[SOLVED] Help with External Table Error with Altium BOM

[spudmaster]

Hello everyone!

I'm fairly new to Altium Designer and I am having some trouble creating a BOM for my design. I have added a new BOM document to the project by right clicking on the project name in the projects windows and everything there works fine. However, when I try to generate a BOM from the reports tab, I receive an error saying:

'The external table is not in expected format. Exception Occurred in GenerateReport'

If I try to generate a Simple BOM from the Reports tab, it thinks for a while and then nothing happens. Does anyone know what this means and how I can fix it? I've done alot of searching online and can't seem to find any information on it. Thanks so much!

 

[andre_luis]

As far as I know the BOM is an write-only file that is generated by the CAD tool, and therefore the reported error must actually be due to the table format that contains some function or attribute not supported by Altium. If you want to add some column or information to BOM, you should ideally create these fields in the schematic library of each component, and fill with the appropriate value on each device added to your drawing. This is how I do it in my projects and works pretty well.

 

[spudmaster]

I've gone back through and made sure that every column in the BOM has an identical field in each library component - I still get the same error. Any other ideas?

 

[andre_luis]

Delete the BOM file that you have modified, and let the tool generate another one.

 

[spudmaster]

Tried that, still no good :/

 

[andre_luis]

Then your project file may be corrupted; In this case, a viable solution would be to create a new project, copy the files of interest to there (eg PCB, SCH, and Libraries) and try to generate the BOM from that 'new project'.

 

[spudmaster]

That worked like a charm, I should have thought of that earlier. Thanks so much!