Altium Advances Electronic and Mechanical Co-Design

Altium’s CoDesigner capability gives printed circuit board designers using Altium Designer (with an active subscription) a reportedly faster and easier way to collaborate with mechanical designers working with tools like PTC Creo, Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS, Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk Fusion 360. Mechanical engineers can use CoDesigner capability at no cost and while staying in their favorite MCAD design environment, the company reports.

“Export and import of files is what most EDA companies are calling co-design,” says Ted Pawela, chief ecosystem officer at Altium. “That’s like sending someone a letter in the mail and calling it collaboration. Altium CoDesigner simply keeps MCAD synchronized with ECAD so that electronic and mechanical design teams can truly work concurrently.”

To set up CoDesigner, mechanical engineers only need to download a free plug-in from the Altium website or the MCAD plug-ins page inside Altium 365 for their MCAD tool. Once ready to share, mechanical designers can just synchronize their MCAD tools with Altium Designer and Altium 365.

Eliminating Hours of Work

Altium’s CoDesigner gives mechanical engineers the ability to design alongside PCB designers in real time.

Accessing CoDesigner is easy for both ECAD and MCAD users. The MCAD CoDesigner extension is included in the standard Altium Designer installation, appearing as a panel that’s always available in the PCB editor. Once MCAD users install the aforementioned plug-in, CoDesigner is just as accessible.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.