Item: Altium Develop
Rating: 9
Author: Abdul Sami Mughal

Overall Satisfaction with Altium Designer

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Altium Designer is used in three main areas:
- Looking at and debugging designs already done
- Modifying previous designs
- Doing new PCB designs.
It works for us in the scheme of helping us make the electronics parts of our system more robust and reliable, and be able to troubleshoot any problems.

Pros and Cons

Pros

PCB and schematic design
Component libraries
Being able to look at designs in a browser
Troubleshooting

Cons

Harness diagrams are part of PRO subscription, better to have it as the main program
Simulation is not as good at bringing parts in as something like LT Spice
Importing from OrCAD could be better

Return on Investment

Helps create new PCBs quickly, so quick to test and try items
Helps troubleshoot items quickly
Helps people be able to look at schematics through browser instead of a full install, making it quicker and easier.

Usability

Like any complicated program, it will always need some room for improvement. For example, it would be nicer to have other shortcuts than just the numpad Asterisk as the layer shift shortcut, or easy to shift layers via other ways. Some programs use a space bar instead, or similar.
It would also be nice to manipulate or make 3D items better.

Design Efficiency

It works really rather well at that. I am normally able to design quick PCBs very quickly. It also helps me import components easily and often through its own libraries, as well as review other people's work, allowing us to achieve what we need to achieve. 365 helps with general viewability and troubleshooting too. ActiveBOM also helps with Design for Manufacture.

Altium 365 Integration

Altium 365 is one of my favourite features of the product. It helps various people be able to look at the same designs, review them as well as troubleshoot any PCBs we may be concerned about. The 3D viewer helps you visualise things, while the schematics help you find tracks across it.
It also means we can use the same library components across our designs.

Alternatives Considered

OrCAD, KiCad EDA and Eagle Technology ProTeus

Altium offers much better features and usability over Proteus. Proteus also has certain limitations in what it can achieve, so that leaves it behind.
Same with KiCad, while it is easier to use, and quite an amazing software for a freeware, it lacks certain features which makes it harder for us to use.
OrCAD offers a lot of features, great focus on signal integrity, but the ease of use is non-existent.

Key Insights

Do you think Altium Develop delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Altium Develop's feature set?

Yes

Did Altium Develop live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Altium Develop go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Altium Develop again?

Yes

Other Software Used

AutoCAD, draw.io, OneNote, Spyder

Likelihood to Recommend

The most important aspect that Altium offers is ease of use. The only program I have used that comes close as KiCAD, but being free, it means that it doesn't have the same functionality as Altium.
I also really like Altium 365, one of the highlights of the product for me, as well as being able to import various library components into it.
I find it annoying when certain features are hidden behind extra subscription, like Assembly features or Harness design.

Comments

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