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Altium Develop

Score8.7 out of 10

158 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Altium Develop?

Altium Develop is a platform that unifies multidisciplinary teams across engineering, sourcing, and manufacturing to support seamless co-creation. It provides real-time visibility into designs, requirements, and supply chain data, enabling contributors to work together concurrently rather than in silos.

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Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of The 3D View Editor in Altium Develop that transforms the standard 2D PCB workspace into a fully interactive, three‑dimensional design environment. Users can toggle between 2D and 3D modes, then zoom, pan, and rotate the board freely using tools like a directional sphere for precise pivot control and adjust display settings (such as transparency or coloring) via the View Configuration panel to visually explore and inspect PCB layouts in realistic detail.
Screenshot of Project History in Altium Develop, which provides a browser-based, visually chronological timeline of a project's key events such as: creation, commits, releases, clones, and MCAD exchanges offering version control transparency directly within workspace.
Screenshot of Altium Develop's unified design environment built on a single data model. From schematic capture to PCB layout, routing, and assembly preparation, every step flows seamlessly. Smart placement and routing features make complex designs faster, easier, and more reliable.
Screenshot of ActiveBOM, which is a dynamic, table-based Bill of Materials (BOM) editor integrated into Altium Develop that elevates component management to a real-time, design-aware process. It automatically aggregates supply chain data such as pricing, stock, lifecycle status, and lead times - from sources like Octopart and IHS Markit, enabling parts selection, alternates, cost calculation, rule-based verification, and traceability - within the same environment as the schematic and PCB design.
Screenshot of BOM Portal, which is a cloud-native, procurement-focused tool within Altium Develop that transforms traditional Excel-like Bill of Materials (BOM) workflows by integrating live supply chain, compliance, and pricing data. It enables collaboration between engineering and procurement, helps identify supply risks like obsolescence or shortages, supports BOM consolidation and alternates, and ensures thorough version control and traceability bridging design to manufacturing with real-time visibility and control.
Screenshot of Workspace Projects, which provide a cloud-native, version-controlled hub within Altium Develop that simplifies electronic project management with centralized storage, collaboration, and built-in Git-based version control. This interface enables real-time design navigation (including schematic, 2D/3D PCB, BOM, and Draftsman views), task tracking, release and manufacturing management, historical timeline review, and sharing.
Screenshot of The Requirements Portal, which is a cloud-native, AI‑enhanced requirements engineering platform within Altium Develop that streamlines the definition, breakdown, and management of technical requirements. It supports cross-disciplinary collaboration via live dashboards, version control, parametric requirements, automated verification, system modeling, scripting, and traceable design linkage bridging high-level needs to implementation across designs with full audit readiness.

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Screenshot of The 3D View Editor in Altium Develop that transforms the standard 2D PCB workspace into a fully interactive, three‑dimensional design environment. Users can toggle between 2D and 3D modes, then zoom, pan, and rotate the board freely using tools like a directional sphere for precise pivot control and adjust display settings (such as transparency or coloring) via the View Configuration panel to visually explore and inspect PCB layouts in realistic detail.

Who Buys & Uses Altium Develop

Altium Develop Reviews

What users are saying about Altium Develop.
View all Altium Develop reviews

Pros

  • Robust component library management and validation
  • Comprehensive PCB design and layout tools with rule-based routing
  • Integrated schematic design with metadata automation

Cons

  • Difficulties with component library creation and organization
  • Occasional performance issues and software instability, particularly with large projects
  • Steep learning curve and inconsistencies in the user interface

Altium Develop review.

Incentivized
Kirill Zadoika
Electronics Design Engineer in Engineering at ebm-papst UK ltd (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The company was on an Altium Professional license, and we changed to Altium Developer this year as most features in Professional were not being used or required. I am finding that the Altium Develop loading speed is faster than what Altium Professional used to be. Altium Develop is very easy to use, as all the features and commands are located in pretty much the same areas as in Altium Professional. The AD dashboard is very easy to use and intuitive. I like the fact that more seats can be added at any time if necessary. We use AD for Schematic and PCB design, creating documentation using Draftsman, Bill of Materials, and Gerber Files for PCB manufacturing. Having cloud services with version control makes project management much easier and provides the option to revert if needed. There are occasional updates offered for installation, which shows that the software is well maintained. Overall, very happy with Altium Develop.

