Altium Designer Reviews

Summary: Since moving to Altium, the speed in which we can prototype a design has gone from days to hours. Being able to integrate it with Solidworks using MCAD co-designer means that both electronic and mechanical can work side by side without waiting for each other.

Positive: Component libraries and manufacturer parts search means we can find the components we need with manufacturer approved footprints and have them in our design in seconds.
ActiveBOM is also an excellent tool for helping us pinpoint which components are facing obsolescence or shortages so we can plan accordingly

Negative: It is a costly tool with concord pro, and to get everything set up with templates is quite a long and difficult. But the overall benefit is worth it

Summary: Overall the Altium Design CAD package is a great tool for small or large businesses. Altium is a popular CAD system so most if not all 3rd parties will be able to view and work with any file outputs you generate.

I have been using Altium for about 2 years and in comparison to the other CAD systems I have had experience with Altium Trumps them all.

Positive: The availability and scope of Altium tutorials and Support documentation is a great help when getting started with Altium. Altiums Support Ticket system team have are fast and efficient when responding to our issues.

Altium Provides great Collaboration Tools. The Ability to review, provide feedback and share design data with ease to Colleagues and external parties is very efficient. Altium 365 Enhances this even more.

Altium provides an abundance of tools and features that can be used to design complex HDI PCBs. The tools for impedance control, length tuning and Blind and Buried vias are easy to set up and use.

Negative: The Panels menu which contains all the design menus can be clunky when working on multiple monitors.

If using Altium 365 with Altium there are additional features which are being introduced and locked behind a paywall, Including a 10gb limit on server space. This is upsetting when you have payed a significant amount for Altium Pro licences.

Summary: Overall, this offers the best trade off between cost and usability that I have used, having tried many other software, such as OrCAD, KiCAD, Proteus, etc.

Positive: Ease of use, A365 feature, cloud connectivity, ability to view designs via a browser. Advanced features to allow for great PCB design

Negative: Having to pay extra for some features such as harness design

Summary: We've used a few tools over the years and Altium is easily a mile ahead, both in feature set and ease of use.

Positive: The feature set is extensive, and we are able to produce designs very quickly indeed. The routing tools are also incredibly powerful, and it just makes the job so much easier overall.

Negative: The only thing that could have been better is more transparency in that once you purchase a pro license, all subsequent licenses need to be pro as well.

Summary: I really recommend this software. I have used it in both really big companies and in very early-stage startups and it has always been invaluable. It easily pays off itself by enabling us to design PCBs more effectively. Collaboration with Altium is very easy, and a lot of places are starting to use it as their defacto software. I really recommend it if you haven't tried it!

Positive: I like how Altiun is integrated very well unto one tool, allowing you to design the schematic and the layout from very simple PCBs all the way to complex, multi-pcb system. I have used Altium since Altium 14.0, and they have come a long way in terms of abilities and usefulness. They are my favorite ECAD software for PCB design.

Negative: The licensing can get a little complicated with all the versions of Altium available, but that has been simplified in some part with Altium 365.

I also wish there was more accessibility for hobbyists and for personal use, but Altium does provide alternatives to Altium Designer aimed at that market. I wish their shortcut scheme was the same though, as the time of this writing I have tried some of their other offerings aimed at hobbyists and after 10+ years of using the software it is hard to bot miss that the hobbyists offering's keyboard shortcuts are different enough to be a little confusing. But I guess this is a very niche point. The hobby software is still very good for being free

Summary: I would definitely recommend Altium for either small and big businesses. Also, from an industry point of view, Altium is considered a must when it comes to Electronics Engineers' CVs.

Positive: Easy and intuitive UI.
The library set and its management.
A comprehensive DRC set of features and its interface.
The community that uses Altium.
A standard in the electronics industry.

Negative: The price is always an issue when it comes to software, although there are even more expensive packages that are not as good as Altium.

Summary: I began my PCB design journey using two other software but had an upcoming major design project that consisted of 2-3 high voltage PCB designs. As this was going to be a serious project that lasted more than 6 months I wanted to use a software that I would be happy to put on my resume and was actually used and recognized in industry. I ended up choosing Altium Designer because they offered access to me while I was in school and also provided me with the Altium PCB design course for beginners. I took the course and was honestly blown away by how much better Altium was than my other experiences and was very pleased by the feature set. Ultimately, I would recommend Altium and Altium education to anyone who is looking to get started with PCB design as its the easiest fully featured and industry recognized PCB design software there is in my opinion.

