Altium Designer Reviews

Summary: I spend golden days in Altium training. It given me intense pleasure when working with it. Moreover, I got a some industrial experience. I learn to mail to officials in a decent language.

Positive: I fall in love with Altium 365 while playing with
projects. The professor, who came came for us is quite friendly. He not hesitated while clarifying and repeating the previous classes topics.

Negative: For us classes timings are little bad. Moreover, my licence is deactivated. I want my licence to be renewed to practice once again.

Summary: Overall this software is vey good, a little bit expensive. It was much better if we could access to cheaper version with less feature.
Support is good.

Positive: Not very hard to work with without knowledge.
The libraries are available.
A lot of YouTube videos to help.

Negative: There are many complicated menus and features.
There is no help or explanations in the menus to help to understand.

Summary: Overall, it's a solid offering and my favorite product in the industry. Please keep it efficient and up to date. Also ensure better integration with tools and automation like Python.

Positive: I like Altium the most by far. Allegro is not user friendly at all and is very slow. I like how intuitive of a tool it is. Even new hires can pick it up and figure it out.

Negative: Altium is getting bigger and bigger in terms of program size and slower to work with. If they want to stay ahead, they need to take some time to slim down and improve the overall system performance.

Summary: I will not say that this software does the absolute best for all PCB designing projects. However, it has all of the features and feel of what a good, professional software package should have. While some competitors might have specific expert level features for certain applications, they lack in a lot of other places where Altium has improved and excelled at.

Altium should be considered the minimum standard for the industry in all of it's features and design, and it really shows when using anything else how they might focus on one aspect of their software rather than providing a whole integrated package. Unless you have some specific requirements that force you to use some other package, I would currently recommend Altium as the first choice.

Positive: Excellent UX design with modern look and feel.
Great customization options for workflow.
Uses the same tool for all PCB design tasks.
All of the basic features and most of the advanced ones.

Negative: Occasional crashing and stability issues when working with large projects.
Still behind on some of the expert level features.

Summary: I've been using Altium for over 5 years after using other CAD products and find it to be a very powerful and easy CAD software. It has advanced capabilities, is easy to customize and perform batch operations to ensure uniformity and consistency across a design.

Positive: First I will say Altium has great online resources. If there is anything you are trying to do or having trouble with, you can find help online. Customer support is responsive if needed. Next I will say Altium is a powerful tool and I have yet to find a limitation that keeps me from my intended design. Convenient and easy shortcuts make execution smooth and advanced capabilities that make all kinds of designs possible without being limited by CAD software. 3d circuit and variant managing is incredibly useful. Stackup design and impedance calculators, customizability for viewing, batch operations (such as teardrops and removing unused pads on inner layers) and design rules that can be detailed/very specific but are easy to create make it easy to execute the desired design with confidence.

Negative: Sometimes Altium becomes unresponsive or unable to perform certain tasks. Restarting the program usually helps, sometimes I need to restart my computer. This may be an issue with my computer, not Altium, but I'm not sure.
No real complaints, otherwise!

Summary: Throughout my career, this has been an excellent tool which has allowed me to achieve my goals with ease. It is the tool of choice in the area of the country I live in and considered the standard for PCB development.

Positive: I would use no other software for schematic capture/PCB development and maintenance. Altium offers powerful, intuitive PCB design tools with a unified design environment.

The expansive library of components, real-time collaboration, simulation and analysis tools make it easy to develop from concept, through production and well final product end of life.

Negative: There is a bit of a steep learning curve - which is lessened by the availability of in-person and online training courses.

In addition, it is a bit pricey, but I guess you get what you pay for.

Summary: I have built up such a knowledgebase in Altium that I shudder to think about ever needing to change to a different platform. There are small frustrations at times, but those are made up for when the product just generally works.

Positive: I have been using Altium daily since ~2007. The evolution of the main program, especially the web/365 integration, release process and parts control, searching and creation make 2007 look like the stone age. Highly recommended.

Negative: Support has been hit or miss lately. Getting through to a chat person who has the knowledge needed to answer questions is very difficult. Cases are routinely answered pretty quickly, though.

