Altium Designer 10/Altium Vaults/AltiumLive design software

Altium Designer 10, Altium Vaults and AltiumLive have been released.

Vaults is new technology at the heart of Designer 10’s new design data management functionality and Live is an online ecosystem for electronics design professionals that will connect designers with collaborators, suppliers, manufacturers and, in the future, customers. It is designed as a back-end for the Designer front-end user application.

With Designer 10, users can relieve their anxieties around design process complexity, business system integration, supply chain integration, external manufacturing, and increasing competitive pressure and, using Live, the company will deliver content and updates continuously. Designers using Designer will log on to check Live, select content (new functions, upgrade, content, IP and more) that is appropriate or relevant, download and install.

Designer extends the designer's reach into the supply chain, adding Mouser and Arrow to its new live links function.

Vaults stores and manages electronics design data to manage revisions, design data, manage component lifecycles and track usage across designs and provide links to supply chains to provide real-time information about parts being specified in designs.

Managed Vaults will be cloud-based running entirely in AltiumLive as cloud-based services.

Satellite Vaults is hosted locally on users' own systems, suitable for companies who prefer to keep their design data behind firewalls, with user authentication through Live.

Enterprise vault servers are a way to establish an independent vault system inside a user's own organisation, especially for those who do not allow internet connections because of security concerns.

Live is for downloading, dealing in and sharing electronics design-related content: the place to turn to for new functionality. The first design content comes from technical centres in Shanghai and in Hobart, Tasmania. In the future, users will also be able to share their design data using Live as their ecosystem.

A new blog provides detailed technical papers, comment and discourse, and a new system has been created so that users can influence the future content in Altium Designer (via a nomination and voting system called BugCrunch).