New in CoDesigner

 

Altium's MCAD CoDesigner technology connects the mechanical and electrical design domains, allowing the mechanical and electronic engineers to pass the loaded PCB back and forth between the two domains.

In your Altium design software, this is achieved through an extension that loads and extracts board and component data from the PCB editor, the MCAD CoDesigner extension. In the MCAD software the Altium CoDesigner Add-in performs the same function, loading and extracting board and component data from the MCAD software.

The ECAD and the MCAD software pass design changes through an Altium Workspace, which can be hosted in the cloud on Altium 365, or on your company network using an Altium On-Prem Enterprise Server. The Workspace acts as a bridge, with both the ECAD and MCAD software connecting to it. The Workspace holds the board and component data, allowing the ECAD and MCAD engineers to continue to work autonomously, Pulling and Pushing their changes when they are ready.

  • The updates are listed in reverse order on this page - you'll find the latest updates at the top of the page.

  • The videos on this page demonstrate CoDesigner features using Altium Designer. The process of CoDesigning between other Altium design clients and your MCAD software is essentially the same.

  • For the latest announcements and engaging conversation, head on over to the MCAD CoDesigner forum.

  • Refer to the Note in the right-hand pane for information on which features will be available in your installation of MCAD CoDesigner.

 
 
 
 
 

Supported Versions

CoDesigner is under continuous development, this page outlines the changes made in each version. Because the CoDesigner extension and Add-ins can be updated separately from the update cycle of your Altium design software, this page also includes information about supported versions of Altium software, as well as the supported versions of MCAD software.

Download and install the version of the Add-in you require for your MCAD software from the MCAD CoDesigner Plugins section on the Altium Downloads page.


New in CoDesigner 3.9.0

Released: 21 August 2024 – Version 3.9.0 Hot Fix (MCAD CoDesigner extension change to version 3.9.0.2208)
Released: 8 August 2024 – Version 3.9.0 Hot Fix for Autodesk Inventor

Released: 24 July 2024 – Version 3.9.0

Feature Highlights

Support for MCAD Fillets and Chamfers 

A common approach for a mechanical engineer is to apply chamfers and fillets to shape the corners of the board. If these are defined in MCAD as a 3D entities, CoDesigner cannot transfer them to ECAD because the ECAD PCB editor defines the board shape as a 2D object (with a thickness). To help with this, when the 3.9 update of CoDesigner detects such an entity, it offers to convert them to 2D entities and embed them into the board sketch. Previously, CoDesigner warned the mechanical engineer about the existence of such entities, but they were ignored.

3D MCAD fillets and chamfers applied to a z-axis edge can be transformed to 2D by CoDesigner, and pushed to ECAD.3D MCAD fillets and chamfers applied to a z-axis edge can be transformed to 2D by CoDesigner, and pushed to ECAD.

  • Fillets and chamfers applied to the board part are supported, assembly-level fillets and chamfers are not.
  • Note that fillet and chamfer transformation is a one-way process. Once they have been converted, they can no longer be edited as 3D entities. 
  • The initial support for 3D-to-2D entity transformation is for 3D fillets and chamfers created on the vertical edges of the board shape in MCAD (edges along the Z-axis).
Fillet and chamfer support:
  • Regular (circular) fillets with a constant radius are supported. (show image)
  • Chamfers defined by equal distances from the edge (symmetric distance-distance) are supported. (show image)
  • Chamfers defined as an angle-distance (show image), or non-symmetric distance-distance, are not supported.
  • Fillets and chamfers defined on non-straight side edges, as well as on other fillets and chamfers, are not supported.
  • Fillets and chamfers defined on a rigid-flex design are not supported.

Smart Sketch Changes in MCAD

Consider the situation where the ECAD engineer needs to modify the board shape, and that shape has dimensions and constraints applied in MCAD. Previously, the dimensions and constraints in MCAD's sketch would be lost when the board was Pulled back into MCAD. The 3.9 update to CoDesigner greatly improves this. During a Pull, CoDesigner now redraws only the elements of a sketch which were changed in ECAD, so that the dimensions and constraints related to non-changed elements are kept as they were.

Note that in some cases, for example where there are complex mechanical constraints, this behavior may lead to unexpected changes in the geometry. In such cases, it may be more efficient to disable this new smart sketch support feature and Pull again, then recreate the dimensions and constraints (as was required in earlier versions of CoDesigner). That can be achieved by disabling the Smart Sketch Change option in the MCAD Altium CoDesigner Settings dialog.

Smart dimensions that are not impacted by design changes, are retained during a Pull from ECAD.

Pull a Previous Revision of the PCB into MCAD

The mechanical engineer sometimes needs to open a previous release or revision of a PCB design. Previously, that meant they had to ask the ECAD engineer to restore a previous revision temporarily and push that revision to MCAD. The 3.9 update to Altium CoDesigner resolves that, with the introduction of support for Pulling any of the previous Pushes performed in ECAD.

