Altium Designer (AD) is a

PCB PCB may refer to: Science and technology * Polychlorinated biphenyl, an organic chlorine compound, now recognized as an environmental toxin and classified as a persistent organic pollutant * Printed circuit board, a board used in electronics * ...

and

electronic design automation Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools work together ...

software package for

printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a laminated sandwich str ...

s. It is developed by Australian software company

Altium Limited Altium Limited is an Australian multinational software company that provides electronic design automation software to engineers who design printed circuit boards. Founded as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in Australia in 1985, the company has regional ...

History

Altium Designer was originally launched in 2005 by Altium, known at the time as Protel Systems Pty Ltd. It has roots back to 1985 when the company launched the

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

-based PCB design tool known as Protel PCB (which later emerged into

Autotrax Autotrax was a free software application that ran on DOS on an IBM or compatible PC. It was designed by Protel Systems (now Altium), and was one of the first professional printed circuit board CAD applications available for personal computers. I ...

and Easytrax). Originally it was sold only in Australia. Protel PCB was marketed internationally by HST Technology since 1986. The product became available in the United States, Canada, and Mexico beginning in 1986, marketed by San Diego-based ACCEL Technologies, Inc. under the name

Tango PCB Autotrax was a free software application that ran on DOS on an IBM or compatible PC. It was designed by Protel Systems (now Altium), and was one of the first professional printed circuit board CAD applications available for personal computers. ...

. In 1987, Protel launched the circuit diagram editor '' Protel Schematic'' for DOS. In 1991, Protel released ''Advanced Schematic'' and ''Advanced PCB'' 1.0 for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

(1991–1993), followed by Advanced Schematic/PCB 2.x (1993–1995) and 3.x (1995–1998). In 1998, ''Protel 98'' consolidated all components, including ''Advanced Schematic'' and ''Advanced PCB'', into a single environment. ''Protel 99'' in 1999 introduced the first integrated 3D visualization of the PCB assembly. It was followed by ''Protel 99 SE'' in 2000. ''Protel DXP'' was issued in 2003, ''Protel 2004'' in 2004, Altium Designer 6.0 in 2005. Altium Designer version 6.8 from 2007 was the first to offer 3D visualization and clearance checking of PCBs directly within the PCB editor.

Features

Altium Designer's suite encompasses four main functional areas, including

schematic capture Schematic capture or schematic entry is a step in the design cycle of electronic design automation (EDA) at which the electronic diagram, or electronic schematic of the designed electronic circuit is created by a designer. This is done interact ...

, 3D

PCB design A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a laminated sandwich struc ...

field-programmable gate array A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware ...

(FPGA) development and release/data management. It integrates with several component distributors for access to manufacturer's data. It also has interactive 3D editing of the board and MCAD export to STEP.

File formats

Altium Designer supports import & export of various PCB and

CAD data exchange CAD data exchange is a method of drawing data exchange used to translate between different Computer-aided design (CAD) authoring systems or between CAD and other downstream CAx systems. Many companies use different CAD systems and exchange CAD d ...

file formats. The tool's native file formats are and . Altium Designer is capable to import and export AutoCAD / and ISO STEP file formats.

References

Sources*.sch

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External links