Altium Designer - The PCB King
December 13, 2024

Altium Designer - The PCB King

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Altium Designer

Altium Designer is for PCBA design in our organization. The pick and place/Gerber files are sent to our 3rd party supplier to have the boards constructed. OrCAD was used previously, but it continuously did not meet our needs. Altium Designer is used for ALL designs, as well as any engineering change orders that need to take place. I would definitely recommend using Altium Designer for personal and industry PCB design.

Pros

  • Extremely straightforward and easy to use
  • Easy to find all tools, including laying traces, adding net labels, etc.
  • Great training documents and videos, very using friendly; especially for first time users
  • 3D models of the PCB are excellent
  • Easy to generate files; including schematics, BOMs, Gerber files, etc.

Cons

  • With the expansion of Altium Designer and all the new features, some bugs in previous releases are left forgotten and need to be addressed
  • Inconsistent special text input between PCB, schematic, and draftsman documents
  • The automatically generated BOM can be confusing and hard to use; a lot is going on at one time
  • Quick PCB design allows for quick sales, thus generating a large ROI for a company
  • Altium Designer's built in BOM price tracker allows the user to have a general idea of the cost of their PCB, so they can plan accordingly when budgeting
  • In addition to the BOM, Altium Designer provides different manufacturers and their part numbers for different components so the user can choose the cheapest option to move forward with
Everything is well labeled, and explanations of all features/functions are well explained. Altium Designer is an excellent platform for new users to the PCB world. There are many tutorial articles and videos that prepare any user for success. Everything is brightly colored and easy to see. Although there is a lot going on on the screen at one time, Altium Designer separates different features into their own b categories.
Altium Designer has made it very easy to design a PCB from scratch. The software makes it very simple to import your own board sizes, component libraries, sensor libraries, and more. There are already built-in libraries to help a new user get started with PCB design. Editing a part or its footprint is also straightforward.
Usually, there are many different engineers working on a project at once. It is critical that everybody has access to each project, and all the changes that are being made. Altium 365 has made collaborating streamline. Every engineer on a project is able to see who is currently working on a project and the changes that they have made. The Altium 365 vault has access to all older projects.
OrCAD was used at our company for years before we switched over to Altium Designer. Usually, moving all projects from one software can be a pain and time-consuming. Altium Designer made it very streamline to move all projects over, including all component libraries. In addition, on the Mechanical Engineering side of things, Altium Designer has wonderful integration with SOLIDWORKS, so all parts can be 3D modeled and brought over.

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

Yes

Are you happy with Altium Develop's feature set?

Yes

Did Altium Develop live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Altium Develop go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Altium Develop again?

Yes

For general PCB design, rigid flex PCB design, and multi-layer PCB design, Altium Designer is the best software to use on the market. The simple movement between board layers and easy component placement are what sets it apart from other similar software. When designing our PCBs for industry, it is easily capable of suiting all of our needs.

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