What’s New in Altium Designer

For enterprise and pro subscriptions, the new Constraint Manager offers a table-based interface, accessible from both Schematic and PCB, allowing you to define constraints more collaboratively. Engineers and stakeholders can collectively set design constraints with ease.

The new PCB Layout Replication tool gives you the ability to quickly replicate the layout for repetitive blocks of circuitry in a flat PCB design. This avoids the need for manual routines, snippets, reuse blocks, or converting into a multi-channel design.

The custom paste and solder mask feature is now automatically enabled by default, allowing you to personalize pad shapes directly without the need for workarounds. This simplification improves manufacturing efficiency, project clarity, and provides a more user-friendly interface.

We've added a new "Retrace Parameters" feature to the Gloss and Retrace panel, offering enhanced flexibility for retracing single-ended traces at any angle using the Rounded hugging style. You can also set rule-based width modes or input custom values to ensure compliance with design rules. Furthermore, you have the option to "Preserve Route Path," allowing you to maintain precise trace geometry during retracing, providing greater control and design accuracy.

Altium Designer's "Where Used" component panel streamlines component management in your PCB designs. It offers a comprehensive list of where each component is used, making conflict resolution and maintaining design accuracy a breeze. The latest enhancement features a redesigned panel and integration of Reuse Blocks from the connected Workspace's library, with tabs displayed only when relevant to reduce clutter.

For Pro and Enterprise subscriptions, PCB CoDesign in Altium Designer revolutionizes collaborative design by enabling multiple team members to work simultaneously on a project, ensuring streamlined development, efficient testing, and faster iteration to meet project deadlines. This feature includes Git-like version control, allowing collaborators to access the same project concurrently, commit changes to a master branch, and use Commenting and Tasks features to allocate work on the board. Notifications alert team members of commits, and the Compare and Merge panel displays differences in design, offering color-coded feedback. When conflicts arise, such as overlapping changes by multiple designers, you can confidently decide to keep local changes or accept remote changes from the latest commit, ensuring a smooth collaborative design process.

There are key improvements and fixes in relation to the import of OrCAD and Allegro design files into Altium Designer. This includes support for customized port connectors, accurate title block parameter handling, component fill coloring preservation, and precise design file imports, ensuring your design process is seamless.

For enterprise, when connected to an Enterprise Server Workspace and a design project is stored in a SVN repository managed through the Workspace's Version Control Service, you can now migrate this project from the SVN repository to the Workspace's built-in Git repository.

When it comes to license management, the search field and related sorting control will now appear only when more than seven licenses are in the listing to avoid redundancy. Also, license type labels have been added to help quickly distinguish differences between licenses in the listing.

For Harness Design, the zoom level now sets the size of the model view's green box automatically. No need for manual adjustments. We've also added quick keyboard shortcuts for adding wires and placing bundles to streamline your workflow. Plus, you can easily validate your active harness project with the new validate button.

There is a new functionality of the ‘Copy Room Formats’ feature with the addition of an option to control whether or not the rotation of the chosen source room is copied to the desired destination room, avoiding the need for manual rotation corrections.

You can now include a wider range of manufacturing and assembly parameters, such as layer counts, board dimensions, and object quantities directly into your fabrication and assembly notes. These additions are conveniently auto-calculated directly from the PCB, ensuring that your notes align with any design updates.

Altium has completed the custom pad stack feature, which includes the ability to freely customize pad, thermal relief, and most recently, paste and solder mask shapes. You now have the ability to independently control paste and solder mask shapes and can adapt to non-standard component footprints.

Altium has added the ability to manage part choices that are associated with each component in your design. The excluded part choice will still be in the project, however it will not appear in the generated BOM, nor will it be used in price calculations or as part of BOM checks

The new Mixed-Simulation Data Viewer introduces higher waveform accuracy and measurement precision. This extended precision significantly reduces the likelihood of round-off errors, ensuring more accurate results when viewing simulation waveforms to improve the overall reliability of the simulation process.

