Design your next great
electronic product.
Powerful Free ECAD with
Online Collaboration
We think you deserve better design tools that are made specifically for you to turn great ideas into reality. That’s why we’ve created CircuitMaker. CircuitMaker is schematic and PCB design software that is built upon Altium Designer technology. With a streamlined interface and powerful engine to boot, you’ll never have to worry about your software holding you back. This is a free design tool unlike anything you’ve seen before.
Modern Interface
See what’s inside
CircuitMaker gives you the full power of 16 signal + 16 plane layers and no restrictions to the PCB dimensions. You can even make money with your designs because there’s no “non-commercial” clause! With CircuitMaker 2.0, you can have unlimited (and by default, private) projects and decide if and when to share with the community or only with other authors or customers.
CirucitMaker is built on a community library with hundreds of thousands of components - all backed by the incredible Octopart database. Placing components in CircuitMaker designs is as easy as searching by manufacturer part number or by design parameters. You can also add your own custom parts and mechanical components.
You can share your project with only authors of your choice or share with the entire community. It is your choice. So you can harness the power of teams to get projects done faster! Designs released to the community can be taken as a base by any member then modified so you can build new designs with different features without having to start from scratch every time.
Altium Native 3D™ technology means that when you’re in the PCB editor, just hit the 3 key and you can immediately see the PCB layout in full 3D. It will also show any component clearance violations and you’ll even know what the overlap distances are so you can get your designs right - and to fit the box - the first time.
For a tool we’re giving away for free, we did not hold back on the push and shove routing capabilities! The interactive routing modes include obstacle avoidance, hug, hug-n-push, and obstacle ignore. The push modes will push other trace and vias, as well as hop-over. You can even route differential pairs and interactively add accordions to nets that need that extra length for signal delays.
CircuitMaker uses the same easy-to-use and great looking schematic editor for which Altium is known. You can even do complex multi-sheet designs, use hierarchical design blocks, and generate SmartPDF™ outputs for your project.
The Situs™ topological autorouter works in concert with your design rules to help you get the board done fast. With BGA and SMT fanout, parallel memory, hug, and via optimization, it’s easy to use Situs to get working results really fast. You can also interactively route multi-nets or single nets or use manual routing with auto-complete.
When you’re ready to turn your design into a real board, CircuitMaker will generate industry standard CAM outputs. You can choose Gerber and NC Drill, or ODB++, or both. IPC test point reports and all other necessary outputs for professional manufacturing can be generated as well, and all this through a succinct release process that ensures your board passes design rules checks for DFM and assembly.
CircuitMaker comes with a huge set of importers, including OrCAD™, PCAD®, PADS®, EAGLE™, Protel and more - so starting your project from a manufacturer reference design is easy. The importers support both PCB and schematic documents.
