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Altium Develop

Score8.7 out of 10

166 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

  • Flexible and controlled Library Management
  • Robust Schematic Design capabilities
  • Effective PCB Design and Layout tools

Cons

  • Sluggishness and inconsistencies in component library management
  • Performance and stability issues, including crashes and slow responsiveness
  • Steep learning curve and challenging user interface usability

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

Evolving with Altium Develop

Incentivized
Gerry Hermann
Electrical Engineering Manager in Engineering at Laser Mechanisms (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We develop many different types of PCBs to go into our laser devices. Some of the boards are quite simple, while others are very complex with multiple layers and many different types of components. In general, rapid development is essential. Custom circuits, with small production runs, are common for our products.

Pros

  • Providing real-time component source information.
  • 3D rendering of the PCB for visualization purposes.
  • Design rule checking of the PCB to reduce mistakes.

Cons

  • Finding help on using the software. The Help menu is poor.
  • Getting realtime technical support from a person.
  • Editing a Draftsman document is awkward. The tools are different than editing with the schematics and PCBs.
  • Keyboard shortcuts are hard to remember and difficult to find.

Return on Investment

  • Active BOMs have made a significant improvement in identifying component shortages or obsolescence.
  • Collaboration with mechanical engineers, by utilizing the importing and exporting of 3D STEP files, has reduced development time and reduced fitment errors.
  • With just a small group of 5 electrical engineers we are able to produce dozens of new PCB designs every year.

Usability

Other Software Used

PTC Creo, Microsoft Excel, Claris FileMaker, Microsoft 365

Altium doing its magic

Shovon Saha
Hardware Engineering Manager in Engineering at Sonic Incytes Medical Corp. (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We develop PCBs for our ultrasound medical device. In Altium, we manage our footprint library, BOM, projects, etc. Altium has been working great in version controlling the PCB projects, as we have 2-4 people accessing the same files and each person updating each files such as schematic, PCB Doc, etc. independently.

We also like the license control feature, where one can just easily release the license if needed.

Pros

  • Version controlling like git, enabling easier change-tracking
  • Library management, we can control the footprints through a review and an approval process before they are used in the PCB layout
  • BOM management, changing BOM to generating BOM for PCB manufacturers

Cons

  • I think arranging the 3D files in Altium is much harder, that part can be improved. Even some basic functionalities such as add small shapes in altium instead of just importing would help a lot and reduce back and forth between other applications.

Return on Investment

  • Hard to say, because all development has been done here from the starting.

Usability

Other Software Used

Autodesk Fusion, Arduino, SOLIDWORKS

Good tool. Impressive performance

Incentivized
Pablo Briceño
R&D Engineer in Research & Development at PEM (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my team, we use Altium to create PCBs with 2 to 4 layers, typically following specific constraints regarding space and clearance. We also work on designing PCBs operating at frequencies from tens of MHz up to 100 MHz, as part of high-specification, high-bandwidth requirements. Finally, we use Altium to edit some legacy projects created with other software.

Pros

  • Traces with fixed impedance
  • Design rules
  • Stitching vias

Cons

  • Get a better component searcher
  • Incorporate AI to create component (3D body included)

Return on Investment

  • Return on Investment

Usability

Altium the tool to move faster

Incentivized
Myles Scott
Principle Electrical Engineer in Research & Development at Willowview Consulting (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Altium to design schematics and PCBs. I use the CAD codesigner to ensure the PCBs fit the mechanical enclosures and will integrate with the rest of the system. I also use altium 365 to track part inventory and get an estimate on part cost.

Pros

  • Schematic design
  • PCB layout
  • Impedance matching
  • BOM management

Cons

  • layout replication can be difficult with more advanced designs where the core is the same but then the upper level has different connections. If I need to do replication changes late in a design I usually have to cut all nets to have a chance at successful replication with the tool.
  • Would be nice if there was an easier way to select like a template for common parts like resistors and capacitors when creating new parts. As we reuse the same symbol and layout across parts, but right now have to search for both each time.
  • Would be great if you could supply templates for rules to get new users started with a basic set of standard rules, setting up rules has a major learning curve.

Return on Investment

  • Saves time in schematic design, layout, and BOM management. At least 3X savings compared to diptrace that our company was using prior to Altium.
  • Moving from Altium to Altium develop was a painful process, it took several weeks to get moved over when that should have taken a day or less in my mind

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Allegro X Design Platform

Other Software Used

Cursor, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Slack, Dropbox Business, SOLIDWORKS

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