Design software

Altium has released Designer 6.3 targeted at accelerating the design process. It includes upgraded translation capabilities for migration to Designer from other systems such as OrCAD and PADS.

The package enables engineers to take maximum advantage of the options provided by 'soft' design and to make the transition from board designer or embedded designer to 'super systems designer'.

New features include a PADS library importer which enables users to bring in PADS footprint (pattern) libraries.

ASCII library files up to PADS PowerPCB version 2005 (SP0) can be imported. The existing OrCAD importer, which handles OrCAD Layout, OrCAD Capture and OrCAD PCB and schematic library files, has been enhanced to support OrCAD design components that include simulation data.

This includes both simulation-ready schematics and schematic libraries.

The software also features a unified PADS/OrCAD importer that creates integrated libraries from a combination of OrCAD schematic symbols and PADS footprints (patterns).

The importer also includes a wizard that supports the import of OrCAD schematics and PADS PCB documents into a single Designer project in one operation.

The import wizard translates complete P-CAD designs, including schematics, PCB layout and library files.

Also included is a host of features that accelerate design for current users. There is a significant boost to graphics performance in the PCB editor with a new hardware-accelerated graphics engine that makes use of DirectX technologies.

Users can expect speed increases of around 20 times when zooming and panning. It also introduces native support for 3D rendering directly in the PCB editor.