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Live Bom, what do think about it?

gvellet

Hi,

Live Bom is a new feature in Orcad capture that connects your schematic BOM with Datalynq, a company which provides market intelligence, life cycle evaluation, forecast and inventory statistics. I thought it would be a great tool to check if any component in a design is at risk to be obsolete soon or to have excessively long lead time. I have tried it on a few designs and I have mixed feeling about it. Live Bom has a cute GUI but I feel I cannot trust it that much. All the forecasts ( inventory, lead time, price, availability) are very dependent on how you set the timeline and the lookback period. IMHO, the tool should only present forecasts that are the most likely and accurate as possible. The graphics are almost unreadable on 28 inch monitors and there is no zoom. There is no reference for the presented data; it is basically a leap of faith.

This is my opinion; I want to know what other users think of that tool.

GV

  • 0

    Yes, Live BOM is a new feature in OrCAD X Capture and you explained it very well. 

    Below is the screen shot of Supply Chain Forecast from my laptop screen.

    Can you share a screen shot from your 28 inch screen and what screen resolution you are using at your end?

  • 0 in reply to Jeet

    My screen resolution is 2560x1440. Sorry I tried attaching a picture in the forum but it does not accept it. Anyway, in your snapshot, I can see that the graphic text fonts are quite small. On my screen they are a bit smaller, since I am not young anymore, it is difficult to read. I guess that a future software version could benefit from additionnal display settings.

  • 0 in reply to gvellet

    If we added options in Live BOM preferences where you could adjust text size, graph color, and line thickness would that address the issues your experiencing? 

    If the goal is to just find if parts are "active" and market available you don;t have to go into the the forecast view. The default view of Live BOM will show you lifecycle, design risk, and avialbility. Forecasting is really for looking at longer term prediction based on current market trends.

  • 0 in reply to dfernseb

    Hi,

    Yes the display options that you are proposing will fix the appearance issues. Hopefully they will be saved somewhere so I dont have to re-enter them everytime I start Capture. 

    About the active status part, the problem is that when you are unlucky some will transitionned to obsolete status a few months after your PCB is released. Hopefully Livebom Risk score is reliable to warn about these problematic components. Looking at the forecast or the inventory is also helpfull to judge about the risk.

    I was hoping that the Orcad community would also talk about their experience with Livebom, but unfortunately my message is passing under the radar of almost everybody!.

    Another possible topic: in System capture livebom, I think that it can export data to a CSV file. Does Cadence plan to add an export feature to Orcad Capture Livebom too?

  • 0 in reply to gvellet

    Yes - there are plans to add PDF and CSV exporting to Live BOM.

    If you have suggestions about improving any aspect of Live BOM please feel free to share them as our goal is to make it simple and obviosuly useful.

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