Home
Products
Solutions
Community
Resources
Company
Free Trials

Download a free trial to find out which Altium software best suits your needs

Contact your local sales office to get started on improving your design environment

Download the latest in PCB design and EDA software

PCB DESIGN SOFTWARE

Altium Designer

Complete Environment for Schematic + Layout

Entry Level, Professional PCB Design Tool

Community Based PCB Design Tool

Agile PCB Design For Teams

CLOUD PLATFORM

Connecting PCB Design to the Manufacturing Floor

COMPONENT MANAGEMENT

Altium Concord Pro

Complete Solution for Library Management

Extensive, Easy-to-Use Component Database

PRODUCT EXTENSIONS

Natural and Effortless Power Distribution Network Analysis

See All Extensions

EMBEDDED

World-Renowned Technology for Embedded Systems Development

TRAININGS

Learn best practices with instructional training available worldwide

On-Demand Courses

Gain comprehensive knowledge without leaving your home or office

ONLINE VIEWER

Altium 365 Viewer

View & Share electronic designs in your browser

Altium Designer 20

The most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use

Altium Designer 20

The most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use

Annual PCB Design Summit

Forum
Where Altium users and enthusiasts can interact with each other
Blog
Our blog about things that interest us and hopefully you too
Ideas
Submit ideas and vote for new features you want in Altium tools
Bug Crunch
Help make the software better by submitting bugs and voting on what's important
Wall
A stream of events on AltiumLive you follow by participating in or subscribing to
Beta Program
Information about participating in our Beta program and getting early access to Altium tools

Explore the latest content from blog posts to social media and technical white papers gathered together for your convenience

Take a look at what download options are available to best suit your needs

Contact your local sales office to get started improving your design environment

Documentation
The documentation area is where you can find extensive, versioned information about our software online, for free.
Training & Events
View the schedule and register for training events all around the world and online
Design Content
Browse our vast library of free design content including components, templates and reference designs
Webinars
Attend a live webinar online or get instant access to our on demand series of webinars
Support
Get your questions answered with our variety of direct support and self-service options
Technical Papers
Stay up to date with the latest technology and industry trends with our complete collection of technical white papers.
Video Library
Quick and to-the-point video tutorials to get you started with Altium Designer

Altium Leadership

Altium is led by a team of highly passionate industry experts

Market Announcements

Announcements to the ASX market from the preceding 3 years

Customer Success

Our customers can be found changing every industry; see how

PCB Design

Read the latest information PCB Design from the industry's leading experts.

Princeton Racing Electrical Team and the Formula Hybrid Competition Judy Warner: It is a pleasure to meet you both. Jasper, let’s begin with you. Will you please share what the Princeton Racing Electric team does, how the team was formed, and in what year? Jasper Gebhardt: Princeton Racing Electric is a team of students who design, build, and race single-seat electric race cars. We compete in the Formula SAE collegiate design competitions, in particular, the Formula Hybrid competition. The team was founded by Read Article

Expert Dirk Stans Bridging Gaps in PCB Manufacturing Judy Warner: Dirk, please give us a brief overview of your career path and history in the electronics industry. Dirk Stans: As an electronics engineer, I started my career at DISC which became Barco Graphics just one year after I joined the company. From day one I was active in the sales of Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) systems for the PCB industry in Europe. It was there that I gained insight into the evolution of the European and global Read Article

Searching for Clarity: Signal Integrity Issues in PCB Design The clarity of TV signal transmission these days is amazing. I can still remember the days when I had a set of rabbit ears perched atop my 19” RCA. It was a challenge to position them just right to get the clearest picture, not to mention having to adjust them for every channel. Sometimes it’d take all night just to find the channel I wanted, so I’d sit down for five minutes and then head to bed. And if the weather was bad, forget about it. While Read Article

Practical Setups for PCB Design and Other Tips for Success My father did not say a lot as he was a quiet man armed with a subtle wit, but he was very wise. He’s been gone for many years now, but I will always remember how he modeled for us a consistent perseverance in getting the job done and getting it done right. Every night, regular as clockwork, he would go through the house to make sure that all of the doors and windows were locked. This was his regular practice to make sure that his family was Read Article

Listen to the Baby: Use Circuit Board Visual Indicators for Serviceability I’m a new dad and let me tell you: it is tough. I know everybody always tells you about the two sides of parenting, but I hadn’t really taken it to heart until now. That happy, sleeping, cuddly infant is around for about forty minutes after being fed, and then the crying begins. Sometimes, the problem is the milk temperature, sometimes a wet diaper, and sometimes because they feel like crying. In my years alive, I never anticipated being grateful Read Article

What’s Worse: Holes in Your Winter Gloves or Copper Layer Defects? Much of the United States is going through a remarkably cold period right now; as I write this there is only about 10% of the country experiencing temperatures above freezing. It was a true, white Christmas for many; however, not the white that most expect: instead of snow, they got ice. Living in areas where the temperature can vary by up to 40℉ in a day means dressing in layers. If you’re anything like me, you’re still mastering the art of Read Article

