I need to manage electronic parts used on PCB assemblies. Where is the reference designator(R4,C6,U5 etc) stored/displayed? For a common part number used in several places with different reference designators, how will that be displayed?
By: Support
Posted on: Oct 2 2020 at 04:04:01 AM
Hello Bob,
Reference/Designator is managed within a specific assembly. For example a common part that appears in many different assemblies willlikely not always occupy the same postion/ref/des on different PCBs.
So. Reference Designator is done within the assembly editor.
See the Ref/Pos column in the assembly editor here:-
When you've created/edited your assembly the reference appears in the Bill of Materials here:-
In our example above you'll see by the Levels that this is in a sub assembly. You would obviously only need to edit the sub assembly once. If that was a common used assembly used in other products that ref/des would appear within the sub assembly.
The Reference/Pos designator is a great tool for us; we use it to store information about specific treatments required to some parts and to follow up the logistics associated to those treatments (which are not done in house).
Since our work orders/projects (using a given assembly) take a long time to finish we are also looking for an alternative to keep the information about the week/month when parts were actually handed over to the project (miniMRP does not allow for an individual issuing of parts).
