Altium Designer

Updated on Nov 28, 2023

Edit

Comment

Developer(s) Altium Operating system Microsoft Windows		Written in Delphi

Initial release 2005; 12 years ago (2005) Stable release 17.0.10 (Build 617) / February 8, 2017; 18 days ago (2017-02-08) Type Electronic design automation

Altium Designer is an electronic design automation software package for printed circuit board, FPGA and embedded software design, and associated library and release management automation. It is developed and marketed by Altium Limited of Australia. The current release is 17.0

History

In 1985 Altium launched the DOS based PCB design tool known as Protel, and later named Autotrax (and a limited feature-set low cost version Easytrax). Originally sold only in Australia, it has been exported to the United States and Europe since 1986. In 1987, Altium launched the circuit diagram editor Protel Schematic. The launch of Protel 98 in 1998 saw the consolidation of all components, including Protel Advanced PCB and Protel Advanced Schematic, into a single environment. Protel 99 introduced the first integrated 3D visualization of the PCB assembly, and Altium Designer version 6.8 from 2007 was the first to offer 3D visualization and clearance checking of PCBs directly within the PCB editor. In April 2011 Altium moved from Australia to Shanghai in China and most workers in Sydney were made redundant.

Schematic capture

Schematic capture module provides electronics circuit editing functionality, including:

Component library management

Schematic document editing (component placement, connectivity editing and design rules definition)

Integration with several component distributors allows search for components and access to manufacturer's data

SPICE mixed-signal circuit simulation

Pre-layout signal integrity analysis

Netlist export

Reporting and BoM facilities

Multi-channel, hierarchical schematics and design re-use

3D PCB design

Printed circuit board design module of Altium designer allows:

xSignal Wizard: allows the designer to cluster multiple nets into a single signal

Support for Flex and Rigid-Flex Design

Custom Coverlay Support

Live Drill Drawing

Add Hole Tolerance

PDF 3D Export

Dynamic Display of Clearance Boundaries During Routing

Enhanced Layer Stack Management

Support for Embedded Components

Differential Pair Routing Improvements

Via Stitching within a User-Defined Area

Ibis Model Implementation Editor

Pin-Package Delay Support

Import wizard to import from Orcad Mentor and other software in to Altium

Component footprint library management

Smart Component placement

Manual trace routing, with support for differential pairs, multi-trace routing, pin-swapping and gate-swapping

Automatic trace routing

Automated multi-channel layout and routing

3D STEP Model Generation in IPC Wizard

Interactive 3D editing of the board and MCAD export to STEP

Signal integrity analysis

Manufacturing files generation with support for Gerber and ODB++ formats

FPGA and embedded software tools

FPGA development tools integrated into Altium designer provide the following capabilities:

FPGA, PCB and Signal Integrity design synchronization

VHDL simulation and debugging

FPGA soft processor software development tools (compiler, debugger, profiler) for several embedded processors

Release/data management

Release and data management tools within Altium designer allow users to:

Version control each design, and compare differences textually and visually

Batch-process output generation and output formatting (i.e. Gerber files, Pick and Place, PDF schematic and PCB documentation etc.)

Create templates for documents and design rules

Use configuration management and track all design changes through ECO

Create and release design and assembly variants

Cloud publishing of design and manufacturing data

References

Altium Designer Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA