Since the first release of Altium Designer back in 1985 with Protel, our focus has always been on improving your design productivity. Getting those designs from concept to completion as quickly and easily as possible is always a concern of yours, and a focus of ours in each new version of Altium Designer.
At the core of Altium Designer 15.1 is a set of new features that we’ve been hard at work on. Without further ado, we’d like to present the new productivity features that you can take advantage of in the newest update to Altium Designer.
Polygon Pour Checks
We’ve added extended checks when pouring polygons. The order you pour polygons will now be automatically checked for dependences during the repouring process, helping you to avoid any issues with overlapping polygons.
Intelligent polygon pour checks look for dependencies during repour.
(Image credit: iMX6 Rex design by Robert Feranec)
Improved Unions
A new section in the PCB panel is being added for Unions to improve the organization of your design data. The Union panel will show all Union types, Unions, and Union primitives in your design project, and fully aligns with other PCB objects in your design.
New Union panel in Altium Designer 15.1.
(Image credit: iMX6 Rex design by Robert Feranec)
Board Outline Clearance Check
We’ve expanded your clearance checking options to now check for clearance between PCB objects and a defined board edge. This will provide greater control of your component placement with more precise clearance checking options.
Easily identify clearance between board edges and objects
Cypress CapSense
We’ve added support for CapSense touch sensors with an integrated library that you can easily access in the library panel for your schematic designs.
Adding Capsense touch sensors to a design in AD 15.1
Expansion of Solder Mask from Hole
We’ve expanded your options for defining solder mask expansions from the hole edge or pad edge for greater precision and control in your PCB designs.
New solder mask expansion settings in Altium Designer 15.1
Test Point Clearance Check
You now have even greater control over your clearance checking with enhanced test point clearance checking options. Easily check the distance between test points and through-hole pads, as well as inter-test point spacing.
Get instant notifications of test point clearance violations in AD 15.1
Pad & Via Management
Easily create templates and manage your pad and via stacks with a new pad and via management feature. This is a great design-reuse tool that lets you create pad templates that can then be applied to specific groups of pads on your PCB for easy replication.
Adding mounting holes from a pre-existing template in AD 15.1
xDxDesigner Importer
Save loads of time re-creating schematic designs with a new tool to import schematic designers to Altium Designer from xDxDesigner.
Importing schematic designs from xDxDesigner
Coming Soon
We hope you’re as excited as we are about all the new productivity features we’re adding in Altium Designer 15.1. Want to see these features in action? Check out the Altium Designer What’s New page.
About the Author
David currently serves as a Sr. Technical Marketing Engineer at Altium and is responsible for managing the development of technical marketing materials for all Altium products. He also works closely with our marketing, sales, and customer support teams to define product strategies including branding, positioning, and messaging. David brings over 15 years of experience in the EDA industry to our team, and he holds an MBA from Colorado State University and a B.S. in Electronics Engineering from Devry Technical Institute.
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