Frustrated with Designing Assemblies with PCBs?

Shave off Hours when Collaborating
with Your PCB Designers!

Supporting PTC Creo®, Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS®, Autodesk Inventor®, and Autodesk Fusion 360®

Need Help Getting your PCB Designers Onboard?

Learn how CoDesigner can save your team time and money.

Complete this form to receive a downloadable one-page fact sheet to share with your team.

Step 1
Talk to Your Electrical Engineers
Talk to your electrical engineers to find out if they’re using Altium Designer and if they have an active Altium Designer subscription.

If yes, go to Step 2.
If no, please reach out to us using the form at the end of this website to get a free factsheet you can share with your team.
Step 2
Create Your Collaborative Workspace
Both you and your PCB designer need to have, or create new accounts. Free to set up at http://365.altium.com

ECAD/MCAD CoDesigner capability requires no additional licensing when managed content servers are hosted on Altium 365.
Step 3
Installing the CoDesigner Plug-in into MCAD Software
Download a plug-in to access the Altium CoDesigner panel from your MCAD software. The plug-in is free to download here:
Altium website download page
Once the plug-in is downloaded and you relaunch your MCAD application, you’ll be able to see the Altium CoDesigner panel (or tab) in your MCAD tool.
In the CoDesigner panel, you’ll be able to:
▸ Create new collaboration projects
▸ Open an existing collaboration project
▸ Configure collaboration options
▸ Push and pull design changes back and forth
▸ Display messages
Step 4
Enjoy Effortless Collaboration!

If you're a mechanical engineer collaborating with PCB designers using ECAD software platforms, the design process can be frustrating.

It requires constant importing, exporting, and converting files—which adds hours of manual labor, data loss, and rework to the design process.

Altium's CoDesigner capability gives mechanical engineers the ability to design alongside PCB designers in real time, without manual work on files, and empowers effortless product design collaboration from project to project.

The CoDesigner capability makes it easy for mechanical engineers to work alongside their PCB designer colleagues by simply downloading a free plug-in for their MCAD tool and then continuing to work with their native assemblies without leaving their MCAD environment. Once they’re ready to share, mechanical designers can just push/pull changes from their MCAD tools into the Altium ECAD space.

Cut Hours of Extra Work Without Changing the Way You Work

Accessing Altium CoDesigner capability is easy—scroll below for step by step instructions.

Just download a plug-in; no need to leave your MCAD environment!

The CoDesigner capability supports the most commonly used MCAD software tools, including PTC Creo, Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS, Autodesk Inventor, and Autodesk Fusion 360.

The CoDesigner Capability Advantage

No more manually converting, importing, exporting, or losing data

The CoDesigner capability automatically transfers PCB data from ECAD to MCAD and back via Altium 365 workspace, without any data loss

Stay in your MCAD environment

The CoDesigner plug-in appears as a panel in your MCAD software and works with native ECAD and MCAD data

Design in context

Set up board geometry in relation to the enclosure inside MCAD and easily transfer it to ECAD; components placed inside MCAD are easily recognized in ECAD, eliminating rework

Streamline design review

Accept or reject any changes from MCAD and ECAD with a record of changes, comments and time stamps; changes can be viewed in 2D or 3D for easy product visualization