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Altium
Designer 24
Review by Tim Blythman
Each year brings a new version of Altium Designer. We have spent a while trying out Altium
Designer 24 and exploring its latest features. This review covers our findings and includes
support for the exciting new 3D-MID technology.
A
ltium Designer 24 is the latest version of
the Altium Designer EDA (electronic
design automation) software,
released late last year. We use Altium
Designer to create practically all our
PCB designs, so we are pretty familiar with it. We tested version 24.0.1
for this review.
As has been the case for a few
years, incremental updates have been
released for Altium Designer on a
monthly basis. Sometimes, very new
and upcoming features can be enabled
for trial (‘beta’) by enabling an option
in the Advanced Settings dialog.
Some of the new features we tested
may have been available for a while,
even appearing in versions of Altium
Designer from late last year. We always
seem to find some new tools or options
that are handy and helpful.
The web page at www.altium.com/
altium-designer/whats-new lists
changes by version. You can also
see planned future features at www.
altium.com/altium-designer/coming-
soon
Depending on your beta settings,
product access level and installed
version, some of these features may
or may not be available. More information about features and their corresponding subscription requirements
can be found at www.altium.com/
altium-designer/subscription
We quite like the simplified Gerber
export dialog box that we noted in our
review of Altium Designer 23 (March
2023; siliconchip.au/Article/15697).
There is now also a simplified License
Management page, shown in Screen
1 below. It includes only the most
relevant information, and the option
to hide expired licenses means there
aren’t any unnecessary items that you
have to scroll past.
It’s a small change, but making the
simple tasks easy is always helpful.
PCB CoDesign
Many of our projects use Altium
Designer for the basic steps of ‘schematic capture’ (drawing a circuit diagram on a computer), PCB layout and
Gerber export. Gerber files are what
PCB manufacturers use to produce
circuit boards.
Nearly all of our designs are handled
by one person from concept to completion due to their relative simplicity.
However, more complex designs might
require a large team working together
to complete a PCB.
Screen 1: the License
Management screen
has been simplified
to make the most
useful buttons and
data visible. Expired
licenses can be
hidden, and essential
status information is
displayed clearly.
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siliconchip.com.au
Screen 3: it’s easy to import a STEP file into Altium Designer
to visualise how a 3D model of a mechanical part, such as
an enclosure, will fit the PCB. The 3D view can even detect
conflicts and collisions.
Keeping the efforts of many workers synchronised is not a simple task,
and Altium has released tools over the
last few years to keep things such as
component libraries consistent and up
to date. The Altium 365 Workspace is
one example.
PCB CoDesign allows multiple people to work on the same PCB without
causing conflicts, by resolving and
handling differences within the Workspace (see Screen 2).
Electronic design automation
You might think that Altium
Designer is just about PCB design, but
it can do much more than that, even if
that is what we usually use it for. The
concept of electronic design automation (EDA) stretches beyond just PCB
design, and Altium Designer incorporates several features in addition
to designing circuit diagrams and circuit boards.
For electronic engineers, mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD)
typically encompasses mechanical
parts like enclosures and heatsinks.
MCAD is well-covered by other programs. Our review of Altium Designer
21 (January 2021, siliconchip.au/
Article/14705) noted software plugins
that allow the integration of mechanical designs into Altium projects.
Supported MCAD tools include
Solidworks, PTC Creo, Autodesk
Inventor, Autodesk Fusion 360 and
Siemens NX. These plugins work
both ways, allowing electronic and
mechanical engineers to see how their
respective designs mesh together. The
siliconchip.com.au
Screen 4: a STEP file representing the PCB can be exported
for use in 3D modelling programs, in this case a populated
Breadboard PSU PCB with all components present. You can
also export the PCB without 3D components.
plugins allow changes to be easily seen
and acted upon.
Even if you aren’t a user of one of
the fully-featured MCAD programs
Altium Designer supports, you can
still do simple things like importing
and exporting 3D models to see if they
mechanically align with the PCB.
