Altium Designer... PCB designer Shangri-La?

There is a constant industry drive to advance and evolve EDA tools, including their PCB schematic and layout packages. Mentor Graphics and Cadence have traditionally “owned” the market, and most designers are accustomed to their tools. However, these tools have their quirks and limitations. If you’re growing tired of these issues and are looking for something new, then read on.

As a global professional services firm with many hundreds of clients across a vast array of markets and process flows, Nuvation must maintain a wide variety of design tools in order to mirror the format preferences of our clients. For PCB schematic and layout design, Nuvation has naturally become adept with industry-leading tools from Cadence (OrCAD, Allegro) and Mentor (DxDesigner, PADS, Expedition). Along the way, we have developed fluency with other tools including Altium Designer, which has traditionally been considered a third- or fourth-rung tool.

Nuvation maintains a Lean Product Development methodology as part of our continuous improvement program. In 2008 we embarked on a major initiative to enhance design efficiency and design-reuse by overhauling our symbol/footprint library system. That drove a need to select a primary tool flow for PCB development, specifically in the areas of schematic entry and layout. That process, internally dubbed the “bake-off,” initially evaluated tools from Cadence and Mentor. Altium was added on the impetus from some internal champions.

At the end of this comparison, Nuvation chose Altium Designer as our primary/default tool flow. When we compared it to the Cadence and Mentor solutions, we saw remarkable advantages in tool integration, cost per seat, library management, and general design efficiency.

For example, having the schematic and layout as one integrated package has enabled us to achieve design densities of up to 30% smaller PCB footprint compared to traditional flows. It has also reduced chances for human error (which increased our design accuracy) and reduced lab bring-up time. The unique 3D modeling feature in layout has aided when mechanical height restrictions are involved.

Altium Designer has a powerful library management feature built into the tool. With the Altium- managed libraries, we have already built up a very useful set of Altium schematic symbols, layout footprints, and design blocks. Each asset is tagged for level of certainty, such as whether it has been used in a validated design.

The tool is remarkably easy to learn and use. We had engineers logging 40+ hours to ramp on a new version of DxDesigner. Our engineers picked up an equivalent level of fluency in Altium within 20 hours of first touching the tool. Altium also improved the coordination between the schematic engineer and layout designer, particularly in cases where they are not co-located, such as between our San Jose and Waterloo design centers.

Of course, Nuvation still maintains and uses other tool flows. Given our large customer base, no one solution fits all designs. We also use other tool flows for specific tasks. For example, on designs that need advanced signal integrity analysis, we use a number of other solutions including the Mentor flow with HyperLynx.

In summary, we have found Altium Designer to be a significantly superior tool for most applications, and have implemented it as our primary tool flow for PCB design. This has provided us with better design capabilities, better library systems, and an overall more cost-effective solution. If you’re looking for the PCB design Shangri-La, you may want to check out Altium.