Taking a page from Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Altium
has released a what it's calling a milestone upgrade to its EDA platform built
around the idea of bringing smart data management capabilities to electronics
design.
At the heart of Altium
Designer 10 are new engineering content management capabilities, including
an Enterprise Vault Server, aimed at unifying design-related data in a secure
location. Given the complexity of today's electronics design, enterprise
vaulting capabilities are essential to accommodate the needs of dispersed
design teams, to facilitate multi-domain collaboration and to ensure reusable
assets, according to Bob Potock, Altium's director of Americas marketing. In
addition, as products become smaller and the clearances get tighter, there is
less margin for error, hence the need for a central platform to secure IP and
to facilitate collaboration.
"Electronics design is very mature in many respects, but
what is more complicated is the design process," Potock explains. "Design teams
are now dispersed, and multi-domain collaboration is required. There is also
the specialization of engineering with FPGA design teams, embedded software
team, RF teams and board-based team all collaborating with the ultimate goal of
building product."
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While the mechanical engineering discipline has embraced
data management tools and concepts to manage MCAD data, the electronics domain
has not been in the forefront, primarily due to the lack of tools, he says.
Many electronics manufacturers still rely on paper-based processes to manage
engineering changes-a process that can lead to a lot of rework not to mention,
costly errors.
Altium Designer 10 debuts a variety of new technologies to
address these issues. The new releases supports a unified data model so a
variety of design data can be captured and stored in a central location, from
schematics to PCB layouts and embedded software development data. Altium Designer
10 also ushers in what it dubs a "next-generation" Component Management System,
a framework that manages components at the engineering level, in the design and
across release domains. The framework
extends existing models of storing and managing ECAD component data to capture
business intelligence along with where-used capabilities for tracking where
exactly components are used across any design or release document. Altium Designer
10 also includes a new live supplier-linking system to provide real-time
updates to pricing and availability information so designers can keep up with
component changes.
Thanks to technology gleaned from its acquisition of Morfik,
the new Enterprise Vault Server is built as a Morfik xApp, which means it can be
accessed and managed through a Web interface. The new release also exploits
cloud computing capabilities, allowing design engineers to store Altium
preferences in the cloud so they can be automatically retrieved even from
another computer.
The final piece of the Altium Designer 10 upgrade story is
AltiumLive, a Web-based destination that the company bills as "a central access
point to all things Altium." The portal will function like a community where
users can collaborate with peers as well as with Altium employees and
engineers. There will also be a forum, a new BugCrunch system and capabilities
for delivering tool and functionality upgrades on a regular basis.
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