Adding company part numbers in Eagle that I can access with ULP

Question

Hello all,

I have successfully written my first ULP to format data for my pick and place machine. For the most part I got the data formatted to be a direct import into the machine except for one detail - part numbers.

The software in the machine needs to associate every reference designator with a part number. This association tells it what package, reel, value, etc it is. In Eagle, I am not sure how to assign our internal part number to each component so that when it comes time to program the pick and place it can be one swift ULP action to get the data I need.This is also a problem when outputting general purpose BOM's

I have been using the same resistor for all the resistors on the PCB of the same package type. Just change the values as needed. This of course is the same for the capacitors as well. What I would like to have is our part number for all the variations of values, tolerance, type, etc.

Active and unique parts are seemingly a little easier because I use a specific part in general. This is not always the case though, maybe an MCU with the same package has a number of variants of memory, speed, or whatever.

Does anyone have any suggestions or best practices for associating part number with a part that can be output via ULP's to Pick and Place centroid files and BOM's? Hoping there is an easy solution that is hiding in plain site.

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to help.

autodeskguest · Answer

On 25/10/15 06:05, Carlos Acosta wrote: Hello all, I have successfully written my first ULP to format data for my pick and place machine. For the most part I got the data formatted to be a direct import into the machine except for one detail - part numbers. The software in the machine needs to associate every reference designator with a part number. This association tells it what package, reel, value, etc it is. In Eagle, I am not sure how to assign our internal part number to each component so that when it comes time to program the pick and place it can be one swift ULP action to get the data I need.This is also a problem when outputting general purpose BOM's I have been using the same resistor for all the resistors on the PCB of the same package type. Just change the values as needed. This of course is the same for the capacitors as well. What I would like to have is our part number for all the variations of values, tolerance, type, etc. Active and unique parts are seemingly a little easier because I use a specific part in general. This is not always the case though, maybe an MCU with the same package has a number of variants of memory, speed, or whatever. Does anyone have any suggestions or best practices for associating part number with a part that can be output via ULP's to Pick and Place centroid files and BOM's? Hoping there is an easy solution that is hiding in plain site. The usual recommended method, these days, is to place the part number as an attribute of all components on the schematic or board. That feels like another manual step to me, but apparently it's the "right" way. I still use V4 for some of the work I do, which didn't have attributes. For that, I use a variant of the old BoM ULP, which matches both part and value against a TSV database of known parts. So where I use an R_EU_0805 and set its value to 10K, the BoM ULP produces a different part number than if an identical R_EU_0805 has a value of 100K.