With many parts suppliers now providing 3D models of their offerings, it’s
easy to validate a design’s complete
assembly without having to buy all the
parts first. 3D printers are now commonplace, so this feature will simplify
the checking of custom parts before
they are even 3D printed.
If you have a STEP file, checking
it is as easy as using the Place → 3D
Body menu selection. The object can
be positioned and rotated to check its
alignment with other parts. You can
even change the colour or transparency to help visualise how the parts
combine.
Screen 3 shows our Pico Analyser
PCB being aligned with a model of
its Jiffy box in the Altium Designer
3D viewer.
Conversely, you can export a 3D
model of the PCB itself; this can
include or exclude 3D component bodies, which would be much the same as
Screen 2: an example of the PCB CoDesign
interface from Altium.
Australia's electronics magazine
August 2024 65
the model being either a populated or
unpopulated PCB.
This can be handy if you want to
design an enclosure around an existing PCB design or test a PCB’s fit into
an enclosure.
Screen 4 shows an exported STEP
file placed into a 3D printing program,
with all components included. We’ve
even heard of people 3D-printing the
shape of the PCB so that they can test
its fit into an enclosure before the fabricated PCB arrives!
Many electronics products rely on
wiring harnesses as part of their construction, and now Altium Designer
can be used to design and lay out
wiring harnesses. Harnesses can also
be incorporated into a multi-board
design. We’ll discuss the Harness
Designer feature of Altium Designer
24 later.
Another emerging technology in the
EDA field is 3D-MID, a 3D fabrication
technique that blurs the line between
PCB and enclosure.
3D-MID
Our 2021 review also covered
Altium Designer’s support for flexible
and mixed (combining rigid and flexible) PCBs. Many PCB manufacturers
(including those accessible to hobbyists) can now produce flexible PCBs,
and they are clearly useful when space
in an enclosure is tight or a rigid PCB
is not feasible.
Altium Designer 24 introduces support for 3D-MID (three-dimensional
mechatronic integrated device) technology. At the time of writing, the
3D-MID feature is at the beta stage
and must be specifically enabled as a
beta feature.
With a 3D-MID design, the substrate to which components are fitted
is a 3D plastic part instead of a flat or
flexible PCB. The part could be 3D
printed (in the case of a prototype) or
made by injection moulding for mass
production.
The traces are added directly to the
part using a technique known as laser
direct structuring (LDS). In LDS, the
plastic contains additives that are activated by a laser, which scans over the
part after it has been formed. The activated regions can then be selectively
plated with a conductive trace material such as copper, nickel or gold.
Solder paste is applied, and components are mounted to the traces using
traditional solder reflow technology,
supplemented by adhesives as needed.
The substrate material is
chosen to work with the
required temperatures for
reflow.
Effectively, the enclosure or other
mechanical part replaces or supplements the PCB. This sort of technology is already used to embed simple PCB-trace circuitry like antennas and touch sensors into devices
like mobile phones. Still, we expect
more complex applications will be
developed.
Altium Designer 24’s 3D-MID design
process is not too different from that
needed for standard 2D PCB designs.
A circuit diagram is drawn, and
component footprints and packages are selected, just as in a design
intended for a PCB. But instead of a
layer stackup, a 3D STEP or IGES file
is imported and used as the substrate.
Like a 2D design, the following
steps are to place the components,
connect them with traces and validate
the layout with a design rules check,
although we anticipate there will be
new factors and design constraints to
be considered. For example, the component’s orientation in 3D space must
be considered as it definitely affects
the placement step.
We expect that simulation of the
RF and emissions performance would
Screen 5: 3D-MID is a new technology that allows customised 3D
parts to be used in place of standard PCB substrates, including
flexible and mixed substrates. Altium Designer’s 3D-MID tool
allows a circuit to be translated into a 3D-MID design, which can be
exported for use in the LDS process that creates conductive traces
on the surface of a plastic part.
