Altium Develop

Score9.3 out of 10

73 Reviews and Ratings

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Altium Develop

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Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Altium Designer are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Integration Between Teams: Users appreciate the seamless integration Altium 365 offers, allowing for easy collaboration on designs among team members. The platform facilitates smooth communication and sharing of design files, fostering efficient teamwork.

Convenient Project Switching: Some users find it beneficial that Altium Designer enables them to switch between different projects without any downtime, enhancing productivity. This feature streamlines workflow transitions and helps users stay focused on their tasks.

Powerful Feature Set: Users consider Altium Designer a powerful tool with a wide range of features suitable for complex PCB designs, making it valuable for their projects. From advanced editing capabilities to comprehensive libraries, the software equips users with the necessary tools to tackle intricate design challenges effectively.

Reviews

54 Reviews

PCB Layout with Altium Design

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 25, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Altium Designer to generate Schematic diagrams and PCB layouts. It's also handy to generate 3d models of a populated PCB so you can check the fit in product.

Pros

Generates Schematics
Lays out PCBs
Generated 3D model

Cons

Some features are difficult to locate

Likelihood to Recommend

Altium Designer is well suited to regular PCB design. It does take time to learn everything and some things are easy to forget, so if you don't use it for a while you may have to refamiliarize yourself with Altium's commands.

Steve Weit

General Manager in Corporate at Machine Applications Corporation (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

Altium Designer Review

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 18, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Altium Designer is used for all stages our Development Process in HW area. From requirements definition in A365 System & Requirements Portal to Deplyoment, version, sch & layout, manufacturing files, etc. We also use Altium Designer to create our BOMs, our revision tasks with the new A365 tool, to perform thermal and signal integrity simulations as well.

Pros

Integrates Sch, Library, Constrain Manager, Layout, Gerber, and everything in the same tool
The graphical environment keeps being the best in class.
Altium Designer make easy what competitors make difficult.

Cons

Extra tool to make hyper realistics 3D view.
Integrates AI for library creation
Make the posibility to create schemes thought text.

Likelihood to Recommend

Altium Designer is well suited in any PCB Design application. Probably is weaker in aerospace industry where some features is required. In this industry, customer usually want to have well separated Scheme (Design Engineers) from Layout (CAD Engineers) and Requirements (System Engineers) and Constrains definition.

Anyway, Altium Designer is suitable for almost whatever application.

Verified User

Engineer (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

12 years of experience

How Altium Designer beats the other designer tools

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 18, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Altium Designer is used in our organisation for client projects but also for personal development. This includes the full scale of development from schematic entry and PCB design. Within the same tool reviews are done to validate the design before the manufacture process. It allows the other engineers to also collaborate on the designs.

Pros

Component Vault storage
In program Reviews
Document preparation for manufacture

Cons

Bugs
Constraint manager
When loading big projects it lags

Likelihood to Recommend

Raphael Buitendag

Electronic designer in Engineering at Alten (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Useful Electronics Design Tool

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 14, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it for general PCB and Assembly design, the engineers can design new parts easily and create the bundle required for outsource manufacturing.
We use it also to control revision with the Altium 365 workspace integration.
Generally, the scope is to design control boards and electronic adapters, but lately we have been using it for Electrical Wire harnesses as well.

Pros

Design PCB
Component selection and validation
Schematics
Release packages

Cons

Multiple monitor management
3D rendering of components
Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment

Likelihood to Recommend

It is best suited for PCB design and schematic design. Since it can use Altium365 web interface to display the design components, it is very good to work with multiple teams and review the projects easily.
The new wire harness modules are not mature enough and make it very difficult to work on wire harnesses.
It is not taking advantage of the git and web integration to run pipelines and CI/CD

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Increasingly Expensive with building feature bloat

Rating: 1 out of 10

Incentivized

May 6, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are a small business who does consulting that involves PCB design. We have 1 primary user and 2 secondary users of Altium Designer. We do not have a librarian or a huge enterprise development process.

Pros

Schematic capture
PCB Layout
PCB Routing
Altium 365 cloud storage

Cons

Version control (revert to previous version)
Program stability
Focusing on core functionality (Schematic capture, layout, routing)
Quick and easy simulation
Sharing multiple projects via folder without splitting multiple workspaces.

