Что нового в Altium Designer

ActiveRoute Enhancements

Introduced in Altium Designer 17, ActiveRoute brings a new approach to interactive routing - select the connections and ActiveRoute them to produce high-quality routes, in a fraction of the time it would take to manually route them. ActiveRoute has strong support for modern design techniques, including differential pairs and room-based width requirements.

In this update, ActiveRoute receives a number of valuable enhancements including: additional select options for route or guide creation; a greater width allowance for the route guide; and better feedback in the Messages panel.

Complimenting ActiveRoute is powerful Glossing technology, which can be used on any existing routing. With this update, ActiveRoutes that follow a route guide, are now automatically Glossed.

Post-Route Glossing Enhancements

Complimenting ActiveRoute and useful at any stage of the routing process, is new, powerful Glossing technology. Glossing shortens and tightens existing routes, reducing the route length, the segment count and the number of corners.

This release sees stronger Glossing support for differential pairs, to ensure that the pair members remain zipped together as much as possible, along their entire length. Glossing also performs sophisticated analyses of pad entries, repairing potential fabrication and assembly problems.

A foundation feature of Glossing is to respect the designer's intent - pad entries are checked against applicable design rules, the position of subnet jumpers and existing room boundary crossovers are maintained, and room-based width rules are complied with.

New Retrace Command - Update Existing Routing

Acknowledging the reality that design is an iterative process with lots of give and take, the new Retrace command retraces existing routes (including differential pairs), updating them to meet the current design rule settings.

Just imagine, you've finished routing the diff pairs, only to hear that the fabricator needs to change the dielectric properties - now all the pair widths and clearances need to be adjusted! No problem, run the new Retrace command over selected pairs, updating them to the new gap/width settings.

Object Specific Keepouts

This release brings substantial advances in the creation and application of Keepouts, with the introduction of Object Specific Keepouts. Placed Keepout objects can now be configured to specify which type objects they apply to, such as Tracks, Copper areas, Vias and Pads, which significantly enhances the flexibility and effectiveness of Keepouts.

Selectively Waive DRC Violations

There are situations where you want to allow a specific DRC violation, for example, when a connector hangs over the edge of the board. This release sees the introduction of the new Waive Violation feature, which can be applied and monitored through the PCB Rules and Violations panel. Waived violations are detailed in the DRC report.

Draftsman Enhancements

The Altium Designer 17.1 release brings a range of new features and enhancements to the Draftsman production drawing application. Included is a new Isometric View, Surface Finish Indicators, the ability to split a BOM over several tables, plus more. The release also incorporates a range of Bug Fixes and drawing feature improvements.

Export or Import Simulation Profiles to or from an OutJob File

The simulation Profile Manager has added improvements for importing and exporting Simulation Profiles to OutJobs.

Additional Enhancements & Improvements

Altium Designer 17.1 includes a number of additional significant enhancements and improvements....