Screen 6: the View Options tab of the View Configuration panel
allows the 2D and 3D views of a PCB design to be customised.
This makes it easier to visually check the design and see what it
would look like with different solder mask and silkscreen printing
colours.
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siliconchip.com.au
need to happen during the design of
the 3D part, and possibly again once
the components and traces have been
laid out.
Once the layout is finalised, production files are produced. Instead of Gerber files, the output is a file that can
be used by the LDS process. Screen 5
is a sample 3D-MID design from the
Altium website.
Support for features like vias
appears to be limited at this stage.
Still, we expect this concept will be
a rapidly evolving aspect of EDA and
look forward to a time when custom-
metallised 3D parts are as cheap and
accessible as PCBs are.
Viewing options
Even if you don’t have the means
to undertake a 3D-MID design, there
are some enhancements to the 3D PCB
viewer that make it easier to understand how a standard PCB fits together
in both 2D and 3D space.
In the View Configuration panel
(accessible from the Panels menu),
the View Options tab has options to
customise both 2D and 3D views. Various colour schemes can be chosen
so you can see how your PCB looks
with different silkscreen and solder
mask colours.
Screen 6 shows the View Options
tab. You can tweak the transparency
to see how the various layers align,
seeing things that would typically
not be visible in a regular 3D perspective. Similar options also apply
to 2D views.
Section View
You can also use the Section View
(View → Toggle Section View when
in 3D mode) to look at cross-sections,
achieving views that would not otherwise be visible. Screen 7 shows the
PCB from our ESR Test Tweezers using
Section View.
The view can also be customised
from the Section View tab of the View
Configuration panel. The sectioning
planes are changed by simply dragging
the arrows in the viewport.
Harness Designer
Altium often presents webinars
aimed at demonstrating new and
upcoming features, including those
available through the beta program.
A webinar we saw during our
review of Altium Designer 23 noted
the then-upcoming Harness Designer
siliconchip.com.au
Screen 7: Section View allows further inspection of a PCB design by allowing
sections to be ‘cut’ through a design. The View Configuration panel also offers a
Section View tab for customising that view.
feature. Wiring harnesses are another
facet of EDA, and the Harness Designer
allows harnesses to be created as a
standalone project or as part of a multiboard assembly.
Altium Designer 24 allows the creation of a harness design project as
a PrjHar file. Just as a PCB project
typically contains a schematic file
(SchDoc) and a PCB file (PcbDoc), the
harness project has a wiring diagram
(WirDoc file) and a layout drawing
(LdrDoc file), with roughly analogous
roles to the schematic and PCB files.
Altium Designer Draftsman can then
create views, bills of materials (BoMs)
and engineering drawings (HarDwf
file) of a harness. Screen 8 shows these
stages of a harness design project.
Draftsman can create engineering drawings for PCBs, too, and
we covered that feature in the June
2022 review of Altium Designer 22
(siliconchip.au/Article/15348). Draftsman drawings of PCBs can include elements such as tables, 2D and 3D views,
layer stackups and bills of materials.
If there is the need to revise the documents (such as PCB or harness layout) used to create the drawings, the
Draftsman document can be updated
by simply selecting Tools → Import
Changes.
Layout Replication
We mentioned Reuse Blocks in the
Altium Designer 23 Review. Reuse
Australia's electronics magazine
Blocks are circuit snippets, usually
with circuit and PCB elements. The
block encapsulates the component
wiring and also the PCB trace layout.
It’s ideal if you use a similar component block in multiple projects.
Layout Replication is a similar concept. However, it is better suited to laying out repeated component blocks on
the same PCB rather than maintaining
a block for later use in another design.
Thus, it is accessed from within the
PCB editor.
With many designs having some
repeated elements, this feature is
bound to take some of the tedium out
of PCB layouts. Effectively, it allows
you to transfer a layout from one group
of components to another group of the
same components.
