You’re not designing electronics by yourself. It can take teams of hundreds of designers, engineers, supply chain and manufacturing people to successfully bring a product to market. It’s essential this happens as efficiently as possible if you’re going to meet strict budgets and deadlines. So how are you supposed to design without stepping on everyone else’s toes? How do you make sure that after all designers have contributed to the project, there is only one final source of data?
Inefficient Teamwork on the Same Design
Collaboration between hundreds of stakeholders is common for large projects, and seeing exactly what everyone is doing is a huge challenge. Visibility into all design work can help ensure an efficient workflow without the need for a complicated system of emails, notes, and other unnecessary back and forth communication. The delicate part is integrating a system that enables teamwork and collaboration without stifling creative design and innovation.
PCB Collaboration
Stop worrying about stepping on each other’s toes
- Easily see changes to the board from several designers simultaneously, then choose to merge or discard those changes down to the finest detail.
Learn More about Collaborate, Compare and Merge - Add comments to any schematic or PCB document in a Managed Project to enable a thorough, real-time design review process.
Learn More about Commenting - Let the Altium Vault (Now Altium Concord Pro) handle the back end of collaboration, so you don’t have to worry about anything but designing.
Learn More about Collaboration
Multiple Sources of Conflicting Design Data
Several designers working on the same project means that if there’s failure to communicate, you could end up with multiple versions of the same design data. Trying to sort this out can be almost more trouble than starting over, and can leave you behind schedule and over budget. How can you make sure everything is managed and approved, so you don’t have to do redundant work?
Better Design Data Management
Maintain data integrity by making sure you only have one source of design data
- Make sure every piece of data created and used in your design has an approved revision and lifecycle state.
Learn More about Revision Management - Manage projects in a formal way to ensure everyone is working from the same source.
Learn More about Managed Projects - Control and manage the software configuration for all designers so everyone’s tools adhere to the same set of organizational standards.
Learn More about Environment Configuration Management
Communication Across Different Design Domains
PCB design is only one element of a complete electronic product lifecycle. Board designers, engineers, CAD librarians, mechanical designers, supply chain experts, manufacturing specialists, and plenty of other people all work with your design. Integrating all of these aspects into a single workflow can be a major source of inefficiency during your design.
Complete Electronics Design Workflow
Seamlessly combine every part of electronics design into a single workflow
- Native 3D PCB design lets you visualize your board just like you would in the real world, and easily integrate your mechanical design flow into a PCB design.
Learn More about Native 3D PCB Design - Real-time supplier links bring you the most accurate pricing, quantity, and parametric information from popular vendors such as DigiKey and Mouser.
Learn More about Supplier Links - A unified software environment integrates every part of the design process into a single package, allowing you to quickly and easily collaborate with other designers in your workflow.
Learn More about the Altium Unified Environment