Usage¶
KiCost’s main use is generating part-cost spreadsheets for circuit boards developed with KiCad as follows:
For each part in your schematic, create a field called
manf#and set the field value to the manufacturer’s part number. (You can reduce the effort of adding this information to individual parts by placing themanf#field into the part info in the schematic library so it gets applied globally.) The allowable field names for part numbers are:mpn pn p# part_num part-num part# manf_num manf-num manf# man_num man-num man# mfg_num mfg-num mfg# mfr_num mfr-num mfr# mnf_num mnf-num mnf#
Be careful if the part have a manf# or distributor code with the ,, ; or \ characters,
these have specific propose as shown in Parts With Subparts. They have to be preceded by \,
example, for the NUP1301,215 code, use NUP1301\,215.
Output a BOM from your KiCad schematic. This will be an XML file such as
schem.xml.Process the XML file with KiCost to create a part-cost spreadsheet named
schem.xlsxlike this:kicost -i schem.xml
Open the
schem.xlsxspreadsheet using Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, or Google Sheets. Then enter the number of boards that you need to build and see the prices for the total board and individual parts when purchased from several different distributors (KiCost currently supports Arrow, Digi-Key, Mouser, Newark, Farnell, RS and TME). All of the pricing information reflects the quantity discounts currently in effect at each distributor. The spreadsheet also shows the current inventory of each part from each distributor so you can tell if there’s a problem finding something and an alternate part may be needed.Enter the quantity of each part that you want to purchase from each distributor. Lists of part numbers and quantities will appear that you can cut-and-paste directly into the website ordering page of each distributor.
Examples¶
Most people just want some examples of using KiCost so they don’t have to read a bunch of documentation, so here they are!
To create a cost spreadsheet from an XML file exported from KiCad:
kicost -i schem.xml
To create a cost spreadsheet from within KiCad, use the
Tools => Generate Bill of Materials... menu item and then enter the
following in the Command line field:
kicost -i %I
To create a cost spreadsheet direct from the KiCad using the user definitions (by graphical interface last runned):
To create a cost spreadsheet from within KiCad using the previous, use the
Tools => Generate Bill of Materials... menu item and then enter the
following in the Command line field:
kicost -i %I --user
To place the spreadsheet in a file with a different name than the XML file:
kicost -i schem.xml -o new_file.xlsx
To overwrite an existing spreadsheet:
kicost -i schem.xml -w
To get costs from only a few distributors:
kicost -i schem.xml --include digikey mouser
To exclude one or more distributors from the cost spreadsheet:
kicost -i schem.xml --exclude digikey farnell
To include parts that are only used in a particular variant of a design:
kicost -i schem.xml --variant V1
To create a cost spreadsheet from a CSV file of part data:
kicost -i schem.csv --eda_tool csv
To read and merge different projects BOMs, even those from different EDA tools:
kicost -i bom1.xml bom2.xml bom3.csv -eda kicad altium csv
To access KiCost through a graphical user interface, just use the kicost command without parameters.
Custom BOM list¶
In addition to XML files output by EDA tools, KiCost also accepts CSV files as a method for getting costs of preliminary designs or older projects. The format of the CSV file is as follows:
- A single column is interpreted as containing manufacturer part numbers.
- Two columns are interpreted as the manufacturer’s part number followed by the part reference (e.g.,
R4). - Three columns are interpreted as the quantity followed by the part number and reference.
You can also arrange the columns arbitrarily by placing a header in the first line
of the CSV file that labels the particular
columns as manufacturer’s part numbers (manf#), quantities (qty), and
part references (refs).
Custom Part Data¶
The price breaks on some parts can’t be obtained automatically because:
- they’re not offered by one of the distributors whose web pages KiCost can scrape/query, or
- they’re custom parts.
For these parts, you can manually enter price information as follows:
Create a new field for the part named
kicost:pricingin either the schematic or library.For the field value, enter a semicolon-separated list of quantities and prices which are separated by colons like so:
1:$1.50; 10:$1.00; 25:$0.90; 100:$0.75
(You can put spaces and currency symbols in the field value. KiCost will strip everything except digits, decimal points, semicolons, and colons. Others currency are acepted by use of the standardize ISO 4217 alpha3 format, e.g.
USD1.50,EUR1.00)
You can also enter a link to documentation for the part using a field named kicost:link.
The value of this field will be a web address like:
www.reallyweirdparts.com/products/weird_product.html
After KiCost is run, the price information and clickable link to documentation for the part are shown in a section of the spreadsheet labeled Local. If you want to associate the pricing and/or documentation link to a particular source or distributor, just place an extra label within the field key to indicate the source like so:
kicost:My_Weird_Parts:pricing
kicost:My_Weird_Parts:link
Then the pricing and documentation link for that part will appear in a section of the spreadsheet labeled My_Weird_Parts.
