Altium Develop

What do you like best about the product?

There's nothing specific to Altium Develop that Designer doesn't already have.

What do you dislike about the product?

The lack of a license management page in Altium Develop was irritating. The component template is restricted in the current package and should be available in the most basic plan. Updating symbols forces reordering of pins in the schematic symbol. The flex layer stack-up doesn't allow for both soldermask and coverlay, making it difficult to edit coverlay. Rather than automatically propagating, coverlay and board regions get deleted with minor changes to the layer stack-up. I can't reorder graphics on fabrication or assembly drawings, making it hard to add a confidential watermark. The git integration is abysmal, affecting back-up on a secondary server. The setup was irritating with buggy licensing and ambiguous information about whether Designer, Develop, and Develop were the same thing.

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

Altium Designer has some useful features such as where traces and vias automatically maintain the required clearance, the release mechanism, the design check, the verification check, the rules manager, the components library - but I don't believe the latter is unique to Altium.

What do you like best about the product?

cost and functionality.
UI UX good, pricing is good,
The differential track placement is good. Integrated SI and PDN is good

What do you dislike about the product?

support is awful. The cloud only aspect created a lot of headaches. Additionally, altium not knowing their product offerings prior to launch was awful for customers. Had no idea what we were buy/getting quotes for

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

building complex high speed boards

What do you like best about the product?

Easy way to store,share, have revision control, compare revs of projects.

What do you dislike about the product?

It was difficult to find the correct process to migrate from Github to A365. I kept getting errors. It turned out that the folder structure I was using was too deep. I had to setup the folders to load my projects from closer to my root C: drive.

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

Helps to have engineers use the proper repository system. With A365 they are able to easily use and update the projects from the repository and save it to the repository, instead of saving the project on their local computer without using the shared repository.

What do you like best about the product?

Collaboration with cross functional disciplines.

What do you dislike about the product?

It's a bit slow at times, technical support also lags when an issue arises.

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

Allowing the team to stay in tune with the projects and collaborate effectively.

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.