Avoid Loose Signals With Successful Coin Acceptor Programs It’s been cold as an ice cube in an igloo lately, and the only thing that’s keeping my hands warm in the morning is my coffee. You know it won’t be a good day, though, when you’re getting a hot latte from a vending machine and the vending machine eats your coins. I end up with frozen hands and a caffeine headache by 10 am, or I end up having to reroute my whole morning just to run to another cafe. I understand that vending machines fail sometimes Read Article

Backroads or Highway: Managing PCB Power Distribution with a PDN Analyzer Who hasn’t been caught daydreaming out the window, overlooking the lines of cars on the freeway at a standstill, wondering about easier or more effective ways of getting to your job on time? And even then, sometimes the alternate routes aren’t always the fastest—there could be road construction, or an event going on which makes you have to re-route even more. At that point, most tend to throw all hopes for getting to work on time out the window Read Article

Don’t Get Caught Sleeping: Resolve PCB Power Distribution Problems I’ve got a heating problem at the moment—after 30 years of service to the various owners of this house, my furnace is finally throwing in the towel and no longer providing heat. Unfortunately, this has come at a, let’s say, inopportune time with it hovering just under freezing lately, and with nights being even more frigid. We installed an ad hoc heating system comprised of the gas fireplace and several space heaters; however, this is not a long Read Article

Hide and Seek: Key Serial-Number Chips for PIC Microcontroller Code Protection One of my favorite games, when I was young, was hide and seek. I would play with my friends and it was always fun to try and find a good hiding place. As an older brother, I played the same game with my younger brothers, but with a twist. Instead of hiding myself, I had to hide my stuff from them. If I picked good hiding places, my stuff was safe. However, if I was lackadaisical and chose poor hiding places they were sure to find my toys or Read Article

Completing a Pre-Layout Design Checklist Can Keep Your PCB Design from Crashing Many years ago I got my private pilot’s license, and there is nothing that I love better than being behind the controls of a small plane. When the plane leaps off the runway and into the sky, the feeling is exhilarating. Then, after executing a perfectly smooth landing, there is a sense of triumphant success. In addition to the pure joy of flying, there are also many ideas and lessons that I have taken from my time in the air. One of these has Read Article

Don't Let Lithography Issues Cast a Shadow on Your PCB Manufacturing Projectors can often be the most annoying piece of technology to work with. You could have a movie night you want to host with an old school projector and some nice, buttery popcorn but be unable to find a spot where the image projected isn’t crooked; you could be trying to give a highly-influential presentation to your peers and bosses, only to encounter that the projector has squished all of your images and graphs; you could be trying to teach Read Article

Boats With The Current: Microstrip and Stripline Transmission Line Trade-offs In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the narrator, Nick Carraway, is torn between infiltrating the notorious elite social circles by attending his neighbor Jay Gatsby’s infamous mansion parties in Long Island, New York and establishing himself on the east coast in a finance career. It can be easy to have an understanding of The Great Gatsby through its context - the roaring twenties, flappers, prohibition - it wouldn’t do justice to any of Read Article

The Best Methods of Calculations for Pad Size in PCB Design In our family we have a phrase that we use to describe when a person is surprised, we call it a “Spielberg moment.” Think back to movies like Poltergeist, or Close Encounters, where the characters in the movie would stare with their mouths hanging open at something that was surprising, shocking, or horrifying. This is what I mean by Spielberg moment. The other day while teaching her third graders, my wife gave the kids a Spielberg moment when she Read Article

Old Wisdom: Best Schematic Software Simplifies Schematic to PCB Synchronizing You’ve heard it said: “there’s no school like the old school.” Is that always true though? When I was a kid my “old school” taught me to type on a typewriter, not a word processor. If I was using that old school typewriter today, it would take me significantly longer to write this article. I wouldn’t have access to spell checking or any of the other helpful utilities that I’ve become accustomed to. I wouldn’t be able to easily backspace and re Read Article

No, I Don’t Want to Make a U-turn: Guidelines for PCB Trace Routing Watching your old town grow up can be a lot like watching your favorite television shows ending, or watching a sequel years after a good movie was released. The town I grew up in was laid out on a grid with streets so wide you didn’t even have to parallel park downtown. It was a town so small that traffic jams were caused by two people in different cars stopping to talk more often than accidents. When I go back to visit, the town has grown; the Read Article

PCB Layout Check Design Rules: What’s The Difference Between DRCs & MRCs? There are a few things that I absolutely want answers to before my time on earth is done. First of all, why is it that my dog sheds more in December than he does in June? Doesn’t he need all that fur for the winter? Second, why is it that people who are great drivers on the road aren’t able to push their shopping cart intelligently through the supermarket? It seems like they go out of their way to head in the opposite direction as everyone else Read Article