ECAD software unifies design flows

The latest release of Altium Designer aims to unify design flows beyond the development of the electronic circuitry in order to achieve greater end-to-end product development efficiency.

The latest release of Altium Designer (6.6) includes a number of new features and enhancements aimed unifying design flows beyond the development of the electronic circuitry in order to achieve greater end-to-end product development efficiency.

In particular, Altium is addressing the challenges of linking electronics design to mechanical design and product manufacture.

"Advances in technology are forcing the convergence of hardware, software and programmable hardware, and design systems must become unified at all levels to support this", said Nick Martin, Founder and CEO, Altium.

"Getting electronic products to market within an acceptable time frame requires not only effective collaboration between the electronics designers themselves, but also between electronics design and the rest of the stakeholders in the process".

"This is particularly important with mechanical design and manufacturing, where good data interchange can lead to significant time savings".

"The latest updates to Altium Designer are all about facilitating this process and unifying the development of electronic products at all levels".

Altium Designer 6.6 expands the recently introduced STEP support (the ISO10303 standard for the exchange of product model data) to include direct import of 3D component data, helping designers access and share precise mechanical data to enhance the flow of information throughout the wider development lifecycle.

Altium Designer customers can now import 3D STEP models into PCB library files and associate them with components.

This allows accurate representations of PCB boards to be created and easily transferred to MCAD applications.

Being able to provide accurate 3D representations of boards directly from the electronic design system allows mechanical designers to start mechanical design earlier and proceed in parallel with electronics design.

It also greatly simplifies the mechanical design process and shortens the time needed to generate accurate mechanical board data.

This means design teams can work more closely together and achieve greater efficiencies over the entire electronic product development process.

Altium Designer 6.6 also features a number of enhancements designed to bring greater unification between electronics design and manufacture.

The system's Assembly Variant Management system has been upgraded to help users better manage the step from design to commercial production and speed the design of PCBs used across multiple end products.

Altium Designer 6.6 now has the ability to vary parameter values by updating from a library, as well as having new options for handling schematic and PCB variant printing and BOM generation.

Also new to 6.6 is the ability to clone variants, making the creation and management of variants faster and easier.

These new features save time by eliminating potential duplicated work in creating different board variations at the production stage, effectively bringing design and production processes closer together.

A new IPC Footprint Wizard in Altium Designer 6.6 enables users to create a much wider range of IPC-compliant component footprints directly within the application.

Rather than working from footprint dimensions, the IPC Footprint Wizard uses dimensional information from the component itself in accordance with the standards released by the IPC.

This makes it easier for engineers to create standards-compliant footprints directly from device manufacturer data and ensure the manufacturability of their designs.

"Our commitment to R and D is part of Altium's dedication to serving the needs of the majority of electronics engineers, designers and developers", said Martin.

"These engineers need tools that help them take advantage of new electronics technologies in order to create smarter products and get them to market faster".

"Our regular updates to Altium Designer help to ensure that they have access to the latest in electronics design technologies and receive real returns on their design tool investment".

"This is what sets Altium apart".

The Altium Designer 6.6 release is free for all Altium Designer 6 licence holders and is now available for immediate download.

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