kicad-bom-gen

A collection of scripts to generate BOMs in various formats from KiCad’s Eeschema (Schematic Editor).

Components

All BOM generation starts with an input .xml file that KiCad generates from your project’s .kicad_sch file. This is referenced as %I in the BOM generator command. The output file, referenced as %O, is the full path to the project including the root of a filename equal to the projects name. An extension + optional suffix should be added to the filepath in the command. The quotes around these variables are required in case the filepath contains spaces.
These paths should get passed to each BOM generation script.

bom-gen.py

The main and sometimes only step in the generation process is the bom-gen.py python script. This simple script extracts component data from a given input xml file, and exposes it to a given template for rendering. This allows BOM templates to be written in the powerful Jinja templating language.

bom-gen-pdf.py / asciidoctor-pdf

When generating a pdf BOM, the final pdf generation is done using asciidoctor’s pdf frontend asciidoctor-pdf. An intermediate asciidoc format is generated with bom-gen.py first, then the result is rendered to pdf. These two steps are chained together in the bom-gen-pdf.py script.

Installation

A simple install.sh script is provided that copies the scripts to Kicad’s user plugin directory located in ~/.local/share/kicad/<version>/plugins/. The corresponding uninstall.sh removes them.

Requirements

• python
  • jinja2
• asciidoctor-pdf (Required only for generating PDFs from AsciiDoc)

Python is required to execute the scripts. The package Jinja2 is used for templating, it can be installed with pip install jinja2. If you would like to generate PDFs from AsciiDoc, asciidoctor-pdf is required to be installed and included in your $PATH. This can be installed with your distro’s package manager.

Usage

The scripts should be called from within KiCad from the BOM generator GUI.
The main script bom-gen.py should be passed the input xml "%I", the output file path with included extension "%0.ext", and a template file. The template file can be an absolute path to a Jinja template, or it can be the filename of one of the included templates. Custom templates can be placed in the templates/ subdirectory where the script is located. After running the install script(or placing them directly in the KiCad user plugins directory), they can be referenced by just the filename.

Examples

Generating a Markdown BOM using the included Github Markdown template (output.md)
This will generate a Markdown table containing a row for every component, with the fields: “ref”, “value”, “MPN” if defined else “footprint”.

python bom-gen.py "%I" -o "%O-bom.md" -t github.md

Generating a plain text table using the included template (output.txt)
This will generate a plain text table that is formatted with an 80 character length. Contains the fields: “ref”, “value”, “MPN” if defined else “footprint”. Groups components by value, with one row per group.

python bom-gen.py "%I" -o "%O-bom.txt" -t table.txt -g

Generating an assembly checklist PDF with asciidoctor-pdf (intermediate.adoc) (output.pdf)
This will generate a pdf that contains a table row for every component. Contains the columns “P” (Placed), “S” (Sourced), “ref”, “value”, “MPN” if defined else “footprint”, “UPN” (Custom PN).

python bom-gen-pdf.py "%I" "%O-bom.adoc"

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Reference

1. bom-gen.py
   usage: bom-gen.py [-h] [-o OUTFILE] [-t TEMPLATE] [-g [GROUP]] [--no-clean] infile
   • positional arguments:
     • infile - Path to KiCad netlist xml file to parse.
   • options:
     • -o, --output OUTFILE - Path to output rendered BOM. Includes extension.
     • -t, --template TEMPLATE - Path to template file, or name of installed template.
     • -g, --group [GROUP] - Group components in rows by group.
     • --no-clean - Do not delete input xml file
     • -h, --help - Show a help message and exit.
2. bom-gen-pdf.py
   usage: bom-gen.py infile outfile
   • positional arguments:
     • infile - Path to KiCad netlist xml file to parse.
     • outfile - Path to output rendered BOM. Includes extension.