Altium

Here's a comprehensive list of commonly asked questions about Altium Designer. If you have a question that is not answered on this page, please contact your local sales and support center at www.altium.com/contacts and an Altium representative will help you find the answer you’re looking for.

Evaluating, learning and using Altium Designer

• What’s the difference between tools that are integrated compared to Altium Designer’s unified system?
  
  An integrated design system is a collection of job-specific ‘point tools’ that exchange design data via custom processes, as the design moves down the product development chain.
  
  This is the type of system offered by the majority of EDA vendors, and indeed is the basis of our former P-CAD and Protel products. At best this approach can only streamline processes within the boundaries of each individual point tool. Each tool has different design data and operating environment, so the design data must be ‘passed over the wall’ to the next process as the design progresses.
  
  Integrated systems are easy to spot because they use multiple applications and sets of design data, and include interconnection paths or frameworks for passing design data between those applications.
  
  Altium Designer is the world’s first and only unified design system. Built from the ground up on Altium’s DXP platform, it brings together all of the design disciplines into a single application and uses a single model of the design data. This revolutionizes the way electronics design can be done and provides huge advantages for both designers and organizations – see the Altium Designer ‘Benefits’ section for more information.
  
  Regardless of how ‘integrated’, or indeed ‘unified’, other design systems claim to be, if they are not using a single application and a single model of the design data they are not truly unified, and cannot come close to offering the benefits of Altium Designer.
• Who is Altium Designer for?
  
  Altium Designer is for all engineers, designers and developers of electronic products. This includes design engineers, PCB designers, systems designers and their organizations. In particular, it is for those want to create innovative designs and take their capabilities into the next generation of electronic product development.
  
  Altium Designer is ideal for:
  
  

  • Organizations that need to rapidly prototype designs
  • Designers that harness the latest technology and techniques
  • Company ‘Skunkworks’ and R&D organizations
  • PCB layout specialists creating high-speed, functionally-intelligent designs
  • Design teams that collaborate internally and with other teams
  • Teams that complete multiple different design projects per year
  • Board and software experts that want to create embedded ‘soft’ hardware

  
  Along with revolutionizing how you can design today, Altium Designer equips designers for next generation of electronics design.
• Who is using Altium Designer today?
  
  Altium Designer customers are an impressive group of innovative companies that span a wide array of industries: aerospace, automotive, defense, education, medicine, telecommunications, and consumer electronics. They range from smaller sized firms with fresh ideas to many of the world's largest organizations who are leaders in their field. These include: 3M, BMW, Boeing, British Aerospace, Cessna, Cochlear, DaimlerChrysler, Fisher-Price, Fujitsu, GE, General Dynamics, Honeywell, HP, IBM, Infineon, Intel, L-3 Communications, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Motorola, NASA, National Semiconductor, NEC, Northrop Gruman, Pelco, Philips Raytheon, Robert Bosch, Siemens, Bang and Olufsen, Sony, Texas Instruments, Thales and many more.
  
  To read more about the success customers are experiencing go to http://www.altium.com/Successes/
• Is Altium Designer easy to learn and use?
  
  Yes! One of Altium Designer’s most compelling benefits is that it enables engineers and electronics companies to exploit the potential of today’s reprogrammable device technologies without having to radically alter their existing skill-sets and design processes, or source additional expensive expertise.
  
  It is also simpler and easier to use throughout the design process because everyone involved can plug into a single, coherent design environment and data store. Taking a design to manufacture becomes easier, version control is simpler and project management works with a central and coherent structure.
  
  Altium Designer is delivered with an extensive set of array of user manuals and learning guides on the DVD. Altium also has one of the most extensive community and online support resources for learning in the industry. This includes free online training resources, extensive product documentation, forums, e-mail support and much more to completely support design teams through every part of the electronic design process.
• What can I do with Altium Designer?
  
  With Altium Designer you can capture and design the physical PCB platform, create the programmable system hardware, develop the embedded software, and manage all the projects that that make up an electronic product, all within a single unified design environment, thereby allowing design freedom and efficiencies not possible with traditional design tools.
  
  Specifically you can:
  
  

  • Define your front-end system & perform hardware capture
  • Design and layout printed circuit boards
  • Design with programmable devices
  • Develop embedded software
  • Rapidly explore designs, devices and technologies without committing to hardware
  • Take your completed design right through to manufacture
  • Link together all of the projects needed to do full electronic product development

  
  And you can do all this using your existing skills, expertise, and design team methodologies in a single unified design environment.
• Can I develop production PCBs with Altium Designer?
  
  Yes! Altium Designer has extremely powerful PCB level design, edit and manufacture capabilities, and continues Altium’s long heritage of innovation in the development of software technology for board-level design. Altium has extended these capabilities to incorporate the use of programmable devices as a system platform, and has fully integrated the development of the embedded intelligence. Furthermore, because everyone in the design process plugs into a single design environment, making changes, controlling versions and going to manufacture is easier and more ordered than ever.
• Is Altium Designer easy to keep up to date?
  
