Moving the design through to manufacture

The smooth transition from design to manufacture plays a crucial role in the success of an electronic product. Delays in component procurement and miscommunication with manufacturers can lead to delays and cost overruns. Your product can be late to market, or miss the boat altogether. Altium Designer helps bridge the gap between design and manufacture, and allows you to actively manage the generation and verification of all manufacturing data.

By linking design to manufacture, Altium Designer saves time and minimizes costly design errors. You can work efficiently with your manufacturing partners to ensure your manufacturing files are fault-free and completely ready for efficient fabrication and assembly.

Altium Designer integrates complete manufacturing file verification and editing into the design environment, allowing you to load and inspect all manufacturing data generated by the system.

Altium Designer gives you the capability to link the design and manufacturing processes, and edit and verify your manufacturing files before they leave your desktop. This allows you to actively manage the transition to board fabrication and assembly, and ensures that your design can be successfully manufactured.

Altium Designer integrates complete manufacturing file verification and editing into the design environment, allowing you to load and inspect all manufacturing data generated by the system. This allows you to check for, and automatically fix, a number of common fabrication problems, such as starved thermals and solder bridging, before the design leaves your desktop, and fully-configure the panelization and rout paths for the board.

By linking design to manufacture, Altium Designer saves time and minimizes costly design errors. You can work efficiently with your manufacturing partners to ensure your manufacturing files are fault-free and completely ready for efficient fabrication and assembly.

To manage output documents Altium Designer includes a specialized output job document (OutJob) that can be added to a project to centralize output generation.

Manufacturing an electronic product requires a multitude of output files to be generated. These can include schematic prints for the handbook, assembly drawings, fabrication files, drill files, pick-and-place files, test point reports and the Bill of Materials (BOM).

To manage these outputs Altium Designer includes a specialized output job document (OutJob) that can be added to a project to centralize output generation. Any number of outputs can be configured within an output job document, and multiple output jobs can be added to a single project. Once you have defined the sets of output files you require, you can then generate all outputs in a single batch process.

Because output jobs are stored within the project, you can easily regenerate output files at any time. You can work on multiple projects simultaneously, maintaining independent output configurations and file sets for each project. Output configurations can be saved and reused in subsequent projects, allowing you to set up multiple configurations for different manufacturers and produce the correctly configured file set for each fabrication and assembly house.

Altium Designer provides a wide choice of outputs to allow you to generate appropriate files for any manufacturing requirements.

Typically you will need to work with a variety of electronics manufacturers, even within a single project. Prototypes and production runs may be manufactured in completely different facilities, and each project will have its unique set of challenges dictating different manufacturing techniques. In order to efficiently work with multiple manufacturers, you must be able to tailor your fabrication and assembly file formats to suit.

Altium Designer provides a wide choice of outputs to allow you to generate appropriate files for any manufacturing requirements. This includes support for all popular Gerber formats, with full control over generated layers and the manual listing or automatic embedding of aperture information.

Altium Designer also supports the emerging ODB++ manufacturing file format. ODB++ is the most intelligent CAD/CAM format available today, capturing all CAD/EDA database, assembly and PCB fabrication knowledge in one single, unified database.

NC drilling and routing files, automatic pick and place files, and all other relevant manufacturing files can be easily generated, checked and edited from within Altium Designer, giving you complete versatility and security in moving your design through to manufacture.

Altium Designer allows you to completely configure the information and format of Bills of Materials (BOM), and generate BOM listings in a variety of formats.

Providing an accurate listing of parts for your project is essential to efficient procurement and board fabrication. Altium Designer allows you to completely configure the information and format of Bills of Materials (BOM), and generate BOM listings in a variety of formats.

In Altium Designer, BOM generation dynamically extracts parts data from your design, including information from database parts libraries. This ensures that the BOM is always accurate and delivers the most current information to your manufacturers.

BOMs can be produced in a variety of formats for import into virtually any manufacturing system. Generate your BOM as a formatted XML spreadsheet, an Excel worksheet based on a defined template, or basic CSV file. You can even generate the BOM in HTML format for web distribution.

With all formats you have complete control over the fields included and the sorting of data. BOM generation also supports assembly variants, allowing you to generate data for any defined board variant without having to manually edit BOM values.

With Altium Designer you can precisely define the mix of PCB layers you want to print, set the scaling and orientation, and see exactly how it will look on the page before you print it.

Good documentation in the form of print outputs of your schematics and PCB layout is essential for smooth progress through the manufacture and test process. Altium Designer lets you take complete control of the print process and generate precise views of all your design documents.

With Altium Designer you can precisely define the mix of PCB layers you want to print, set the scaling and orientation, and see exactly how it will look on the page before you print it. This allows you to easily create custom printouts for fabrication proofs, mechanical output, documentation, assembly, etc.

In each printout you define exactly the layers and options you want to print. Also, for each printed PCB layer you can selectively turn off and set the print mode (draft or final) for each object type. You can even save a print in the Windows Enhanced MetaFile (EMF) graphics format for inclusion in external reports, manuals and documentation.

You can also include prints of simulation and signal integrity waveforms in your design documentation, as well as a range of configurable project reports that include information such as component cross referencing and project hierarchy.

Altium Designer offers extensive interface support for a wide range of mechanical CAD tools.

The ability to transfer data to and from mechanical CAD tools is crucial in taking an electronic circuit and turning it into a finished product. In many of today's designs board-mounted components such as sockets, switches, display modules and keypads must mate seamlessly with cases and mechanical interfaces. Altium Designer offers extensive interface support for a wide range of mechanical CAD tools.

With Altium Designer you can import or export both DXF and native AutoCADŽ DWG files directly from the schematic or PCB editor. Altium Designer also includes bidirectional support for reading and writing in IDF, making it easy to bring in board shape definitions, and transfer out the assembled PCB.

Both the VRML and IGES formats enjoy extensive support in the 3D mechanical CAD domain. Altium Designer allows you to include 3D information for components, such as component body shapes for automatic extrusion, or full VRML or IGES models. You can then use Altium Designer's PCB 3D viewer to render an accurate 3D model of your board, and export the complete assembly as an IGES file.

Altium Designer supports secure collaboration with all stakeholders by providing a powerful Smart PDF wizard and a free Viewer Edition.

As you move from design through to manufacture, you need to be able to share your design data with a number of stakeholders who may not be directly involved in the design process. These can include test engineers, engineering management, documentation specialists, manufacturers and clients. Static images or prints are not easily navigable, and providing source design files will not be an option unless the recipients have the application to open them. Not to mention the security issues!

Altium Designer supports secure collaboration with all stakeholders by providing a powerful Smart PDF wizard that allows you to generate a portable and navigable view of your schematic and PCB data. With Smart PDF you can package your entire project or selected design files as a PDF document that can be viewed on any system with AdobeŽ ReaderŽ installed. The Smart PDF is bookmarked to provide complete navigation of the design, with the ability to browse and highlight components and nets in both schematic sheets and the PCB layout.

To provide a higher level of interaction, Altium Designer can be licensed as a free Viewer Edition for deployment in situations where stakeholders need the ability to open and interrogate any Altium Designer document. A Viewer Edition license allows read-only access to Altium Designer files, with full access to the navigation, querying and reporting features of the Altium Designer environment.

Smart PDF generation and the Altium Designer Viewer Edition combine to provide a flexible and powerful means of collaborating with everyone involved in bringing your design project to completion.

Go back to the Altium Designer 6.0 Product Overview or select a process from above.