Altium Designer 14 Enhanced Layer Stack Manager The ability to define multiple, complex layer stacks in a single design. With different stack ups used in different regions of the PCB. With greater flexibility in defining board stack ups, designers can benefit from cost savings, increased performance, and improved durability found in design technologies such as: Flex and Rigid Flex, Embedded components, Thermal Clad PCBs, High Density Interconnect, Heavy copper PCBs. Support for Flex and Rigid Flex PCB Technology An effective system for designing flex and rigid flex PCBs. Full 3D, folded and unfolded clearance design rule checking. Ability to define and characterize multiple PCB folding lines in a design. Visualization of folding process as a 3D video. Folded designs can fit smaller and/or more complicated form factors, allowing for weight, and packaging cost reductions. Reduced cost and simplified assembly through board to board interconnect without the need for connectors or wiring. Flex materials are often more durable, and dissipate heat better, than other PCB materials. Support for Embedded Components Support for embedding discrete components within the PCB stack up. Embedding components within a PCB can improve reliability, increase performance, and provide significant space and weight saving. This enables designs to fit much smaller form factors. In some cases this also creates an overall cost reduction. Differential Routing Improvements Routing differential pairs now supports automated and guided width and gap changes, allowing consistent odd mode impedance. Significant productivity improvement when routing differential pairs into and out of high density areas of a PCB. Rule driven width and gap settings can be scoped to specific footprints or areas on a PCB, saving time and avoiding possible human error. Via Stitching Within a User-Define Area Via stitching support has been enhanced allowing for stitching to generated within a user defined area. Stitching vias are a necessary feature of many designs dealing with high switching speeds, RF, or noise sensitive circuits. Having automated stitching tools that work in a given area strikes the balance between time consuming hand crafted via stitching and the blunt approach of flood filling an entire layout with vias.
Altium Designer 14 AutoCAD Import / Export Enhancements.DXF and.dwg file export and imports, for schematic and pcb, now support AutoCAD versions from R11/12 to DWG 2013. This enhancement also includes major improvements in primitive support. Exporting and importing board outlines, complex copper land patterns for RF, and technical drawings is an efficient way to work with data from external tools. CadSoft EAGLE Importer Altium Designer 14.0 heralds the arrival of an importer for CadSoft EAGLE (Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor) design files and libraries (*.sch, *.brd, *.lbr). Moving from one design system to another while retaining your existing library of designs and IP is a major time and cost saver. Support for TME (Transfer Multisort Elektronik) as a Component Supplier Link Ability to gather supply chain data for components from TME, one of Europe s largest component distributors. Giving designers rich support chain information (including component price and availability), better decisions can be made about component choices and usage. Downstream, in procurement, BOM reports can include full ordering information for components that have one more supply solutions. New Installation System A fast, efficient installation management system that allows full control of which parts of the software are installed and available. Better management of installation avoids installing parts of the software that might not be needed, saving time and disk space. IBIS Model Implementation Editor Direct use of IBIS models for SI, as opposed to converting IBIS files to Altium Designer SI model format. By linking and using IBIS models directly without conversion, Altium Designer s component model is more compatible with external SI tools and extensions. New Online F1 Resource Documentation First step in overhauling and modernizing Altium Designer s documentation. Interactive and online help functions (F1 and What s this? ) have been updated and are now part of our the new Altium wiki in a more user friendly and readable format. Shortens the learning curve for Altium Designer and allows more rapid help and document updates and edition.
