Friday, July 11, 2014

What's new in Altium Designer v14?

The latest release of Altium Designer is the v14.... So what new in this version?

During the installation of AD14 check the new functionality and option available. This is how it looks like with the Altium Designer 14 is installed for the first time.


What is platform extensions? The platform extension provides a bridge to integrate 3rd party application with Altium designer software. When the platform extension tab is expanded it looks like the following picture. Notice that that all are selected except the Embedded option.


 Altium Designer 14 provides Suppliers option during the installation. What it means is that with AD14 now designer can search, compare prices and link to the part suppliers. This is a great new features which saves time and effort of browsing through the supplier catalogs.


The FPGA Design tab consist of configurable Components and Virtual Instruments. These are not checked by default.


The importer/ exporter tab is the next thing. Initially only few file formats for import/ export are selected such as DXF and IDF as shown below. But it has option to select import/ export of other CAD software file format such as from Ansoft. Allegro, PADS and Eagle. Remember that Eagle file formats could not be imported directly to altium designer. Some script had to be installed in Eagle software and then export them in Altium Designer format. This means you had to own Eagle software too along with Altium do import the eagle files. Now Altium designer has build in program to directly import the Eagle files. There are also number of other CAD software support in Altium Designer.


What is Touch Sensor Support in Altium Designer? Well new electronics design demands touch sensors available in todays electronics such as cell phones handsets. Altium designer 14 comes with touch sensor support with ATMEL and Microchip sensors controllers. If you want to design electronics with planar capacitive sensor patterns on your PCB and use controllers from Atmel or microchip then select this option.


Other than those mentioned above in the Altium Designer v14 installation overview, it has solved many bugs and added new features in schematic, pcb and simulation part of the software.

One of the bug related to importing step file was the "Cannot load 3D model from file" warning message. With Altium Designer 14 this bug is fixed.

You might want to see Cadsoft Eagle Free if you looking for PCB design software


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