

BR,

[robertferanec]

When you read the code, doesn't it tell the format? (I am not sure, it is quite while I was working with barcodes).

But I think it could somehow work as they are able to read it here: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/di...user-barcodes/

[JohnsonMiller]

I believe, in the assembly house they use Designator as the main identificator. That is why we also provide BOM with Designators. But to answer your question, you could probably fill out Comment with Manufacturer PN in your library (I am not sure if you would like to do this) or you could try to adjust the Pick & Place file to add one more column with Manufacturer PN (again, I am not sure if this is possible) or you can combine BOM and Pick and place (may be an additional of work) ...

However, what could work, you could make a custom Template and generate a BOM (the standard way) and include position information about the component. For this, you have to go into your PCB: Reports -> Bill of Materials and then you will be able to select position of the component (we use manufacturer part number as libref, if you do it different way, you may not be able to do it, as manufacturer PN doesn't seems to be available in the PCB BOM):

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n4265[/ATTACH]

Thank you Robert,

- Where do you set the libref? I do not see it in schematic or component property? but it appear in PCB.
- I got another question about packing and number of component per unit length, for example how many 603 resistor per meter in standard reel packing?

BR,

[robertferanec]

- libref: that is name of the component in your library
- packing: I do not really know. I would look into datasheet. Sometimes they put reel packaging information there, maybe if you really need it, it can be calculated from the information. But I guess, you already tried datasheets ....