Benchmark is a global leader in product design, engineering services, and advanced manufacturing, serving original equipment manufacturers across a wide range of industries—from aerospace and defense to medical technologies and advanced computing. Since its founding in 1979, the company has built a reputation for delivering end-to-end solutions that span the entire product lifecycle, from concept development to volume production and aftermarket support.

With Benchmark's North American engineering teams distributed across different cities and time zones, the company needed to unify design efforts on a shared platform. The company operated three separate engineering groups within North America, each with its own tools, making cross-team collaboration difficult. As projects grew in complexity and required tighter integration, Benchmark began searching for a solution that could bridge geographical gaps and foster real-time collaboration across its engineering ecosystem.

Bridging ECAD and MCAD Workflows

A major obstacle for Benchmark’s engineering teams was the lack of a streamlined process for sharing design data between electrical and mechanical engineers. Before adopting Altium, engineers relied on manually importing and exporting DXF files of PCB layouts between their ECAD and MCAD tools. This method limited visibility into design changes and often led to misalignment between electrical and mechanical efforts. As a result, teams worked out of sync and wasted valuable time reconciling updates.

To overcome this, Benchmark implemented Altium’s ECAD-MCAD co-design capabilities, a powerful integration between Altium Designer and leading MCAD platforms. With a built-in panel inside Altium Designer and a corresponding plug-in for the team’s MCAD software, engineers were able to synchronize PCB designs across domains without leaving their native environments. Electrical engineers could push board outlines, component placements, and keep-out zones directly to MCAD, while mechanical engineers could route cables, adjust enclosures, and send updates back to ECAD—all without manually importing or exporting files. This bidirectional workflow allowed Benchmark to maintain design integrity across disciplines and dramatically reduced the time spent on file transfers and version tracking. Neither mechanical nor electrical engineers had to leave their preferred workspace.

Streamlining Design Visibility for Software Teams

One of the early obstacles blocking Benchmark’s collaboration meant that its software engineering teams struggled to access the most current design files. Without a centralized system, engineers had to manually check with colleagues to confirm if they were working from the latest version—a process that often involved messaging back and forth, introducing delays and uncertainty. This lack of visibility not only slowed development but also made it difficult for software engineers to identify test pins or leave feedback on designs in a consistent, traceable, and contextual way.

To solve this, Benchmark adopted Altium’s cloud-based collaboration platform, which provided version control built specifically for electronics. With design files rendered directly in a browser, software engineers could view the latest schematics and PCB layouts from any device—no ECAD installation required. This browser-based access allowed engineers to probe designs, identify test pins, and leave comments to clarify functionality or flag issues, all within a shared workspace.

Structuring Part Creation with Transparent Workflows

As Benchmark worked to unify its engineering teams, another challenge emerged around part creation and BOM management. Each group had its own process for reviewing components and adding new parts to their library, but without a shared system, there was no visibility into which parts were approved, in progress, or still under review. This lack of transparency made it difficult to verify part status during design, leading to delays and causing rework.

To address this, Benchmark turned to Altium’s configurable, diagram-based workflows, tailored to the team’s existing processes. These workflows allowed engineers to assign task ownership, track progress, and monitor part creation status in real time—all within a centralized platform.