Summary: Very good job Altium. Best software I have ever used hands down!
Been doing Electrical Engineering for 30 Years now and have used them all.

Positive: Well thought out.
Constantly improved.
Very good support.
Saves so much time.
Visually stunning, logical interaction, Simulation, Draftsman, library from suppliers, SolidWorks integration, Active BOM, Cloud Based, Auto routing, etc.

Negative: Panel Snapping is awful, not intuitive.
Some refreshing errors.
No group project instant messaging while working together on project!
Some file types not supported.

Summary: A pretty good application, i am writing the rest of this part cause the writing requirements.

Positive: The designing and the features, hella a lot more but i am too lazy to write it i am writing this part to due to the writing requirements.

Negative: The pricing, and nothing else i am writing the rest of this part cause the writing requirements.

Summary: Great designing experience.
I'm yet to explore other parts as integrated simulators and CAD designers.

Positive: 1) Easier for multiple engineers to work on.
2) Great visual for firmware engineers to know things.
3) Version Control is superb
4) Can't forget about PCB Compare and Schematic compare feature with the previous version.
Thank you for this!!

Negative: Making local libraries is a little hassle because we don't provide all the details regarding vendors and all links.

Summary: I have very positive feelings about Altium Designer and do suggest it to others for professional use.
Out of all the different PCB design softwares I have used Altium has been the easiest and the best one for getting in to a nice flow state while designing.

Positive: Easy to use and gets in my way the least of any ECAD software I have used.
Nothing in it feels needlessly painful and it works well for advanced, complex designs.
Good for multi-sheet design and schematic verification of those.

Official documentation is PUBLIC and not behind a login wall or in random pdf files.
It is indexed by Google and other search engines, so searching for solutions usually yields hits on up to date official documentation, not unanswered forum posts from 2006.

Negative: Pricing.
Can't afford it for personal projects at home, so it needs to be provided by employer or client. This is especially relevant if you want to keep your skills with it sharp or try new ways of doing things.
Sometimes opaque errors that are annoying to Google, but so far I have been able to eventually solve all except one issue just by googling.
For that I had to contact Altium support, which was able to solve it.

Summary: Using Altium was definitely a much-needed upgrade on my previous -mostly for personal projects- use of eCAD tools. 9.5/10 would recommend.

Positive: Easy to use, a plethora of educational videos, and a responding support team. Much more capabilities than some previously used eCAD tools.

Negative: Price for single users is a bit much, but I'm a student so I got the educational license.

Summary: I need to provide some simpler and more training materials, maybe more examples and demos to us for have a update level.

Positive: For designers, it's easy as a recommended electronic tool, for new bees, it's easy to understand and design new analog and digital circuits, for schematics and PCBs, AD can translate ideals into Solidworks 3D designs, and ultimately become a delightful and friendly product.

Negative: Version compatibility needs to be improved, and 3D footprints can be more accessible.

Summary: Overall it's an amazing product. I've also used other software, but Altium is the only one I enjoyed working with.

Positive: -Lots of options and gadgets to work with.
-You can add your shortcut keys to most of the commands.
-Cloud base library which makes part creation, editing, and history keeping very easy.

Negative: -On bigger projects which have lots of components and VIAs, it gets very slow.
-Sometimes crashed when it can't communicate with the server and doesn't let you save.
-Doesn't have PCB concurrent design ability between two (or more) designers.

Summary: A professional tool for developing the best possible PCB designs. They kept all possible features available to assist you in getting an excellent result. I’m really happy to have chosen it.

Positive: First of all the user interface is very intuitive and made for quick reference in terms of checking and testing your designs. The risk of doing something wrong has been reduced significantly. Also the possibility the Altium Concord Pro on 365 is a major benefit! Everything has been tweaked and adapted for a perfect end result. I’ve been using other PCB design software but Altium Designer is absolutely top notch and generates the most professional results.

Negative: Haven't found any while using it for now, but maybe in the future. But to be honest I doubt it.