Altium Designer (AD) is a PCB and electronic design automation software package for printed circuit boards. It is developed by Australian software company Altium Limited.

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 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 ...

(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 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 ...

). 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. I ...

. In 1987, Protel launched the circuit diagram editor ''

Protel Schematic 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 ...

'' 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 ser ...

(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 struct ...

, field-programmable gate array (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 ...

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