Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Announcement: Altium Designer 15.0

What's New in Altium Designer

Each release of Altium Designer continues the process of keeping you plugged into a continuous stream of new features, technologies and enhancements, designed to make it easier for you to create your next generation electronics designs. This page introduces new features as they are released so have a browse through – you may just find a feature or enhancement you have missed or overlooked. A design gem that may well prove an invaluable productivity-booster!

We're excited about the new features and functionality included in each and every update to Altium Designer, in addition to a host of other enhancements, crunched bugs and implemented ideas, and we're sure that you'll be excited too! And remember, keeping current with your Altium Subscription gives you access to new cool features and enhancements in future updates, as soon as they are released from development.

For each Altium Designer update, its release date and version is presented, along with a link to the associated page of release notes. Its key features are highlighted with links to more detailed pages where available. For information on which features were introduced in previous versions of the software, refer to the page Altium Designer What's New - Previous Releases.

 For information on installing the software, see System Installation, Licensing & Management.

Altium Designer 15.0

Released:
             17 November 2014 - Version: 15.0.7

This update to Altium Designer delivers a powerful array of new features and enhancements to the core technologies, while also addressing many issues raised by customers through the AltiumLive Community's BugCrunch system. In total, over 20 new features and over 120 fixes and enhancements across the software as a whole. Another sound release that reinforces Altium's ongoing commitment to providing you with a world class design solution.

Release Notes for Altium Designer Version 15.0

Altium Designer 15 - What's it all about?

Altium Designer 15.0 is a major update. It is not possible to update from Altium Designer 14.3, a new installation is required. You have the choice to continue with your current version or to install Altium Designer 15.0 to access the latest features. Alternatively, have both installed side-by-side, and use the version that best suits your needs.

PCB xSignals

This new feature specifically enables the correct treatment of a high-speed signal path as just that - a path for a signal to travel between a source and destination, through termination components as well as y-splits. This means DDR3/4 memory routing and delay and phase tuning of the bus signals just got a whole lot easier.

Feature in-depth...

xSignals

Enhanced Length Phase and Delay Tuning

Solder Mask Expansion Enhancements

With this new release, it is now possible to specify different values for solder mask expansions for top and bottom layers. The capability of defining separate layer expansions for pads and vias is available through the matching properties dialogs, the PCB Inspector panel etc, and can be applied on a Design Rule basis.

Feature in-depth...

 

Polygon Enhancements

Based on extensive feedback from designers, there have been a number of improvements and changes to polygon pours. Shelving of polygons has returned and the display of modified polygons has changed to make it easy to identify an edited polygon. Vertex manipulation has also been simplified, with the default move mode for both corner and center vertex set to unconstrained movement.

Feature in-depth...

OLE Object Support in PCB Documents

The PCB Editor now supports embedding OLE objects, such as Word or Excel documents, into a PCB document (Place » Object from File). As an OLE object it remains linked back to the source document, and an edit session can be launched from the PCB workspace.

Feature in-depth...

 

Support for Rectangular Pad Holes

Adding to Altium Designer's pad hole options of round, square and slotted definitions, this release includes enhanced hole support through the addition of Rectangular shaped holes. Rectangular pad holes are ultimately routed, punched or cut out, depending on board fabricator capabilities.

Feature in-depth...

Separate 2D & 3D View Orientations

2D and 3D view modes are now completely separate, each view mode retains the last-used orientation, zoom level, and layer configurations.

Feature in-depth...

 

IPC-2581 Support

The IPC-2581 output format is a new standard from the IPC (Institute for Printed Circuits) that is now supported by Altium Designer. A significant advantage of IPC-2581 is that it generates a single XML file which is capable of including all information needed to fabricate and assemble the printed circuit board assembly.

Feature in-depth...

Watch video...

IPC-2851 Consortium Website

Gerber X2 Support

This release also includes the new Gerber X2 fabrication output format. Gerber X2 is an advanced extension of the existing Gerber RS-274X standard and provides an improved manufacturing output format that is backward compatible with existing workflows, software, and fabrication equipment.

Feature in-depth...

Watch video...