Altium has expanded support for additional multi-board features, which allows you to navigate to your wiring diagrams seamlessly from your multi-board schematic. You are now able to cross-probe directly from the corresponding harness object on the multi-board schematic to the Wiring Diagram of that harness design, minimizing the risk of mismatch and giving you more control over your multi-board design.

The latest release simplifies the management of the silkscreen preparation process, offering the ability to effortlessly move or clip silkscreen objects at specific distances from exposed copper or solder mask openings. This eliminates the need for manual silkscreen work while creating footprints and PCB manufacturing preparation.

Altium's latest release adds simulation capabilities by providing expanded support for additional components. You are now able to add your digital file stimulus device (FSTIM) model primitives from PSpice for simulation in Altium to achieve high accuracy and efficiency in generating transient signals. This addition aligns with Altium's ongoing commitment to have a best-in-class SPICE simulator fully integrated within the Altium Designer environment.

This release introduces new tools for precise harness cable design, helping to reduce errors during assembly. You can now define the size of the harness covering relative to the enclosed bundle and choose between solid-style and patterned fills. Additionally, isometric views in the Layout Drawing give assemblers an additional viewpoint to enhance the presentation of harness components, enabling comprehensive communication of design intent and minimizing assembly errors.

The PCB section view provides precise insight into the layout and structure of your designs, like never before. when working with dense and complex PCBs the section view reveals the details within a PCB that are typically not visible. With full control over plane placement and color you can easily see all components, even smaller SMD components hiding under larger components or mechanical parts.

As a continuation of our custom pad shape capabilities, it is now possible to add, remove, and edit, thermal relief spikes to anywhere on a pad, regardless of shape. This helps with soldering and avoids possible manufacturing problems like tombstoning.

The interactive probes feature is like using an oscilloscope right within Altium Designer. When this feature is enabled, any changes to probe placement, color, or other settings, are immediately reflected in the simulation results document.

We’ve now added support for voltage and current controlled sources, functional sources and variable passive components for voltage, power and current output variables in the AC analysis. Great for audio projects, communication designs, and other design types. Plus we’ve added support for multi-bit ADC and ROM PSPICE digital model primitives as well as their timing models.

Live traces actively follow your cursor, showing you the way to your final wire destination. Allowing you to move more efficiently in the wiring diagram. Wiring diagram objects are now synced with the documents snap grid, bringing a new level of uniformity to the diagram.

In the Layout Drawing, it is now possible to show the Physical (3D) model for a connector as a wireframe view and also, for a connection point, display the Physical (3D) model of one of its associated parts.

For this release we have added support for workspace defined project parameters, bulk creation and edits of components, and enhanced side-by-side component revision comparison.

This release of Altium Designer we’ve added support for more programmable logic array PSPICE digital primitives as well as support for digital models that use global nodes ($D_HI, $D_LO, $D_X), and variable passives.

The wiring diagram and layout drawing for harness projects has been given several new features to boost usability. We’ve added additional crimping capabilities, scaling options for documentation, visual connection lines for components and more.

The Gerber Setup dialog now includes a Layer Classes section in its Layers to plot list. Using the checkbox for layer classes, you can quickly enable plotting for all the layers that belong to a specific layer class.

This release of Altium Designer supports even more PSPICE digital model primitives. We’ve added support for the PINDLY, and CONSTRAINT Pspice digital behavioral model primitives as well as support for the DIGRRGEFAULT option.

In this release of Altium Designer we’ve added several new features to boost the usability of the harness wiring diagram and layout drawing. Including additional features for crimping, splices, and efficiency

To better convey a message to other project stakeholders, you now have the capability to copy and paste pictures into your comments. Also, exporting a project history report can now be easily done through the Reports menu.

This release has added several improvements for both the harness wiring diagram and the Harness layout drawing. Some new capabilities include: parameters for twist and shield objects, crimping, additional 3D views, multiple connections from a single point and more…

New PCB features allow you to load a stored view configuration file from the View Configuration Panel. Also, it is now possible to change the name for the Gerber Board Profile layer when using the new, unified Gerber/Gerber X2 dialog.

Quickly assess the integrity of your power distribution network without the need for any specialized training with Power Analyzer by Keysight.