Importantly, Altium Designer looks
for the same connectivity between the
same components, so if you have copied and pasted part of a circuit diagram, layout replication is likely to
be helpful in duplicating the layout of
those parts between the copies.
You can choose how much of the
layout (such as internal and external
routing) is copied. Naturally, you can
tweak the layout afterwards if identical layouts are not appropriate due
to space or other design constraints.
A block can also duplicate the layout
of items like component designators.
Screen 9 shows the PCB Layout Replication dialog box, opened from the
August 2024 67
Tools menu. We used it to place and
route the components shown at upper
right, so they matched those at upper
left. We just had to select Target Block
1 and press the Replicate button!
We found it very easy to use and it
saved a lot of time. It can even process multiple target groups at the
same time, and the results are consistent and tidy. This is a feature we
will undoubtedly use in laying out
future designs.
series of videos, each focusing on
a specific aspect of using Altium
Designer. The videos can also be
found on the Altium Academy YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/<at>
AltiumAcademy
The Certificates section opens a
web page explaining Altium’s paid
training courses. Even if you aren’t
an Altium subscriber, you can access
much of the free content from https://
my.altium.com/
Education
Product access
The Home page of the Altium
Designer program presents various
educational and learning opportunities, as shown in Screen 10. It’s clear
that Altium wants its users to be able
to make the best use of the program’s
features.
The Design Secrets category is a
While researching this article, we
noticed that much of the online documentation states that some features
are only available at certain product
access levels. It may be the case that
certain features that we’ve described
will not be available to all users.
As we mentioned earlier, this will
depend on your beta settings, product access level and installed version.
Access to beta features is controlled
from within the Advanced Settings
window of System Preferences.
Free stuff
Some Altium content can be
accessed online for free. Videos like
those from the Altium Academy mentioned earlier can be seen on YouTube.
Altium 365 also has a free online file
viewer at www.altium.com/viewer
There is even the option of a free
trial of the Altium Designer software.
You can find out more about that at
www.altium.com/altium-designer/
free-trial
If you’re a hobbyist, Altium’s CircuitMaker software (https://circuitmaker.
com) can be used at no cost. We
reviewed it in the January 2019 issue
(siliconchip.au/Article/11378).
CircuitMaker has a similar feel to
Altium Designer and allows designs
to be easily shared with others. You
can see projects that other people
have created at https://circuitmaker.
com/Projects
Summary
Screen 8: this shows the order of the different stages of a Harness Design in
Altium Designer, from top to bottom. The top shows the wiring diagram to
which you can connect wires, connectors and splices. The second document
shows the layout drawing, while the final products are the engineering drawings
that can be created by Draftsman for production.
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Silicon Chip
Australia's electronics magazine
Altium continues to add useful features to the Altium Designer software
and provides great support to educate
current and potential users.
Many of the new features target
advanced users who create multilayer PCB designs with high-speed
requirements and advanced constraints. That’s often very different
to our own PCBs, which are nearly
always straightforward two-layer
affairs. But we always find something
useful to us in new Altium Designer
releases.
Layout Replication is a tool we
are sure we will use in the future.
The numerous 3D import and export
options, tools and viewers are very
handy for checking, visualising and
validating a design as it develops.
The concept of 3D-MID is fascinating, and we imagine it will find
many novel and interesting applications. The availability of cheap, custom PCB designs has made electronics
very accessible, and we look forward
to a time when 3D-MID technology
is available to the likes of hobbyists
as well.
Visit www.altium.com/altium-
designer for more information on
Altium Designer 24.
SC
siliconchip.com.au
Screen 9: we found Layout Replication a handy tool for laying out and routing repeated groups of components. It is easy
to use, and multiple target blocks can be processed with different options. It’s now easy to produce neat PCB layouts with
repeated elements.
Screen 10: Altium Designer’s Home tab provides links to numerous educational videos and webinars. Even if you don’t
have an Altium license or subscription, much of the material is freely available online.
siliconchip.com.au
Australia's electronics magazine
August 2024 69
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