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What is Altium Designer?

Altium Designer® provides a cohesive design platform that is the result of more than 35 years of continuous innovation and enhancement. It encompasses everything from schematic creation to PCB layout, interactive differential pair routing, design documentation, and smooth integration between ECAD and MCAD, giving engineers a comprehensive perspective on all facets of the PCB design journey. This all-in-one approach allows engineers to utilize a singular, user-friendly environment to manage their entire design workflow efficiently, enabling the rapid delivery of high-quality products.

Among its many features, Altium Designer includes stackup planning, anonymous sharing, effective data management, 3D visualization capabilities, multi-board assembly support, comprehensive documentation options, and output configuration tools. Additionally, with the introduction of Altium 365, users gain the flexibility to access the software either online or through on-premises installations, enhancing collaboration and accessibility for design teams. Overall, the platform's robust capabilities make it a valuable asset for engineers aiming to streamline their workflow and optimize productivity.

Pricing

Price Starts At:
$355 USD/month
Price Overview:
Altium Designer® term-based licensing allows you to use the licensed software for a specified period, for example, a 12-month term. Designers and organizations preserve cash flow while also having the flexibility to scale capacity with additional seats. Term-based licenses include a Standard subscription for the latest Altium Designer, Altium 365®, and more.

Additional features and license options will affect price.
Free Trial Offered?:
Yes

Integrations

All Altium Designer Integrations

Screenshots and Video

Play Video Perhaps the greatest strength of Altium Designer's 3D PCB editor is the ability to perform 3D collision testing as well as catching general component-to-component collisions. Now you can confidently position one component under another, or test if the loaded board fits correctly into the enclosure. ActiveBOM is a powerful Bill of Materials management editor that brings comprehensive BOM management tools together with Altium Designer's powerful part information aggregation technologies, helping you manage the component selection challenge. Cross-probing allows users to jump between and select objects in both the logical schematic and physical layout domains. With Altium Designer you can escape the problems of a mixed-tool system and rely on a unified data model to make circuit board design and layout easy. This means you can design schematics, use schematic capture to create a new PCB, route printed circuit traces, and prepare for PCB assembly in a single program. The PCB layout design features make component placement and routing easy. The Interactive Properties panel for schematics includes several functional improvements as well as productivity enhancements. The entire layout has been refined to optimize efficiency, icons and graphical previews have been improved, and there is now a smart parameters filter both for schematic lists and components. Differential pair PCB routing is a design technique employed to create a balanced transmission system able to carry differential (equal and opposite) signals across a printed circuit board. Typically this differential routing will interface to an external differential transmission system, such as a connector and cable. Altium Designer ensures that your differential pairs are coupled together whether you’re entering or leaving a pad or just navigating around obstacles on your board.

Company Facts

Company Name:
Altium
Date Founded:
1985
Company Location:
Global
Company Website:
www.altium.com/altium-designer/
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Product Details

Deployment
SaaS
Windows
On-Prem
Training Options
Documentation Hub
Online Training
Webinars
Support
Standard Support
Web-Based Support

Product Details

Target Company Sizes
Individual
1-10
11-50
51-200
201-500
501-1000
1001-5000
5001-10000
10001+
Target Organization Types
Mid Size Business
Small Business
Enterprise
Freelance
Nonprofit
Government
Startup
Supported Languages
English

Altium Designer Categories and Features

Product Design Software

PCB Design Software

3D Visualization
Autorouting
Collaboration Tools
Component Library
Design Rule Check
Differential Pair Routing
Schematic Editor

Engineering Software

2D Drawing
3D Modeling
Chemical Engineering
Civil Engineering
Collaboration
Design Analysis
Design Export
Document Management
Electrical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Mechatronics
Presentation Tools
Structural Engineering

Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Software

CAD Software

2 1/2-Axis Milling
2D Drawing
3-Axis Milling
3D Modeling
4-Axis Milling
5-Axis Milling
Civil
Collaboration
Database Connectivity
Design Analysis
Design Export
Document Management
Electrical
Hole Making
Mechanical
Mechatronics
Presentation Tools
Simulate Cycles
Spiral Output
Structural Engineering
Toolpath Simulation
User Defined Cycles

More Altium Designer Categories

Altium Designer Customer Reviews

Write a Review
  • Reviewer Name: A Verified Reviewer
    Position: Engineer
    Has used product for: Free Trial
    Uses the product: Daily
    Org Size (# of Employees): 500 - 999
    Feature Set
    Layout
    Ease Of Use
    Cost
    Customer Service
    Would you Recommend to Others?
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    Expensive, but full of features.

    Date: Jun 06 2020
    Summary

    The choice of which PCB design software to use can be very personal for people and they do not like to change. But if you're just getting started, starting with Altium will enable you to adapt to any other software out there since Altium is the amongst the most complex and powerful tools available.

    Positive

    - Altium is a very powerful tool. You can design professional-grade PCBs with any number of layers and Altium has a big enough feature set to enable you to do that. At the same time, I learned it as a student and still was able to grasp the concepts and use it easily.
    - The 3D viewer is excellent and makes it really easy to visualize at each step.

    Negative

    - The price of this software makes it unfeasible for students and individual entrepreneurs. Period.
    - No big community of contributors like KiCAD or eagle. Basically it is a premium software for industrial applications.

    Read More...
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