Ucamco Website

 

IDX Support

Building Altium Designer's strong ECAD - MCAD integration, is the new IDX extension. This extension implements ProStep's Electrical Design, Mechanical Design (EDMD) standard for data exchange, based on the XML protocol. This collaborative standard is most commonly referred to by the name of the exchange file format – IDX (Incremental Design Exchange format).

Feature in-depth...

Exporting to IDF in Unicode Format

Altium Designer 15.0 sees an enhancement to the IDF Exporter, with support for generating files using Unicode (supporting the use of non-ASCII symbols). An example of the use of this aspect of the exporter, is when ensuring the generated files meet the compliancy requirements of the GOST standards.

Feature in-depth...

Reorganized Import & Export Menus

Both the Schematic and PCB Editors now have all of their Importers and Exporters available through the File » Import and File » Export menu entries. The Save As and Save Copy As commands are now reserved for Altium formats only.

Feature in-depth...

Output Job Editor Enhancements

This release includes several enhancements to the Output Job Editor that make navigating and making selections within the OutJob generator listings much easier and more capable. The improvements include bulk OutJob enable/disable capabilities, scrollable window lists and drag & drop job reordering.

Feature in-depth...

 

Upgraded Duplicate UID Correction

With this release, Altium Designer’s schematic compiler now detects duplicate UniqueIDs for all common circuit elements. Duplicate UIDs can be corrected and reset through a single command during editing, and are also automatically checked and corrected during the schematic loading process.

Feature in-depth...

System & Performance Enhancements

Altium Designer 15.0 delivers a number of system and performance-related improvements that collectively increase efficiency, while enhancing your overall design experience with the software.

Feature in-depth...

 

Vault Connection Enhancements

Altium Designer 15.0 sees enhancements to the way in which you connect to your Altium Vault. The option for automatic future sign-in on starting Altium Designer is now more obvious, and you also have the ability to remember, and automatically reuse, a chosen environment configuration. Together, these features allow you to get back in to your vault as if you'd never left.

Feature in-depth...

Controlling Parameter Visibility for Vault Components

Altium Designer 15.0 brings you control over the visibility of parameters - or more specifically, their values - when placing vault-based components into your designs from the Vaults or Libraries panels. This facilitates the Visible On Add concept, long enjoyed by users of Database Libraries.

Feature in-depth...

 

Parameter List Templates

Altium Designer 15.0 brings with it a stand-out enhancement to the Component Library Editor, by way of customizable parameter list templates. These simple, humanly-readable files can be built with a list of required parameters, that can then be loaded into the CmpLib editor with a single click.

Feature in-depth...

Parameter-based Name Templates

Parameter-based name templates allow you to precisely rename your components, based on the currently defined values of parameters available to those components in the CmpLib file. Include one or more parameters into the naming template using the format [<ParameterName>], for example CMP-[Part Number]-[Value]-{0001}.

Feature in-depth...

 

True Variant Enhancements

Variants now support the selection of an entirely different component for a variant, referred to as an Alternate Part. A number of features have been added to support this capability, including DRC support for stacked alternate parts, improved output generation, and support for PCB re-annotation.

Feature in-depth...

Vivado Toolchain Improvements

The recent versions of the Xilinx Vivado toolchain are now supported by Altium Designer 15. These are detected and registered by the system, and their path can be manually entered in the FPGA Preferences settings. The support includes Vivado’s updated Checkpoint behavior.

Feature in-depth...

 

Schematic Smart Wire

Back by popular demand, when a perpendicular wire is placed across multiple component pins and then dragged away from the pins, individual wires are created between each pin and the wire being dragged.

GOST Compliant BOM Templates

Building on the support for the GOST standards (technical standards maintained by the Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification (EASC)), three GOST-specific Excel BOM templates have been added. More information is available on Altium's Russian website.

 

WEBENCH support for adding a new wave to SimView

The WEBENCH® Altium Connector Extension, which interfaces to Texas Instruments WEBENCH® Designer, has been enhanced by allowing a new wave plot such as that for a dB(Vout/Vin) plot to be passed (and updated) by WEBENCH for the design’s SimView plot.