On December 13, 2023, Altium released a new version of its flagship PCB design software – Altium Designer 24.
Updates and new functionalities in Altium Designer are regularly delivered, approximately on a monthly basis. Therefore, the new version of the software is a direct continuation and expansion of the previous ones. Of course, with the new release, a range of new features has been introduced, making the work of electronic designers more convenient and efficient.
The main changes introduced in the current version of the software include:
This release brings a revitalized approach to collaborative design, allowing multiple designers to work concurrently on a PCB in a far more streamlined fashion while greatly minimizing discrepancies and potential reworks. The PCB editor’s new PCB CoDesign feature offers a Git-like approach, with version control provided courtesy of your connected Workspace. All users access the same Workspace project and commit their changes to a single master branch. Using Altium Designer’s Commenting and Tasks features, you can decide, with your fellow designers, which areas of the board (or layers, nets, or components) you will each work on. As one designer makes a commit, all other collaborators will receive a notification, with the ability to update their local copy with those committed changes before saving their own changes back to the Workspace. A new-look Compare and Merge panel keeps you apprised of changes to the design, reflecting differences between your local incarnation and that of the last commit. Color coding lets you quickly see which objects have been added, modified, and removed. You can also show changes directly within the PCB design space, giving you even greater visual feedback of the comparison. If any conflicts have been detected between objects on the board, such as components, nets and polygons (touched by yourself and another designer), you can choose whether to keep your local changes or accept the remote changes of the latest commit (or for polygon pours, combine objects), then merge to confidently resolve the design overlap.
In this release, a new approach to defining design constraints has been implemented in the form of the Constraint Manager. The Constraint Manager gives both electrical and layout engineers access to the same document-based, spreadsheet-like user interface for the management of net constraints across the design. Accessed from the schematic and PCB editors, the Constraint Manager allows defining electrical clearances between net classes in the form of a class-to-class matrix, as well as physical and electrical rules for nets, differential pairs, and xNets (user-defined signal paths on the schematic side) and their classes. The Constraint Sets expedite the process of defining the constraints for objects that should have the same set of constraints. Also, the Constraint Manager is now command central for managing definitions of differential pairs, as well as net and diff pair classes; there is no need to use design directives on the schematic side for this.
Ansys CoDesigner facilitates the bi-directional push/pull of design changes between the two domains. From Altium Designer, changes to layer stack and materials, components and primitives are detected and can be applied in AEDT. From AEDT, proposed changes to layer stack and materials can be pushed through the EDB file and detected/applied in Altium Designer. ECAD and simulation engineers can communicate with the commenting system, with each comment thread attached to a specific component in a design. Simulation results can be pushed from AEDT to the Altium 365 Workspace and associated with a revision of the design, with the ability to view through the Workspace’s browser interface and preview within Altium Designer.
Altium Designer 24 brings support for direct layout on a 3D substrate in support of 3-Dimensional Mechatronic Integrated Devices (3D-MID) designs. The 3D-MID manufacturing process uses a laser to etch the circuit pattern directly onto the surface of a 3D substrate, which then undergoes a standard metalization treatment to build up that pattern into conductive pathways. This process, known as Laser Direct Structuring (LDS), enables the circuit to be integrated into the structure of the final product.
Courtesy of a new editor and document type (*.PcbDoc3D) you can place standard surface mount components onto a 3D substrate, route traces along the surface of that substrate, and place regions to complete the layout as required. The completed design can then be exported in the file format required by the LDS manufacturing process.
The PCB Layout Replication tool gives you the ability to replicate the layout for repetitive blocks of circuitry in a flat PCB design. As an informal reuse feature, this tool is a perfect fit when you need to quickly replicate placement of a group of components to another group of the same, not-yet-placed components with the same connections. On the PCB document, a fragment of the captured design to be replicated (the Source Block) can be selected, and then that layout can be applied to each fragment of the design that is detected to be a match (Target Blocks). You have full control over which target block(s) to apply replication to and can specify what that replication should include besides component placement (e.g., routing objects).
This release brings support for any angle differential pair routing, with a new "Any Angle" corner style added to the configurable properties of the Interactive Differential Pair Router. Routing your diff pairs in this mode supports symmetrical pad entry and gap change and, when holding the Shift key, enables routing using tangent arcs.
Altium Designer 24, of course, brings many smaller changes, such as improved layer stack report, enhanced importers from xDx Designer and Xpedition, or support for long file path names. The complete list of all changes introduced in the new version of the software is available in the documentation section on the www.altium.com website. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, further improvements to existing features or new functionalities will be systematically introduced into the program in subsequent updates.