Positive: *Fully featured PCB design software
*Easiest to learn while retaining lots of features
*Altium Education

Negative: *Could have provided more than 1 educational project
*Integrated Component Search is not the best

Summary: Overall experience has been very positive.
Altium is feature rich, uses a modern user interface, has tons of help videos and documentation, provides excellent technical support, and provides regular product updates.
Great combination that is orders of magnitude better than the PADS Standard we previously were using.

Positive: => Live BOM information with Part Obsolescence and Part Availability
=> Revision controlled central Components library and Board design repository with Where Used traceability from Components to Brds and vice versa
=> Project Templates to promote consistency and get new board designs stared very quickly
=> ECAD/MCAD integration for doing quick fit checks with the Mechanical team who use Solid Works

Negative: => Number of "paper cuts" in the SW where things work differently from menu to menu or annoyances that you get used to working around. Rather than adding more features, would love to see Altium address more of these User Interface annoyances
=> With all the benefits of the integrated revision controlled OnPrem server, comes the downside of it running somewhat slowly. Would love to see Altium work at speeding it up

Summary: I would say that there is a lot to learn but help and documentation is plentiful. I am able to do anything I want with these tools.

Positive: Features, documentation and the fact that it is widely used. Many chip products use Altium to document evaluation boards.

Negative: Complexity and cost. There are many ways to execute features. The cost is high although you get a lot for your money.

Summary: I'v been using Altium since 13 years and I still love it! All the additional features like EMI-EMC simulation, and other new features make it a must to design PCBs

Positive: UI is very easy to learn. Like the cloud service and manufacturer part search. Easy to create new components and generates BOM

Negative: Some crash here and there but better than it as been before

Summary: I am currently an electrical engineering student in college, and I've used quite a few ECAD programs, but Altium Designer is hands-down the best. It has amazing utility, a great community, tons of resources, and very intuitive design (apart from the UI).

Positive: Altium Designer has basically everything you could possibly need in an ECAD, while still managing to be easy to use. It has amazing simulation software, easy to use footprint and schematic models wizards, and integration with major MCAD programs to allow you to design cases/ mechanical components around your PCB. The documentation is amazing, and they have tons of free resources on how to design better circuit boards.

Negative: I can't speak to this too much yet because I have free access to Altium Designer as a college student, but Altium Designer costs a lot. The price matches its utility, but for smaller companies it may cost more than they can afford. In addition, the file UI and a few other UI elements could be improved. For example, I was working on updating on old PCB design and Altium added all of my generated documents to separate folders, which I was unable to combine for some reason. It took me a while to figure out the problem, mainly because there were multiple UI options that were named similarly.

Summary: I have used Fusion360, Eagle, and KiCad to design PCBs, but Altium reigns supreme. There is not a better PCB designing software that is as well maintained, documented, and supported. The engineers are constantly improving the designers workflow and the ease of access is incredible.

Positive: - The software itself is modern and sleek, each action is very fast as well. If processing time is required, there is always an active indicator.
- Every feature one could need for PCB designing is available, with countless articles and videos tutorials for them. There have been many instances where I looked up how to do something, discovered a better way to do it, and had many resources to help me accomplish it.
- There are very detailed error messages whenever some issue arises. If the software itself doesn't tell you a solution, there is an official article showing how to resolve it.
- Hundreds of lessons available to help guide a new PCB designer learn best practices, and seasoned designers ease into a new tool.

Negative: - Making a change to a library element is tedious. I may have not found a better way to do it, but the only way I have found is long.

Summary: I think Altium is one of the best PCB design softwares on the market and it’s my go to choice for both professional work and personal projects.

Positive: The built in advance features for PCB design like 3D view and parametric design puts Altium a step above Kicad.

Negative: There is a sharp learning curve. After learning the basic features some of the more advance stuff takes a while to learn.

Summary: Altium has been a very useful tool for importing external designs via DXF/DWG and making customizations as needed. Robust features allow for ease of use when starting from schematic to layout in order to make the designers time much more efficient

Positive: Online documentation is plentiful and covers many of the basic needs to navigate the many tools at your disposal. The training courses are very thorough and well laid out to cover basic flows all the way to complex circuit design.

Negative: So many features that it can almost be hard to scratch the surface on a lot of them

Summary: The entire process from creating a symbol to generating Gerber works seamlessly. I also had a look at the Simulation tool, which is quite impressive as well.

Positive: I have worked on multiple CAD tools throughout my career. Compared to some of the other CAD tools I have been using, Altium provides an excellent user interface. The 3D view is another commendable aspect of this tool. You can turn on the single mode option and analyze each layer in detail.

Negative: I have been using this tool for more than 12 months and haven't found any major concerns yet. My only suggestion would be to add more simulation models (SPICE/IBIS) for parts from leading manufacturers in to the database.