You can have as many sources for parts as you want, and a part may have multiple sources.
Part Grouping¶
KiCost groups similar parts together and places their information on a single line of the generated spreadsheet. For parts to be grouped, they must:
- come from the same library (e.g., “device”),
- be the same part (e.g., “R”),
- have the same value (e.g., “10K” but note that this would not match “10000” or “10K0”), and
- have the same footprint (e.g., “Resistors_SMD:R_0805_HandSoldering”).
To reduce your effort, KiCost will also propagate pricing data among grouped parts. For example, if you place a hundred 0.1 uF decoupling capacitors in 0805 packages in a schematic, you need only assign a manufacturer’s number and/or pricing data to one of them and it will be applied to the rest.
There are several cases that are considered when propagating part data:
- If only one of the parts has data, that data is propagated to all the other parts in the group.
- If two or more parts have data but it is identical, then that data is propagated to any of the parts in the group without data.
- If two or more parts in the group have
differentdata, then any parts without data are left that way because it is impossible to figure out which data should be propagated to them.
It is possible that there are identical parts in your schematic that have differing data and, hence, wouldn’t be grouped together. For example, you might store information about a part in a “notes” field, but that shouldn’t exclude the part from a group that has none or different notes. There are three ways to prevent this:
Use the
--ignore_fieldscommand-line option to make KiCost ignore part fields with certain names:kicost -i schematic.xml --ignore_fields notes
Use the
--group_fieldsoption to allow grouping of parts even if they have different field values, but then display the parts separately in the spreadsheet using a multiline cell. The following example will group parts that are identical except for having different footprints, but will display them individually:kicost -i schematic.xml --group_fields footprint
Precede the field name with a “:” such as
:note. This makes KiCost ignore the field because it is in a different namespace.
Parts With Subparts¶
Some parts consist of two or more subparts.
For example, a two-pin jumper might have an associated shunt.
This is represented by placing the part number for each subpart into the manf# field, separated
by a “;” like so: JMP1A45;SH3QQ5. The manf (manufacture name) also allow this division, empty or replicate the last one (use “~” character to replicate the last one).
Each subpart will be placed on a separate row of the spreadsheet with its associated part number
and a part reference formed from the original part reference with an added “#” and a number.
For example, if the two-pin jumper had a part reference of JP6, then there
would be two rows in the spreadsheet containing data like this:
JP6#1 ... JMP1A45
JP6#2 ... SH3QQ5
You can also specify multipliers for each subpart by either prepending or appending
the subpart part number with a multiplier separated by a “:”.
To illustrate, a 2x2 jumper paired with two shunts would have a part number of
JMP2B26; SH3QQ5:2.
The multiplier can be either an integer, float or fraction
and it can precede or follow the part code (e.g. SH3QQ5:2 or 2:SH3QQ5).
In the case of distributor# and manf# for one sub part only, the other should have a blank
value discriminated. As exemple:
manf# = 0022232061;0022012067; 6: 08-50-0114; LA 55-P; lv 25-P
digikey# = ;;; 398-1010-ND; 398-1019-ND
rs# = ;;; 180-7357; 286-361
See that just the last two manf# have a correspondent digikey# and rs# catalogue code.
Schematic Variants¶
There are cases where a schematic needs to be priced differently depending upon the context. For example, the price of the end-user circuit board might be needed, but then the price for the board plus additional parts for test also has to be calculated.
KiCost supports this using a variant field for parts in the schematic in
conjunction with the --variant command-line option.
Suppose a circuit has a connector, J1, that’s only inserted for certain units.
If a field called variant is added to J1 and given the value V1,
then KiCost will ignore it during a normal cost calculation.
But J1 will be included in the cost calculation spreadsheet if you run KiCost like so:
kicost -i schematic.xml --variant V1
In more complicated situations, you may have several circuit variants, some of which
are used in combination.
The --variant option will accept a regular expression as its argument
so, for example, you could get the cost of a board that includes circuitry for
both variants V1 and V2 with:
kicost -i schematic.xml --variant "(V1|V2)"
A part can be a member of more than one variant by loading its variant field
with a list such as “V1, V2”.
(The allowed delimiters for the list are comma (,), semicolon (;), slash (/), and space ( ).)
The part will be included in the cost calculation spreadsheet if any of its variants matches
the --variant argument.
Old-Style Variants¶
KiCost supports another way of specifying the variant associated with a part.
Using the example from above, labeling the part number for J1 as
kicost.v1:manf# will assign it to the v1 variant.
This method is not as flexible as using the variant field and may be removed
in future versions of KiCost.
“Do Not Populate” Parts¶
Some parts in a schematic are not intended for insertion on the final board assembly.
