Design Secret 56 - Importing Outlined Logos and Shapes using DXF format.

I'm very pleased to introduce to you Max Clemons, one of our AE's on the US support team.

In this video Max shows us a neat and tidy process for bringing logos, RF geometries and other shapes, into the PCB editor and library editor, from vector imaging tools using the DXF file format.

This applies to RF shapes developed in field solvers such as CST or uWave Office and others, equally to logos and company graphics developed in AutoCAD or Adobe Illustrator - all these tools provide the ability to export vectored designs in DXF which Altium Designer can use to bring them into your designs, templates, or components.

Watch and enjoy this video here: http://altiumvideos.live.altium.com/#Detail/1223/True

Announcement: Altium Designer 13.2 available (10 May 2013)

We are pleased to provide you with the second update of Altium Designer 2013. You can choose to update your existing installation or use the AD13 Installer (download here).

This update includes some long awaited features, lots of enhancements and the continuation of performance and stability fixes.

Some highlights of this release

ActiveBOM

ActiveBOM is a new tool that facilitates real-time cost estimation and tracking for a board design, by giving the designer a clear picture of cost and availability of all items associated with that design. Also see ActiveBOM FAQ for detailed insights and answers to common questions.

Live Drill Drawing Table

A WYSIWYG live drill table that dynamically updates in real-time, as hole-containing objects such as pads and vias are placed on and removed from the PCB design.

PCB Design View

A specific, scalable view that allows the designer to place a snapshot of any rectangular shaped region of the current board, or another board, anywhere within the workspace.

Define Output Filenames using Expressions

Support for user-defined output filenames using a concatenation of special strings and user-defined project parameters.

Vault-based Simulation Models

Bringing support for defining and releasing simulation models to an Altium Vault. A simulation model is defined within a SimModel file (*.SimModel) on the design-side, and linked to a Simulation Model Item within a target vault.

Enhanced Vault Searching

The Vault search feature has been substantially upgraded, with the introduction of Grouping, Column-based filtering, and a powerful Filter panel.

A new Altium Vault Server and Personal Vault installation is also required to take advantage of these improvements. See Upgrading to Version 1.1 for important information about upgrading your existing AVS.

 

AD13 new update ?!

We are in the final stages of the 13.2 beta and planning the public release during the coming week. We have also made good progress with the runtime error 216 on exit and we are looking forward to getting this update into the hands of our of wider user community.