Altium

For those who have recently, or thinking about downloading Altium 365, we are excited to get you up and running! We strongly recommend all customers attend one of our onboarding sessions. The Altium Product team will help you get started. Reserve your spot now!

All design teams have the idea or intention of creating a centralized place where the team can access and use the same design information for their own purposes. We’re talking about projects, components, libraries, symbols, models and so on. Very quickly though these file systems break down, there are too many people making too many edits with no quality control. The reason all these efforts fail is due to a lack of structure, standardization, and electrical intelligence. Altium 365 solves all these problems bringing together all project stakeholders including electrical, mechanical, and manufacturing.

A heavy focus is usually put on managing your design data, but what about managing your design team? A mismanaged design team can lead to a disorganized and inaccurate design library and data. Duplicate parts, incomplete components, unauthorized design release, these are all common occurrences when dealing with a mismanaged team.

Working between the Electronic and Mechanical design domains brings unique challenges. ECAD and MCAD tools have different design objectives and have evolved down different paths, and so has the way they store and manage their design and project data. Today's designs of small and complex product enclosures that house multiple, irregular-shaped and even flexible printed circuit boards (PCB), demand that this challenge be solved. To successfully design these products, the designers must fluidly pass design changes back and forth between the ECAD and MCAD domains beyond outdated file exchanges.

Managing your team's data is not just about the actual data itself, even if you're a team of one. You also need to account for how your design information will flow through the data structure you’ve set up, as well as maintaining the integrity of that structure. This can actually be very easy to set up and manage.

Working between the Electronic and Mechanical design domains brings unique challenges. ECAD and MCAD tools have different design objectives and have evolved down different paths, and so has the way they store and manage their design and project data. Today's designs of small and complex product enclosures that house multiple, irregular-shaped printed circuit boards (PCB), demand that this challenge be solved . To successfully design these products, the designers must fluidly pass design changes back and forth between the ECAD and MCAD domains beyond outdated file exchanges.

Surprises can be fun. Supply chain surprises on the other hand are no fun at all; they can derail your budget, deadlines, and build quality. When electronic components become obsolete, design and production can suffer lengthy delays. With an average of 15 end-of-life notices issued every day, part obsolescence is a challenge that most engineers routinely face.

Whether you’re solo or a whole team, components need to have more than just a schematic symbol and footprint. Incomplete components can lead to chaotic libraries that are difficult to filter through and find needed components. This usually leads to duplicated efforts as well. Avoid these struggles and create complete, ready-to-use components with Altium Designer and Altium 365.

Designing is stressful enough, you shouldn’t have to worry about procuring parts as well. Unfortunately, this is the reality for most of us, especially in today’s climate. Supplies and prices seem to change overnight, and with counterfeit components being so prevalent it sometimes seems that the most difficult part of a project is being able to obtain trusted supply chain sources for your components. You need to ask yourself. Can you trust your supplier? Are they using counterfeit parts? Is there enough supply? Are you within budget? These are all important questions to answer, as any delays can cost you a first-mover advantage, and using bad parts can completely wipe out your budget. Fortunately Altium Designer has teamed up with industry leader IHS Markit to give designers powerful insight into their supply chain.

For those who have recently, or thinking about downloading Altium 365, we are excited to get you up and running! We strongly recommend all customers attend one of our onboarding sessions. The Altium Product team will help you get started. Reserve your spot now!