These “do not populate” (DNP) parts can be assigned a field called DNP or NOPOP.
Setting the value of this field to a non-zero number or any string will cause this part
to be omitted from the cost calculation spreadsheet.
Showing Extra Part Data in the Spreadsheet¶
Sometimes it is desirable to show additional data for the parts in the
spreadsheet.
To do this, use the --fields command-line option followed by the names of the
additional part fields you want displayed in the global data section of the
of the spreadsheet:
kicost -i schematic.xml --fields fld1 fld2
Visual Cues in the Spreadsheet¶
In addition to the part cost information, the spreadsheet output by KiCost provides additional cues:
The
Manf#cell is colored to warning the part lifecyle status:- Purple if the part is asign as ‘obsolete’ or ‘not recommended for new designs’
by one of the distributors accessed.
The
Qtycell is colored to show the availability of a given part:- Red if the part is unavailable at any of the distributors.
- Orange if the part is available, but not in sufficient quantity.
- Yellow if there is enough of the part available, but not enough has been ordered.
- Gray if no manufacturer or distributor part number was found in the BOM file.
The
Availcell is colored to show the availability of a given part at a particular distributor:- Red if the part is unavailable.
- Orange if there is not sufficient quantity of the part available.
The
Unit$andExt$in each distributor cell is colored green to indicate the lowest price found across all the distributors.
Selecting Distributors to Scrape/Query¶
You can get the list of part distributors that KiCost scrapes/query for data like this:
kicost --show_dist_list
Distributor list: digikey farnell local_template mouser newark rs tme
Since you may not have access to some of the distributors in that list, you can restrict scraping from only a subset of them as follows:
kicost -i schem.xml --include digikey mouser
Or you can exclude some distributors require the price of the rest:
kicost -i schem.xml --exclude farnell newark
Command-Line Options¶
- usage: kicost [-h] [-v] [-i FILE.XML [FILE.XML …]] [-o [FILE.XLSX]]
- [-f NAME [NAME …]] [–translate NAME [NAME …]] [-var VARIANT [VARIANT …]] [-w] [-q] [-ign NAME [NAME …]] [-grp NAME [NAME …]] [–debug [LEVEL]] [–eda {kicad,altium,csv} [{kicad,altium,csv} …]] [–show_dist_list] [–show_eda_list] [–no_collapse] [-e DIST [DIST …]] [–include DIST [DIST …]] [–no_price] [–currency [CURRENCY]] [–guide FILE.XML [FILE.XML …]] [–user]
Build cost spreadsheet for a KiCAD project.
- optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit -v, --version show program’s version number and exit - -i FILE.XML [FILE.XML …], –input FILE.XML [FILE.XML …]
- One or more schematic BOM XML files.
- -o [FILE.XLSX], –output [FILE.XLSX]
- Generated cost spreadsheet.
- -f NAME [NAME …], –fields NAME [NAME …]
- Specify the names of additional part fields to extract and insert in the global data section of the spreadsheet.
- –translate_fields NAME [NAME …]
- Speficy or remove field translation (–translate X1 Y1 X2 Y2 X3 ~, translates X1 to Y1 and X2 to Y2 and remove X3 for the internal dictionary).
- -var VARIANT [VARIANT …], –variant VARIANT [VARIANT …]
- schematic variant name filter.
-w, --overwrite Allow overwriting of an existing spreadsheet. -q, --quiet Enable quiet mode with no warnings. - -ign NAME [NAME …], –ignore_fields NAME [NAME …]
- Declare part fields to ignore when reading the BoM file.
- -grp NAME [NAME …], –group_fields NAME [NAME …]
- Declare part fields to merge when grouping parts.
–debug [LEVEL] Print debugging info. (Larger LEVEL means more info.) –eda {kicad,altium,csv} [{kicad,altium,csv} …]
Choose EDA tool from which the XML BOM file originated, or use csv for .CSV files.--show_dist_list Show list of distributors that can be scraped for cost data, then exit. --show_eda_list Show list of EDA tools whose files KiCost can read, then exit. --no_collapse Do not collapse the part references in the spreadsheet. - -e DIST [DIST …], –exclude DIST [DIST …]
- Excludes the given distributor(s) from the scraping process.
- –include DIST [DIST …]
- Includes only the given distributor(s) in the scraping process.
--no_price Create a spreadsheet without scraping part data from distributor websites. - –currency [CURRENCY]
- Define the priority currency. Use the ISO4217 for currency (USD, EUR). Default: USD.
- –guide FILE.XML [FILE.XML …]
- Start the user guide to run KiCost passing the file parameter give by “–input”, all others parameters are ignored.
--user, -u Run KiCost on terminal using the parameters in the guide memory, all passed parameters from terminal take priority.