Update (4) for Altium Designer 10 available

This update focuses primarily on enhancements to using vaults, and further addresses some of the crashes that have been reported. And let’s not forget some more BugCrunch reports that have been stomped on. These include:

1. Four-way junctions are no longer optimized out of schematics and will no longer be replaced by a cross over.
2. "Duplicate Rule" menu item has been added to the right click menu in the "PCB Rules and Constraints Editor".
3. DRC Clearance Violations now show the actual distance compared to the rule distance in the text summary.

 

Update to Altium Hobart vault - Microchip

These new components can be found in the Altium Hobart Vault and include the following families:

PIC10 and PIC12

These are Microchip’s classic 8-bit MCU devices covering baseline/mid-range architecture levels.  They are 6- to 64-pin, low-cost, small form factor MCUs utilizing a 12-bit instruction word for baseline (PIC10/PIC12) and 14-bit for mid-range (PIC12). They join the already released collection of other 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit PIC microcontrollers and digital signal controllers.

Thermal management, mixed-signal and linear devices

These families add to Microchip’s analog components already released (see Power Management). Thermal management includes temperature sensors (voltage, logic and serial output) and brushless DC fan controllers. Mixed-signal covers ADCs, F/V converters and DACs. Linear devices completes the group with amplifiers and comparators.

Interface and wireless

Microchip’s interface device family covers CAN, Ethernet, infrared, LIN transceivers and I/O expanders. Wireless includes RF devices and KEELOQ encoders and decoders.

AltiumLive Subscribers can use these components by connecting to the Hobart Vault directly from Altium Designer 10 using their AltiumLive credentials, or by browsing to the AltiumLive Design Content area and selecting the Altium Hobart Vault.

 

Shanghai Content Center is pleased to announce our very first library release!

These new components can be found in the Altium Hobart Vault and for this release, we have included the following families:

ColdFire

Freescale first released the Coldfire family during the mid nineties as the next generation of 68k processors for embedded applications. The ColdFire family today spans a broad product range, from ultra low-power solutions targeting mobile products, to feature rich MCU and MPU devices at speeds up to 266 Mhz.

Kinetis ARM

Freescale’s 32-bit Kinetis microcontrollers are based on the latest ARM Cortex-M4 core and include 90nm thin-film storage flash memory technology. The range of MCUs in the family provide scalable performance, mixed signal integration and ultra-low power consumption making them ideal for consumer and industrial applications.

AltiumLive Subscribers can use these components by connecting to the Hobart Vault directly from Altium Designer 10 using their AltiumLive credentials, or by browsing to the AltiumLive Design Content area and selecting the Altium Hobart Vault.

Why not take a few minutes and browse through this new content, and explore the existing content that is available in both the Shanghai and Hobart vaults.

 

Update for Altium Designer 10

Just  released a new update for Altium Designer 10.

This release focuses primarily on developments to the system components, including the addition of more preferences that can be imported/exported. And we’ve also fixed another couple of BugCrunch reports:

1. Schematics now display text correctly in all supported languages and simulations work correctly regardless of the machines language settings.
2. CAMtastic Reload layer data command no longer kills AD10.

These are two issues that were reported and verified by our development team. And rather than send them through the voting process, we accepted them directly for fixing. So in this case, you didn’t need to vote - we just wanted to crunch!

We have also been working on the crashes being reported in the forums as a high priority for fixing. With this release, we have added the ability to send crash reports when these failures happen. Crash reports give us vital information about what happened at the time of the crash - so completing these crash reports will help us in identifying what is causing these ongoing issues. When the failure occurs, just click on the Send Report button, and complete the details, with as much information as possible about what you were doing at the time of the crash. Once it is sent, also post on the forum so that we can identify the report and engage with you on further information that may be required.

 

Altium moving HQ and R&D to China - Its True!

This was posted on the other forum by Clare Jolly, confirming details that were being tossed around. I know that some can't get the Altium Live messages yet:
*******************************
Hey guys,


We are excited to confirm that the rumors are true! We are in fact moving our company’s HQ and core development activities to Shanghai.