  Unlike traditional software development models where users wait 18 months or more for new technology, Altium’s software development and deployment model is designed to quickly respond to rapid changes in electronics design technologies and devices, and the needs of our customers. Altium’s twice-yearly product release program delivers a continuous flow of releases so that users receive new technologies and features faster, and they are of higher quality and cost less to update. And, we can securely deliver these updates directly to your engineers’ desktops via the internet without the need for time-consuming administration or expensive IT support. For more information the latest release of Altium designer go to http://www.altium.com/Products/AltiumDesigner/Latestrelease/
• How do I evaluate Altium Designer?
  
  To discover the advantages of Altium Designer go to http://www.altium.com/evaluate which provides a simple step-by-step guide on how to evaluate its powerful capabilities.

Licensing, pricing and availability

• What’s the latest version of Altium Designer?
  
  The winter 09 release of Altium Designer is the latest release. However, Altium may also release service packs in between releases from time to time. Users on the current version can gain free and easy access to these updates and more via their SUPPORTcenter account.
• What licensing types are available for Altium Designer?
  
  Altium Designer's flexible set of licensing options cover core and extended feature sets, time-based and perpetual, standalone and floating, with or without Altium Software Assurance. This means Altium Designer can easily and effectively be deployed throughout an organization regardless of the size and mix of functions within design teams. Companies can make significant cost savings with licensing terms that match their use of the product. For information on licensing go to Differentiated features & flexible licensing
• What language support is available for Altium Designer?
  
  In addition to universal English, Altium Designer is available with support for French, German, Japanese, Traditional and simplified Chinese and Korean languages. Furthermore, there is no need to buy anything extra to work on design projects in these different languages. For all theses languages, Altium Designer offers a graphical user interface (GUI) that includes translated toolbars, menu items and dialog boxes in addition to the Unicode string support which allows foreign characters and symbols to be placed directly on schematic and PCB worksheets.
• Can I purchase additional features and functionality for Altium Designer?
  
  Altium Designer is a complete off-the-shelf solution with everything ‘in the box’. This means that the entire design process is covered through to manufacturing with a single solution. Altium does not force customers into purchasing numerous add-ons at extra cost in order to increase functionality or make a complete solution. This is because we believe that when a customer buys a design tool, everything that they need to do the job should be included as standard.
• What about network versions?
  
  In addition to standalone licenses, Altium Designer is available as a floating site license which allows the simultaneous use of Altium Designer on individual computers within the LAN, up to the number of users that the LAN license has been purchased to allow. Use of the software is controlled by a central licensing server.
• Do you sell educational licenses?
  
  Yes! While other EDA vendors might offer you limited or discounted design software, Altium Designer delivers a state-of-the-art unified electronics design learning platform that will transform every student’s desktop into a ‘live’ electronics development laboratory. To ensure that educational institutions and students have access to the latest software available, we offer flexible and attractive pricing for educational institutions. For more information on educational licensing options please contact your local sales and support centre at http://www.altium.com/contacts
• Do I need additional software in order to design with programmable devices?
  
  Implementing a programmable design in a device with Altium Designer requires the installation of third-party software in order to do certain low-level device specific functions such as place and route and mapping. FPGA vendors offer these tools, which can be freely downloaded from the vendor web sites. However, Altium Designer makes use of these tools transparently and you don’t need to be an expert in using them to design with programmable devices. For more information on FPGA place and route tools go to http://www.altium.com/community/NanoBoardresources/vendorresources

Platform and system requirements

• What operating systems does Altium Designer run on?
  
  Altium Designer is designed to run on Windows XP (Professional or Home). For more detailed information on operating system support go to http://www.altium.com/products/altiumdesigner/systemrequirements
• What are the system requirements for ‘Altium Designer’?
  
  For the latest recommended and minimum system requirements for installing and running Altium Designer go to http://www.altium.com/products/altiumdesigner/systemrequirements

Training and support

• Are training courses available for Altium Designer?
  
  Yes! Altium offers a wealth of training resources to ensure you keep your skills up to date and make the most of your design software. You can choose to view our training videos at your own leisure, participate in an online training session, join us in person for face-to-face training or download our training manuals. For information on Altium Designer training go to http://www.altium.com/Community/TRAININGcenter
• What user documentation is provided with Altium Designer?
  
  Altium Designer comes with an extensive range of learning guides ‘in the box’ in electronics format, on the product DVD. These, and more, are also available online at Learning guides
• Does an Altium Designer license include any technical support?
  
  All Altium Designer users are entitled at no cost to high-quality free support to help stay productive and be successful.
  
  This includes:
  
  

  • An extensive knowledge base of commonly asked support questions
  • Active peer-to-peer discussion forums with participation from Altium software developers and application engineers
  • A range of downloads for software updates, output generators and more
  • An extensive suite of freely-downloaded libraries for Altium Designer that are developed by the Altium Library Development Center (ALDC) under an ISO 9001 certified quality assured system.

  
  Other online resources:
  
  

  • The INFOcenter provides a useful hub for Altium’s collection of product information resources.
  • The DEMOcenter offers an extensive array of product demo videos compiled by our applications engineers that give you an overview of the major benefits and capabilities of Altium Designer.
  • The Learning guides will take you to the next level with an easy-to-search database of in-depth articles, applications notes, tutorials, user guides and white papers.
• How can I optimize my software investment with additional support options?
  
  Altium offers a number of ways to optimize your software investment with choices that are comprehensive, cost-effective, productivity enhancing – and right for you. For an overview of Altium’s investment options, and their benefits, go to http://www.altium.com/purchase/investmentoptions