Altium Designer (AD) is a PCB 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 Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools wo ...

software package for

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

s. It is developed by

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n 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-based PCB design tool known as Protel PCB (which later emerged into Autotrax and Easytrax). Originally it was sold only in

. 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. Altium Limited is an Australian multinational software company that provides Electronic design automation, electronic design automation software to engineers who design printed circuit boards. Founded as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in Australia in 19 ...

under the name Tango PCB. 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 (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, 3D PCB design,

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 d ...

(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

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File formats

Altium Designer supports import & export of various PCB and CAD data exchange file formats. The tool's native file formats are and . Altium Designer is capable to import and export AutoCAD / and ISO

file formats.

References

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External links