Announcement: Altium Designer 13.3

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

This update brings a lot of general improvements and fixes based on recent feedback.

Some highlights of this release

ActiveBOM enhancements including currency selection, automatic ranking of solutions, Variant support through an OutJob file and improved supplier part choice searching.

Expressions can now be used to define the names of output folders in OutJob files.

PCB editor enhancements including the arc center point is now included as a movable hot spot and initiating the Differential Pair Routing command no longer highlights only differential pairs.

The Schematic Editors now support Unicode text, allowing any combination of characters, irrespective of current locale.

PADS and P-CAD schematic importer improvements including option to generate net labels for hidden net names.

Additional Schematic Power Object drawing styles to comply with GOST standards.

See the What's New and Release Notes for a comprehensive listing of all the fixes and enhancements.

Accessing the Update

To update your Altium Designer installation, first ensure you are using a license with valid Subscription. Proceed to the Plug-in page (DXP >> Plug-ins and Updates) and select “Update All”. If you don’t see the update, use the “Refresh” link in the top right hand corner of the Plugins page. If you have issues with patching make sure you check your antivirus program.

Note: If you are using a Private Server license or Standalone license and you have renewed your Subscription since activation, you will be required to reactivate your license to obtain this and future updates.

For those who installed directly from DVD, you can access the updates by changing a setting in preferences: System >> Installation Manager, change the Remote Repository Location to http://installation.altium.com.

If you are wanting to download the Vaults or install a new build of Altium Designer, the Installers can be downloaded from the Downloads page.

 

Announcement: Microchip, Texas Instruments and Content Requests

The Content Team has been busy developing new component libraries throughout May - in this announcement, we see the launch of TI Amplifiers & Linear support with a wide range of Op Amps, and we finally bring our Microchip 8-bit PIC coverage into line for 2013...

From Texas Instruments we have released the first Operational Amplifier libraries covering General Purpose Amplifiers (1448) and High Speed (1100). A total of 2548 new components, all available in the Altium Content Vault and as Design Content libraries available here. We have opted to release TI Op Amps as three main collections, General Purpose, High Speed and Precision Amplifiers. The 4500+ components from Precision will follow in the next release.

• Texas Instruments General Purpose Amplifiers

• Texas Instruments High Speed Amplifiers

For Microchip, we catch up on our coverage of PIC 8-bit microcontrollers, revising PIC10, PIC12, PIC16 and PIC18 collections. A total of 2620 new components released including most of the latest F devices - but please note, source data for this particular release was captured a couple months back, so there’s a follow up in the pipeline and we will address any recently released devices then. If there’s a particular new product that you want to see in the libraries sooner - we’d be happy to hear about it!

• Microchip PIC10

• Microchip PIC12

• Microchip PIC16

• Microchip PIC18

New Content Request Form

The new ‘Content Request Form’ went live during May, and we’ve already seen a flurry of requests. Thanks for taking the time! - we’re processing as many of them into our schedule as possible. You can find the new request form here.

We are also monitoring comments across the Design Content space, and aim to greatly improve the dialog there - please continue to leave your comments.

All component families from this release, along with the rest of our growing collection, can be found under Unified Components in the Design Content section of the website. You can also place these components directly from within Altium Designer via the Vault Explorer - where you will also find live supplier links and pricing information from suppliers such as Digi-Key, Farnell/Newark, Mouser and more - connect to the Altium Content Vault to explore further.

 

Altium will be at DAC for the first time in a long time!

If you are visiting DAC, or just in Austin during the conference, come by and see us, and ask the booth staff for a demo of the new features and tools with Altium Designer and the Altium Vault Server.

If you are attending the conference, make sure you visit our exhibitor page on the DAC web site at http://dac13.mapyourshow.com/5_0/exhibitor_details.cfm?exhid=ALTIUM and click the plus-sign to add Altium's booth to your show map.

Show Hours:
Monday, June 3 9:00am - 6:00pm

Tuesday, June 4 9:00am - 6:00pm

Wednesday, June 5 9:00am - 6:00pm

For more information about the Design Automation Conference visit http://www.DAC.com.