Altium Designer looks to provide a complete software environment for the design and realisation of Printed Circuit Boards. The latest release, Altium Designer 20, includes major upgrades to the software’s unified design environment, user experience, and PCB design capabilities.
Designing as an individual, or working within a team, users are able to design boards from simple to complex; from single PCB to multi-board systems; from low frequency to high-speed; from logical design all the way to physical board and bill of materials.
Using this single tool, users will be able to create schematics and PCB layouts, run circuit simulations, select electronics components and source them from various manufacturers, and document their designs for manufacturing.
“Altium Designer 20 is a game-changer for PCB design,” said Sergey Kostinsky, CTO of Altium. “This release includes user-driven improvements and advanced capabilities that leapfrog the competition.”
Advancements in the latest release include:
- Best in class interactive routing - new “push & shove’’ capabilities enable routing of complex HDI boards and speed-up design times by over 20%, even for simple printed circuit boards.
- New high-speed PCB routing capabilities - new advanced routing enables users to efficiently design high density and high-speed boards using modern SerDes like PCIe 4.0/5.0, USB3.2, 100G Ethernet and parallel buses like DDR3/4/5.
- Industry-leading multi-board design - the latest release leverages ActiveBOMTM capabilities, including supplier search, BOM rule checking, and live part choices, for multi-board assemblies. Users can also export 3D PDF files of the multi-board assembly allowing collaborators to view and manipulate 3D assemblies.
- New high-voltage design capabilities - for applications where high-voltage design is critical (e.g. spacecraft, high-altitude aircraft, and high-tech lasers), AD20 provides new creepage rules that help maintain high-voltage clearances across the PCB surfaces for prevention of electrical arcing hazards for power supply and mixed-signal device designs.
- Enhanced user experience - user productivity is dramatically improved with new dynamic compilation capability, providing quick access to data across schematic, layout, BOM generation, design documentation, and other elements of Altium Designer’s unified design environment.
- User-driven quality improvements - AD20 boasts over 200 enhancements suggested by Altium Designer users.
Altium Designer 20 will be available to customers in the fourth quarter of 2019.
