Altium Develop

What do you like best about the product?

I really like its Cloud tools, and being able to quickly pull up a PCB and look at signal lines and the like. The UI for getting around is very useful and the cloud integration is strong. Onboarding is a little tricky of having to collact a bunch of separate files bit after that things are smooth.

What do you dislike about the product?

Primary downside is the onboarding on documentation, especially when transitioning outside of Altium into it.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Key problem is easy access to relevant PCB files

What do you like best about the product?

Altium is the industry standard for PCB design. Altium 365 and ActiveBOM make sharing designs with collaborators and manufacturers easy.

What do you dislike about the product?

The user interface is unintuitive. The necessary information to complete some tasks is scattered between official documentation and unofficial support forums.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Altium Develop is the industry standard for designing PCBs and has the capabilities to design PCBs right the first time.

What do you like best about the product?

Price is more reasonable especially for small companies which require 1 license.

What do you dislike about the product?

I do not have anything I do not like. I am using Altium for 15 years.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Reasonable price for 1 design license, and unlimited viewer licences.

What do you like best about the product?

I like how it provides a centralized platform for managing hardware development projects. It improves collaboration between product,engineering and pcb design team. It keeps all the requirements,design data, tasks and documentation in one place

What do you dislike about the product?

Analytical dashboards and reporting options could be more customizable, so they provide better visibility into project KPIs and make it easier to track what matters most. It will help us to track executive level progress.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It solves the problem of fragmented hardware product development by bringing together planning, requirement management, and design collaboration in one place. This improves communication and productivity across all teams, and supports faster, more accurate development.

What do you like best about the product?

I’ve recently moved from using EAGLE to Altium, and I already find that it’s speeding up my workflow. Although it took some adapting, I can see myself using the shortcut key sequences more and more as I get comfortable.

The active BOM is a massive time-saver for me. Being able to link parts with manufacturers and distributors, and to see the cost of parts at a glance, makes a real difference.

I also love the MCAD integration - works amazingly.

It works well in my 5 year old PCB without any performance issues.

The main reason that triggered the switch to Altium was the recent introduction of Altium Develop, which comes with a much cheaper subscription than what we were quoted when we inquired in the past.

What do you dislike about the product?

My main issue right now is that, more often than not, the app logs me out whenever my PC wakes up from sleep. There’s also no way to reclaim the seat from within the app, so I always have to restart it.

The other thing thats a minor annoyance is that the whenever I import components from websites or manufacturers they layers don't match my layers and colors. I have to individually modify the layer list for each component.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Altium is proving to be a more professional software than EAGLE for us. Particularly streamlining the production process with active BOM and data generation, whereas on eagle it was a more involved workflow.

What do you like best about the product?

I appreciate Altium Develop for its visually appealing and user-friendly interface. It's packed with aided features that are integrated with tools to help design for various goals, such as signal integrity and EMI reduction, including a length matching calculator. I love the smooth integration with tools like SolidWorks, allowing ECAD to seamlessly integrate with MCAD. This is particularly useful when designing for size, form, and harnessing needs. When rules are defined correctly, it simplifies the engineer's job significantly after completing schematics and defining PCB shape and component placement. I also found setting up Altium Develop to be easy once the license is paid, and the ability to create users for visualization is a great benefit of the Develop license.

What do you dislike about the product?

Sometimes wrong rules, or the complexity of the rules equations (inclusions and exclusions). The rules are a make or break for the design after all. I've been struggling lately with grids in schematics, something happens during a design that the grids get off, and I'm struggling to match components to traces. It would be good to have almost an automated or suggested pin type and direction assessment done on the schematics to have the proper rule-check when driving pins and wrongly connected or antennas are created.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Altium Develop lets me create precise hardware designs, integrating well with mechanical constraints and tools like SolidWorks. It simplifies design with features for signal integrity and EMI reduction, and eases layout work with defined rules, though setting them correctly is crucial.

What do you like best about the product?

The main functions for designing a PCB didn’t change when moving to Altium Designer Pro, while the pricing went lower, so I didn’t need to learn the software controls all over again. The most useful tool for me is Altium 365 because it lets coworkers without a license view the schematic and PCB easily.

What do you dislike about the product?

We store our Altium files on a local network drive so everyone can access them. However, I think the network connection impacts Altium’s performance heavily, and thus the performance has been very disappointing. Also, the option to add a managed OutJob was removed when moving to Altium Develop. On top of that, the support during our prior active subscription was disappointing as well, because it took over a month to migrate our Altium 365 server to Develop.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

One important function is being able to track all the parts used in PCBs and monitor their lifecycle status, so we can respond quickly and replace components that become obsolete.

What do you like best about the product?

It shows how you can design for multiple boards and harnesses, and bring everything together in one place.

What do you dislike about the product?

Pretty much nothing. Sometimes I would like to hide that top bar of buttons like I can hide board insight. But that is honestly the worst. So I don't really dislike anything at all.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

When I need do design impedance traces of any kind, it calculates the correct track width etc.

What do you like best about the product?

Works well for a small business. Features are good. Realaviely stable

What do you dislike about the product?

Service and support has become awful. No humans able or willing to help

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Good library management. I would use KiCad but for this

What do you like best about the product?

the MPS. makes it so much easier to search for parts

What do you dislike about the product?

the 30-year-old file format implementation and the lag when the net code is running (or search)

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

more professional EDA that is well-integrated with part search. the routing helper also makes things a bit easier