Likelihood to Recommend

Altium Designer has gone back on its word, eliminating perpetual licenses and forcing higher-tier annual licenses with ZERO added utility for our small business. When A365 came out, we were told there was no storage cap. Then, a couple of years later, we get a call from sales saying we MUST upgrade our services and spend a significant amount more just to maintain the functionality we had. Due to this, we were forced to make hard decisions on our spend plan and are looking at lower cost options.

As a consulting company, working on cutting edge technologies, we are constantly talking with larger firms about what tools they should use internally. The answer used to include Altium Designer. Because of the recent price structure changes, it no longer does.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

18 years of experience

Altium Designer Review

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 6, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Its used to connect schematic design directly to layout and bill of materials creation

Pros

Schematic metadata automation
Carryover of data from schematic to layout
BOM exports

Cons

More layout automation
More 3D export improvements
Library creation

Likelihood to Recommend

This is my fourth different CAD software tool and its worked better than any previous tool that we've used. It makes the transition between schematic to layout to purchasing more seamless. Altium 365 also makes it much easier to interact and share data with customers.

Jeff Judit

Sr. Hardware Engineer in Engineering at Lectronix, Inc. (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Great Software would recommend

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 6, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Altium Designer as an Electrical Engineer for designing schematics and pcb layout. The needs Altium Designer addresses are: component pull in with manufacturer specs through the Manufacturer Part Search, MCAD plug in for the PCB between SolidWorks as a way to know pcb sizing for real world usage, and finally, neat cloud saving and uploading for cross person review and editing.

Pros

Neat Layout
Intuitive UI
Easy Saving and Cloud uploading
manufacturer part search with footprints

Cons

even more component schematic and footprints would be awesome
make the simulation more intuitive
better editing of schematic page "heading" editor

Likelihood to Recommend

scenarios where Altium Designer is well suited:
- schematic design
- pcb layout
- cross team usage and review
- manufacturer part searching
scenarios where Altium Designer is not well suited:
- simulation for simple or complex designs (at least from my usage, as there are easier to use softwares out there)

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Basic Altium Designer review from longtime user

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 6, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am both a solo EE and work with a small consultancy, [...]. Our main business is pcb design work, and we use Altium Designer and Altium 365 extensively.

Pros

Altium 365 interface is fantastic
Documentation has gotten very good
mech engineering interoperability

Cons

more models in mfgr component search
draftsman is quirky and inconsistent with UI in main app
still crashes occasionally
have a read-only mode for opening Altium 365 projects

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for all design work. Less appropriate if doing smaller designs, or work that is not for "top tier" clients. Eagle / Kicad / etc. are quite capable and much cheaper, but you don't land big projects with them.

Jesse Lackey

Design Engineer in Engineering at Celestial Audio (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

High productivity enabled by Maximum Customization.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 6, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Altium Designer for both schematics and PCB layout. Also creating assembly drawings and BOMs sent to manufacturing. We plan to create scripts for automation in the future.

Pros

Schematic entry and PCB layout
Manufacturer part lookup with footprints
Assembly drawings

Cons

Assembly drawings for manual build process, separate drawings for each common part number.
Better scripting language such as Python

Likelihood to Recommend

It has become industry standard.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

30 years of experience

The Dudes Drawers

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 18, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Only one seat at the company, but we sometimes use outside consulting. The ability to collaborate with a shared workspace is pure gold. This has transformed our ability to deliver timely solutions and stay on track.

Pros

Collaborate with a team
Generate manufacturing drawings and data
Cloud based data, a single source of information
The ability to share BOM data with the assembly vendor
Above BOM data can be scrubbed well ahead of time for issues

Cons

Periodic crashes
New component creation, the silly script file system never works
I want to grab a new component off the web and instantly import into my designs, no hassles
Naming schemes need to be structured as well, so I can find parts fast and use them in my designs
For example, if I could check a couple boxes for a capacitor, and have the database filter on those choices, I could very quickly get the right part into the design
Wire harnesses are still a pain and hard to visualize

Likelihood to Recommend

I wish Altium 365 was accessible to myself at home... that is, I may want to make a simple board for a home project. This means learning a NEW and inexpensive tool like CS or PADS or something similar. However, keeping track of multiple tools and remembering how they work... can become a nightmare. I want an Altium light that uses the same libraries, interface and commands, but is under 1K in price.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

20 years of experience

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