Altium has released the latest version of its flagship PCB design tool, Altium Designer 15.1. Many new features are included in this release to increase design efficiency by expanding productivity, documentation, and high-speed design.
"The foundation of Altium Designer 15.1 is a solid foundation we have established since the initial release of Altium Designer 15." said Sergey Kostinsky, Altium's vice president of engineering. "Whether it is a designer or a manufacturer, every layer of the platform is continuously improved. This update is a win-win for everyone involved in the design process, and for manufacturers, its documentation features have greater accuracy and can Increase productivity and achieve high-speed enhancements for electronics designers. "
New features in Altium Designer 15.1 focus on improvements across the entire design ecosystem, from the initial electrical designer design to a complete PCB with manufacturer. New productivity high-speed design capabilities keep PCB designers at the forefront of productivity games, while numerous document capabilities extend the communication of design intent to manufacturers and project managers.
Improved xSignals management. High-speed design configurations for length matching rules can now be configured in an easy-to-use wizard that automatically considers T-branch, components, signal pairs and groups, greatly reducing the time to set up high quality . Speed ??design.
Improved output documents can now export PCB designs as 3D PDFs, allowing anyone with a compatible PDF viewer to view and rotate the 3D ?? design. Boards can be easily navigated by selecting individual components, giving manufacturers greater accuracy and design intent.
It is now possible to provide an expanded rigid-flex support surface layer for rigid-flex designs and add a "bikini" overlay that is fully visible in 3D and can be configured according to the designer's specific material needs. Overlay edge gaps and expansion rules have also been added to the design rules options, giving users precise control over the overlay application.
New ways to manage pads and vias Pads and vias can be easily managed in the pad and via library, allowing users to define custom templates for pad shapes and sizes. The template can then be applied to a specific set of pads on the PCB for ease of application, saving countless hours of individually defining pad options.
Improved union data management adds a new union panel to help better organize design data and align union data with other PCB objects in the design. The Union panel will display a hierarchical view of Union types, Union and Union primitives for easy reference.
Driving design possibilities in general, Altium Designer 15.1 extends the already powerful feature set to make the design process faster and more convenient for today's electronic design. The company says that you can check out the Altium Designer product page to get a full overview of all the features added in Altium Designer 15.1.
