Altium Designer 22 Launches with Supply Chain Tools, While Altimade Offers In-App PCBA

Altium's latest EDA package aims to ease your supply chain woes — and provide a handy in-app way to get your designs manufactured.

Gareth Halfacree
2 years agoHW101

Electronic design automation specialist Altium has officially launched Altium Designer 22, the latest revision of its printed circuit board design tool — alongside Altimade, described as "the electronics industry's first 'design WITH manufacturing' application" for ordering PCB manufacturing and assembly without ever leaving the app.

"Altium is dedicated to delivering a high-performance, unified, and elegant design experience to all engineers," says Altium's Lawrence Romine of the company's latest Designer release. "Altium Designer 22 and Altium 365 work together to streamline the design process and ensure our engineers have the supply chain intelligence to complete their work in a single design environment."

Building on the existing Designer base, Altium Designer 22 includes a range of new design capabilities including technology-aware modeling for design optimization on more complex boards, better routing intelligence to reduce time spent routing traces manually, improved solder paste specifications, and a circuit sensitivity analysis system designed to help users understand circuit output characteristics.

The new build also includes "Parts Insight Experience," which pulls in supply chain data from sources including Octopart and IHS Markit — a clear response to the ongoing component shortages felt throughput the industry — alongside enhanced SPICE simulation capabilities with Monte Carlo quality analysis.

The new release also brings with it Altimade, developed in partnership with MacroFab, which allows Altium 365 subscribers to place manufacturing orders directly within the design tool — and which retains what Altium describes as "true 'golden record' for every step in the design, procurement, and manufacturing processes of a PCB."

The new Altimade feature lets you order PCB manufacturing and assembly in-app, via MacroFab. (📹: Altium)

"Altium and MacroFab have modernized PCB design and manufacturing by bringing them to digital-first, cloud platforms," boasts Misha Govshteyn, MacroFab chief executive, of the partnership. "Combining them truly redefines the PCB design to the manufacturing process and has the potential to accelerate product development and unlock enormous value for our customers."

"We’re no longer designing FOR manufacturing as a separate activity," adds Altium's Ted Pawela, "but designing WITH manufacturing in a collaborative environment."

Altium Designer 22 is available for purchase now as a one-year or perpetual license, alongside access to Altimade; Altium 365 subscribers will find the new version included in their subscription.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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