Altium Develop

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.

Siemens PADS

Siemens PADS

I use Altium Develop to create custom PCB designs for many types of customers. It is a core part of our business allowing us to provide custom electronics designs, protypes, and test fixtures to customers. Modern features like cloud integration and revision control also make things much easier when managing many different designs across many customers. Cloud features also make it easier to view and share designs with customers without being tied to an individual PC.

Siemens Xpedition Enterprise, KiCad EDA and OrCAD

SOLIDWORKS, Microsoft Visual Studio

I use it in all electronic device development, combined with either SolidWorks or Fusion, and integrated using Altium Co-Designer. Previously integrated with Arena at a previous job. I find that many reference designs are now being created in Altium, and that it accelerates the design process. Also, the large part library that minimizes PCB footprints saves significant effort. A new user of Altium Develop will have some start-up issues; however, the eventual goal is to use managed components. The existing parts in Altium libraries are not generally set up for this, as symbols like caps and resistors vary greatly, and models seem to come from many sources. The goal is to harmonize all the components, but the tools to do this are somewhat tedious. Another issue I have had is the new browser-based login. As sometimes the internet disappears for a few minutes, the login goes away, and you are locked until you can re-login when it comes back. This needs a better solution. Used to be that when you grabbed a license, you kept it until you logged out or forced a license disconnect. This would be a much better method. I miss some of the flexibility of the enterprise version, but I'm sure Altium Develop will improve. I also use it for simulating real components, PCB impedance, and timing analysis. It's a great tool overall, and I look forward to its continued use.

Autodesk Fusion, SOLIDWORKS, Atempo Time Navigator (TINA), Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Google Gemini

We use three licenses for schematic capture and layout.

Autodesk Fusion and OrCAD

SIMULIA

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.

KiCad EDA and ExpressPCB

SOLIDWORKS, KiCad EDA