Altium Designer 14 Preferences-based Control over FPGA Vendor Tool usage Multiple installations of FPGA vendor tools can be used for design implementation in the soft design flow. Allowing for choosing between old and new, 32-bit or 64-bit vendor tools according to the user preference. Greater flexibility for FPGA vendor tools allows designers to continue revision work on older designs with known results, while supporting the newest designs with a compatible tool chain. Support for Xilinx Vivado Toolchain Support for the latest Xilinx toolchain. With access to Xilinx s much improved toolchain, and programing tools, designers can target the most recent Xilinx devices (Series 7). Altium Designer Extensions With the opening up of the DXP Platform, Extensions for Altium Designer allow 3rd parties to develop additional features and functionality to Altium Designer. Using the extension system, 3rd party add-ons are possible. The extension system avoids installation issues by having 3rd party extensions deployable using Altium s installation management systems. Opening up the DXP Platform also allows organizations to build integration and customizations for Altium Designer to best suit their own business and design processes. Often this represents a big productivity boost and eliminates the need for external processes altogether. About Altium Altium Limited (ASX:ALU) creates electronics design software. Altium s unified electronics design environment links all aspects of electronics product design in a single application that is priced as affordable as possible. This enables electronics designers to innovate, harness the latest devices and technologies, manage their projects across broad design ecosystems, and create connected, intelligent designs. Founded in 1985, Altium has offices in San Diego, Sydney, Karlsruhe, Shanghai, Tokyo, Kiev, with value added resellers worldwide. For more information, visit. You can also follow and engage with Altium via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Altium Designer 14 DXP App Server Support Features Content Acquisition Tools Content Cart Selectively batch acquire, migrate and automatically convert vault data from one vault to another, while maintaining links to the original source items. Taking ownership of vault content from an external vault, can save a significant amount of development time by avoiding the need to build component libraries and sub-circuits. Maintaining a local version of an acquired item secures that item s availability by having it locally managed. Migrating acquired data avoids errors caused by mismatching item numbering and naming conventions. Automated conversion of acquired content saves time by converting aspects like standard PCB footprint layer sets and schematic presentation styles as the item is published to the destination vault. Support for Release and Lifecycle Change Notes An audit trail enhancement, designers can add notes to Vault items during release or changes of lifecycle state. By including notes with each vault item release, or change in lifecycle state design teams can include more information about intent and therefore avoid confusion. Support for Vault-based Schematic Templates Schematic templates can be released to, and managed as Altium Vault items. By centralizing and managing schematic sheet templates, design teams can more easily produce consistent, company standard, design documents. This feature can be combined with Altium s Team Configuration Center product, to ensure design teams using the same document templates, output file formats and design system settings.
Altium Designer 14 DXP App Server Support Features Support for Team Configuration Center 1 Centralized Environment Configuration Management Support for centralizing Altium Designer preferences, settings, output file formats, and schematic document templates. Ensures a design team is using consistent templates and schematic drawing styles, and producing output files according to company standards. These documents and settings may be deployed on a per role basis. By centralizing and managing team member s design tool configurations, document templates for output file formats, a design team can automatically produce more consistent and error free designs while avoiding time consuming manual set up processes. Support for Vault-based Output Jobs 2 Output job files can be released to, and managed as Altium Vault items. By centralizing and managing standard sets of output files, design teams can more easily produce consistent, company standard, output files. This feature can be combined with Altium s Team Configuration Center product, to ensure design teams using the same document templates, output file formats and design system settings. Support for Vault-based Tool Preferences 2 Altium Designer s preferences can be released to, and managed as Altium Vault items. By centralizing and managing Altium Designer settings and preferences, design teams can more easily produce consistent, company standard, design documents and avoid time wasted configuring new installations. This feature can be combined with Altium s Team Configuration Center product, to ensure design teams using the same document templates, output file formats and design system settings. 1 Requires Altium Team Configuration Center product to be installed on a DXP App Server. 2 Releasing and reusing preferences, templates and output job files is supported by Altium Vault Server and Altium Personal Vault. Managing the deployment of these automatically requires Altium Team Configuration Center.
Altium Designer 14 DXP App Server Support Features Item details are now more interactive. Component URL parameters are now live and open the target web address in a browser. Improved user interface and quicker access to important information allows for better productivity and ease of use. Vault Explorer Panel Enhancements Supply chain URLs are also live providing quick access to component datasheets, pricing and ordering web pages. Document previews can be double clicked to open a read only view of them in the relevant Altium Designer editor. Multi-part components are supported, providing a more intuitive means to select, preview and place a symbol s subpart. About Altium Altium Limited (ASX:ALU) creates electronics design software. Altium s unified electronics design environment links all aspects of electronics product design in a single application that is priced as affordable as possible. This enables electronics designers to innovate, harness the latest devices and technologies, manage their projects across broad design ecosystems, and create connected, intelligent designs. Founded in 1985, Altium has offices in San Diego, Sydney, Karlsruhe, Shanghai, Tokyo, Kiev, with value added resellers worldwide. For more information, visit. You can also follow and engage with Altium via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.