You are now able to transfer and sync your muli-board designs with your mechanical team using the MCAD CoDesigner.

Harness Design functionality allows you to create a full wiring harness design, from the individual pin-to-pin connections right through to manufacturing documentation.

Shape your pads the way you need in a matter of clicks. Extending the versatility of pad shapes, you can now customize the rounding of selected corners of pads that use either the Rounded Rectangle shape or the new Chamfered Rectangle shape.

Efficiency, simplicity and convenience are all delivered with the new UI for Gerber setup. Everything you need to prepare for Gerber generation is now at your fingertips in an intuitive setting.

Expanding the functionality available to you in the simulation arena, this release adds further support for PSPICE digital gates, timing and I/O models. Support for variants is also now available.

The Manufacturer Part Search panel has long been a source of components for many users. Improvements have been made in this release that make it easier to use components in their libraries. This allows you to spend more time on development than on the process!

Detailed net information about tuning objects has been added in this release. Information about the maximum current and active resistance of accordion, sawtooth, and trombone objects is now available. More detail means it is less likely mistake will be made!

A large number of microcircuits have multi-functional pins. Working with them in Altium Designer has become even easier. This release introduces the ability to display the alternative pin names with just one click.

Variant management is taken to the next level with this release. Time spent creating and editing variants is greatly reduced. Now you can design with large numbers of variants with streamlined ease and efficiency.

Support for commenting has arrived in the BOM arena with this release. All stakeholders can actively discuss the BOM with ease and convenience, as enjoyed already with schematic and PCB documents.

Reuse Blocks are enhanced further in this release. You can now define multiple, alternate PCB layouts for use with a single block. When placing a block, quickly switch layouts to suit your physical and performance needs.

Take the enhanced functionality of Reuse Blocks for a spin in this release, with the ability to place a block (or schematic snippet) as a sheet symbol. Your proven circuitry is placed on an auto-generated child sheet.

With this release it becomes even easier to work with multi-variant design projects. Now you can select multiple components for the active variant and mark them as Fitted/Not Fitted in a single action.

Modern components often contain pads that are complex in shape. This release of Altium Designer gives you the ability to create custom pad shapes quickly and easily, with management similar to that of standard pads.

Design of high-speed PCBs becomes easier with this latest release. Now, when you need to quickly move tuning elements to a different layer, you can do so from the Properties panel with a single click.

This latest version of Altium Designer makes schematic simulation even easier. System intelligence automatically recognizes SPICE models and assigns them to components from available sources.

Output data needs to be as accurate as possible. For multi-variant designs you can now ensure that the paste mask is only displayed where it is really needed.

Parametric information for your board is now conveniently available from the Properties panel. A single, convenient location with which to browse system, calculated and user-defined parameters, and place as needed in the form of special strings.

You can now specify active links to components and nets within a text frame object on a schematic. This handy navigation aid makes it much easier not only to read the document, but also to work with it.

You will often see that modern ICs consist of multi-functional pins. In this latest version of Altium Designer it has become far easier and much more convenient to work with such components.

Even more possibilities for creating differential pairs. Now you can use any postfixes to designate positive and negative net of a differential pair.

The condition of the PCB is under your control. A new intelligent feature that gives you confidence that your PCB is okay and complies with design rules.

Many schematic solutions are created as multivariant. With the new release, the schematic of multivariant project have become even more detailed and informative.

Working with multiboards has become easier and more convenient. Now you have more component sources at your disposal.

A reuse bloks help reduce development time and avoid errors. The new Design Reuse Panel and new functionality expands the possibilities for reuse blocks and snippets.

Adding cross-references to the project allows you to easily follow the connective flow of nets between the schematic sheets in a project. 

Designing high-speed PCB just got easier. The Length Tuning tools is now even more functionality. Complex tasks can now be solved even faster.

The via editing mode is now even more convenient. Information about the via, editing its parameters and connections to polygons are now all in a new and simple, but familiar form.

The way from idea to real devices has become shorter. The new feature will reduce the time it takes to design a schematic.