Pros

  • PCB design.
  • 3D visualization.
  • Draftsman Documentation.
  • Version Control.

Cons

  • Some plugins, like EMI checker, require a license, but that isn't obvious until you try to use them. It would make sense not to include it on the default ribbon unless the license exists.
  • Otherwise, all good, love the tool.

Return on Investment

  • The BomDoc feature is really helpful for estimating component prices, which is a requirement in the early stages of a project.
  • Sped up development time compared to other PCB software that was used before.
  • Improved PCB quality due to better rule checking and tracking features.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Siemens PADS

Other Software Used

Siemens PADS

Altium Develop - a great tool in one easy to use interface

Incentivized
Eduardo Garcia
Director of Robot Systems / Principal Electrical Engineer in Engineering at RobustAI (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it to develop all the PCBAs for our AMR. We do schematic capture and layout of more than 30+ boards. Altium Develop allows us to design complex boards that combine both digital and analog circuitry as well as HDI boards with relative ease and confidence. It also helps us check the boards with the mechanical engineering team, making sure the boards fit well.

Pros

  • Schematic Capture
  • High speed layout
  • 3D and MCAD support
  • Component library maintenance

Cons

  • More simple license management - right now it is too hidden
  • Linux support

Return on Investment

  • Good price for smaller teams/startups
  • Faster PCBA prototyping
  • Reliable, manufacturers and industry are very familiar with it

Usability

Altium Develop at [...]

Incentivized
Tomas TichyView profile
CTO in Research & Development at Kolibrik.net (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Altium Develop for both PCB design and PCB manufacturing. It excells in taceability of the changes (using git). The feature which really differs it from other products is the Altium 365 web sharing platform, where all the designs can be vieved in an interactive way in a web browser without installing any client app.
You don't need additional licence fee for the viewing of the designs, only the developer seat for editing need to be paid. The rest of the company - manufacturing, support, service, management - can use the platform free of charge.

Pros

  • interactive schematic to PCB crosslinks
  • mechanical CAD interoperability
  • project history traceability
  • PCB assembly variants
  • 3D view

Cons

  • BOM generation
  • alternative parts
  • multi-board signal cross-check

Return on Investment

  • reduced the developer licence seat cost by 50%
  • manufacturing speed-up and avoiding document handling mistakes
  • customer support and service improvement - the customer service have access to up-to date and archive documentation in the uniform way

Usability

Alternatives Considered

KiCad EDA, EasyEDA, OrCAD and Autodesk Fusion

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Google Workspace, Mozilla Firefox

Altium

Incentivized
Eric Emens
Senior Electrical Engineer in Engineering at Phase 1 Engineering (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use three licenses for schematic capture and layout.

Pros

  • Link between schematic capture and layout
  • Quick learning curve, very intuitive
  • Provide well documented instruction on how to use Altium

Cons

  • Not releasing features that have significant amount of bugs
  • Not always backwards compatible
  • Altium365 is filled with bugs

Return on Investment

  • Schematic and layout capture is efficient
  • Easy to setup
  • Being pushed into using altium365 licenses versus our perpetual was a negative impact.
  • Altium sales team extremely difficult to work with, id rather work with an AI robot....

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Autodesk Fusion and OrCAD

Other Software Used

SIMULIA

electronics manufacturing

Incentivized
Joseph Wierzbicki
Engineering Manager in Engineering at Cusack Electronics (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are an electronics design and manufacturing firm, looking to improve our processes as we continue growing year over year. We previously have been using a low cost, simple EDA software for lean projects, however we need a more comprehensive solution for our larger projects. We also plan to use Altium to help with development testing in our CE/FCC lab.

Pros

  • Integration with solidworks and other commonly used design file formats.
  • Providing detailed DRC configurations
  • I really appreciate some of the output file generation configurations

Cons

  • There's way too many features locked in between different licenses, and it's not very clear on Altiums docs.
  • The lack of APIs nor documentation on scripting some of the outjobs
  • The lack of custom configuration on the repository system, library database options, and cloud settings.

Return on Investment

  • We've been able to retain a client that accounts for $200K/year in billable hours.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

KiCad EDA and ExpressPCB

Other Software Used

SOLIDWORKS, KiCad EDA

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