Altium 365

Altium 365 is a cloud-based infrastructure platform that connects all the key stakeholders and disciplines, from mechanical designers to parts procurement, to fabrication and assembly. In other words, Altium 365 connects electronics design to the manufacturing floor.

Since it's cloud-based, there’s nothing to install and no servers to configure. It’s just there with Altium Designer - or from a browser. The Altium 365 platform hosts a whole set of software-based services that run on Altium 365, each designed to simplify your design life and make it easy for everyone involved in the product creation process to collaborate. With Altium 365, you can effortlessly share your current design progress with management, or purchasing, or a potential manufacturer, in a way that is also easy for them - simplified, interactive collaboration, from any device. And it's an experience that doesn’t require you to change the tools you use everyday, regardless of your discipline.

When hosted on the Altium 365 platform, finding parts, setting up, and using components is simple. No server installation required, and convenience features such as part import tools get you up and running in minutes. In an instant you have reliable parts data at your fingertips that can be yours alone, or shared. And in combination with a structured Release to Manufacturing process, you unlock powerful capabilities (e.g. where-used, part obsolescence, functional alternatives and substitutes) that assure you have a manufacturable bill of materials - now and in the future.

With Altium 365, everyone can enjoy a true 21st century design experience. Free from the chains of isolation. Working together across the domains of electronics design, mechanical design, manufacturing, and parts - effortlessly.

Altium 365: It’s easy. It’s convenient. It just works.

Altium Designer Workspace

An integral part of the cloud-based infrastructure platform provided through your Altium 365 plan subscription (Standard, Pro and Enterprise plans), the Altium Designer Workspace is a dedicated, cloud-hosted server for all your managed content. It facilitates the seamless connectivity of, and the mechanics for moving data between, the design, manufacturing and supply domains. Interactive, browser-based ECAD collaboration that requires no tools or tool knowledge from those who use it. Connecting ECAD designers, procurement, and board fabricators and assemblers in a way that makes it easy for them to work together in ways that they could not before.

It works seamlessly, and harmoniously with Altium Designer to provide an elegant answer to the question of handling design data with secured integrity. The Altium Designer Workspace not only provides rock-solid, secure storage of data, but also enables re-release of data as distinctly separate revisions - essentially tracking design changes over time, without overwriting any previously released data. It also caters for the lifecycle of the data to be managed, allowing people that need to use the data to see, at-a-glance, what stage the data has reached in its 'life' and therefore what it can be safely used for.

Depending on the level of your Altium 365 plan, the Altium Designer Workspace can accommodate all managed data, including components, domain models, schematic sheets of circuitry and design templates. Indeed, you can even create and manage your entire design projects directly within the Workspace, with a CAD-centric management view that facilitates collaborative review and commenting of a design and revisions of its released BOM, and the ability to publish released revisions of design data to a Manufacturing Portal - a central place to share manufacturing data directly with your manufacturer.

ECAD-MCAD Co-Design

Most electronic products that are designed are fixed to some kind of mechanical structure - either a chassis, or an enclosure. Finding a mechanical conflict between board (ECAD) and chassis/enclosure (MCAD) late in the design process can be a costly experience. And while you could get a 3D model exported from Altium Designer, it is a manual process that needs conscious decision and action to do so. In reality, this is performed very infrequently, with the result being that the MCAD designer is never quite sure if what they've got is the latest and greatest. It really shouldn’t be so hard to ensure you’re not about to waste a pile of money just because your tools don’t talk.

Altium 365 provides native ECAD to MCAD collaboration where data flows seamlessly between domains. No more polling for updates, and no more uncertainty. Data is pushed between domains as the design evolves, ensuring design coherence.

The following MCAD platforms are currently supported:

• Dassault Systemes SOLIDWORKS® - version 2019 (or later)
• Autodesk Inventor® - Professional version
• PTC Creo® - version 4.0 (or later)

Altium Concord

A distinct design solution in its own right, Altium Concord provides an on-site server solution for all your managed content, and is available to those who are subscribed to the Altium 365 Pro, or Altium 365 Enterprise plans. Altium Concord works in harmony with Altium Designer to provide an elegant answer to the question of handling design data with secured integrity. Altium Concord not only provides rock-solid, secure storage of data, but also enables re-release of data as distinctly separate revisions - essentially tracking design changes over time, without overwriting any previously released data. It also caters for the lifecycle of the data to be managed, allowing people that need to use the data to see, at-a-glance, what stage the data has reached in its 'life' and therefore what it can be safely used for.

But Altium Concord is used to store so much more than just the data generated from a board design. It is also used to manage all other sets of data obtained through the running of specific release processes. This includes the release of component definitions, domain models, schematic sheets of circuitry and design templates. Indeed, you can even create and manage your entire design projects directly within the server, with the additional benefit of collaboration support, meaning an entire team can work concurrently on the same board design - even annotating the design with comments. And with the enterprise version of Altium Concord - available for those on the Altium 365 Enterprise subscription plan - you can even control the working environments of your designers - ensuring that company-wide design standards are enforced and adhered to.

By furnishing a set of reusable design 'building blocks' within the Altium Concord Server, you can embark on fresh projects safe in the knowledge that each model, component, and higher-order design element has been ratified and approved for use, with no having to reinvent the wheel as it were. The server becomes both the source and destination of design elements, with each new design utilizing elements released to, and managed through, the server. And by designing only with elements from your Altium Concord Server, the integrity of those designs is inherently assured.

A Platform for the Future...

The cloud-based Altium 365 infrastructure platform, as it stands today, offers a pretty impressive range of software-based services for collaboration across disciplines. No installation or configuration, no manually updating to a new  'server release', browser-based, mobile-ready, and no extra processes to learn. But the experience doesn't stop there. While subscribed to Altium 365 - and depending on the level of plan you have - you not only benefit from future updates to existing services and capabilities delivered through the Altium 365 platform, but also services and capabilities that have yet to appear. Potential offerings include, but are not limited to:

• BOM Management^*
• Ciiva BOM Analyzer^*
• Ansys Integration^*
• Multiple Data-center Support^#
• Replicated Data^#

That is, of course, just a teaser of what the future may hold, as Altium 365 continues to grow and mature - always with the focus on facilitating frictionless collaboration between all of the stakeholders involved in getting your next innovative product out-the-door, on time, first time.