Pulling into an empty MCAD assembly, the mechanical engineer can now select which revision to Pull from a list of previous Pushes. If the ECAD commits have been tagged, then they can quickly filter the list by enabling the Only show tagged commits option in the Select Push dialog.

Use the Select Push dialog to select a previous revision, from all revisions Pushed in ECAD.Use the Select Push dialog to select a previous revision, from all revisions Pushed in ECAD. 

  • The Workspace performs Automatic Pushing, initiating this process once a Pull into MCAD has been performed. Learn more about Automatic Pushing.
  • Refer to the Note in the right-hand pane for information on whether the Pull a Previous Revision feature is available in your installation of MCAD CoDesigner.

Support for PTC Creo 11

Support for PTC Creo Version 11 has been added in the 3.9 update to Altium MCAD CoDesigner.

Altium MCAD CoDesigner now supports PTC Creo V11 (image courtesy of PTC).Altium MCAD CoDesigner now supports PTC Creo V11 (image courtesy of PTC).

Support for Autodesk Inventor 2025

Support for Autodesk Inventor 2025 has been added in the Hot Fix to the 3.9 update to Altium MCAD CoDesigner.

Altium MCAD CoDesigner now supports Autodesk Inventor 2025 (image courtesy of Autodesk).Altium MCAD CoDesigner now supports Autodesk Inventor 2025 (image courtesy of Autodesk).

Versions Supported by CoDesigner 3.9.0

  • Altium Designer 24.7 (or higher) with MCAD CoDesigner extension version 3.9.0.2208

  • CoDesigner 3.3 is the latest version available for Altium NEXUS Client.

  • CoDesigner 2.10 is the latest version available for Altium CircuitMaker.

This update has been tested on the following MCAD platforms and Add-in versions:

MCAD Version MCAD Add-In Version
Autodesk Fusion 360® (Note 1) 3.9.0.12
Autodesk Inventor Professional® - versions 2023, 2024 3.9.0.8
Autodesk Inventor Professional® - version 2025 3.9.1.7
Dassault Systemes SOLIDWORKS® - versions 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 3.9.0.9
PTC Creo Parametric® - 8.X, 9.X, 10.X, 11.X 3.9.0.9
Siemens NX® - version 1953 - 2312 (Note 2) 3.9.0.16

Notes:

  1. Altium CircuitMaker only supports Autodesk Fusion 360.
  2. Siemens NX is only available to designers as part of an Altium Enterprise Solution. From MCAD CoDesigner 3.8 onwards, there are multiple versions of the installer for MCAD CoDesigner for Siemens NX, to suit different versions of the Siemens NX software. These installers all install identical versions of MCAD CoDesigner, they differ only in their detection of the currently installed version of Siemens NX. For MCAD CoDesigner 3.7 and older there is a single installer, and after installation of MCAD CoDesigner Siemens NX may show a warning when launched that the difference between the current version and the signed version is too great. This warning can be ignored, your installation of MCAD CoDesigner will function correctly. Alternatively, the Show Warning when Loading option in the Customer Defaults dialog in Siemens NX, can be disabled (show image).

Release Notes for CoDesigner 3.9.0


New in CoDesigner 3.8.0

Released: 18 April 2024 – Version 3.8.0


New in CoDesigner 3.7.0

Released: 7 February 2024 – Version 3.7.0 Hot Fix for Autodesk Fusion 360
Released: 26 January 2024 – Version 3.7.0 Hot Fix (MCAD CoDesigner extension change to version 3.7.0.2033)
Released: 17 January 2024 – Version 3.7.0


New in CoDesigner 3.6.0

Released: 2 November 2023 – Version 3.6.0


New in CoDesigner 3.5.0

Released: 17 August 2023 – Version 3.5.0 – Hot Fix (no change to Altium Designer CoD extension)
Released: 27 July 2023 – Version 3.5.0


New in CoDesigner 3.4.0

Released: 29 May 2023 – Version 3.4.0.1859 – Hot Fix for GovCloud
Released: 10 April 2023 – Version 3.4.0.1792 – Hot Fix

Released: 23 March 2023 – Version 3.4.0


New in CoDesigner 3.3.0

Released: 21 December 2022 – Version 3.3.0

There are no new features included in this release.


New in CoDesigner 3.2.0

Released: 17 November 2022 – Version 3.2.0


New in CoDesigner 3.1.0

Released: 4 October 2022 – Version 3.1.0


New in CoDesigner 3.0.0

Released: 18 July 2022 – Version 3.0.0


New in CoDesigner 2.x

Released: 22 May 2020 (Version 2.0.3) – 25 May 2022 (Version 2.10.0)

Learn more about the updates in the MCAD CoDesigner 2.x releases.

 

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Note

The features available depend on your Altium product access level. Compare features included in the various levels of Altium Designer Software Subscription and functionality delivered through applications provided by the Altium 365 platform.

If you don’t see a discussed feature in your software, contact Altium Sales to find out more.

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