As you can appreciate we were bound by certain ASX regulations, which prevented us from responding to your posts earlier.


However, a short time ago (Tuesday afternoon Sydney time) we updated the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) with our bold plans to move our company’s HQ operations to Shanghai, China.   


You can read the ASX announcement here.


Warm regards,
Altium HQ
*****************************

The link to the ASX announcement is:
http://asx.com.au/asxpdf/20110405/pdf/41xw3rspcw7yq7.pdf

Update to Altium Designer 10

The next update for Altium Designer 10, and the first since we released the software three weeks ago.

Our strategy with Altium Designer 10 and AltiumLive is to provide users on the Subscriber Plan with updates and new content on cycles of days and weeks, not months or years.

With the recent updates to our Shanghai and Hobart vaults, and this new update to Altium Designer 10, we can demonstrate what this means in reality (always better than in theory).

With this first update, we have chosen to keep it relatively light - only two new plug-ins with a download of less than 20MB. More details are in the release notes.

This update also sees the first BugCrunch fix!

This particular BugCrunch fix relates to a problem in the clearance rules for differential pairs and was raised by Claudio Veronesi. This bug was in fact an example of one that just needed to be fixed, so it didn’t need to go through the voting process.  But kudos to Claudio for “owning” the first-ever bug crunched!

To update your Altium Designer 10 installation, go to the Plug-in page (DXP >> Plug-ins and Updates) and select “Update All”.  

 

We have released Altium Designer 1O and AltiumLive!

It’s been anticipated for some time: we are now shipping Altium Designer 10 and AltiumLive.

We will kick off the process of getting everyone with a current Subscription contract on to Altium Designer 10, and into AltiumLive, as quickly as we possibly can.

To say that we are excited by this moment is an understatement! To say that we are slightly relieved finally to release Altium Designer 10 and AltiumLive is also probably true!

We appreciate everyone’s interest, patience, and the dynamic discussions that have taken place about what we’ve had planned.

AltiumLive is the new ecosystem for professional electronics designers. It’s the new access point for Altium Designer. And, it’s the place where we will be delivering design content under subscription.

Over the coming days you will receive an email invitation from us which will give you a unique activation link for AltiumLive.

All you need to do is step through the activation process, choose your AltiumLive plan and log into AltiumLive. If you have any issues during the activation process, use the cool new LiveChat feature - one of the Altium team will be at the other end!

This Altium Designer forum will continue for now, until we complete the roll-out of AltiumLive to all of our customers. However, the new Forums in AltiumLive will also be active. We will be monitoring both through the switch over, and merge them once the roll-out is complete (and we’ll let you know when we do this, too).

The current altium.com website will also remain live until the roll-out is complete. You can take a look at http://www.live.altium.com/ and browse the altium.com web pages. You will not be able to sign in until you have been through the activation process.

Here are just some of the highlights of AltiumLive:

• Software - this section of AltiumLive contains links to download Altium Designer and our other applications.

• Content - check out our new Content Vaults that store our qualified, released, ready-to-use design entities, from the components through to loaded boards. More vaults will be added in the future. This is how content will be provided as updates from now on, to users on the new Subscriber Plan.
• Subscriptions - three new AltiumLive membership plans. If you’re currently on Altium Subscription, you automatically become a member of the new Subscriber Plan with continuity of benefits, and some new ones too.
• Rewards - you will notice that we have a new rewards system which is our AltiumLive community currency. Your points are part of your AltiumLive membership and can be used and accumulated through your actions in AltiumLive's Forum, BugCrunch, and Blog.
• BugCrunch - this is where you can directly influence the development of Altium software, the place where you can log those issues that you know about. But don’t just report them - nominate reports that others have logged, and vote for the ones that you want to see crunched!

There is so much more we could tell you, but what we would really like you to do is activate your account and explore. So keep an eye out for your AltiumLive activation link. It will be in your inbox soon.