Altium Designer 15 PCB design software

Altium Limited has announced the upcoming release of its PCB and electronic system level design software, Altium Designer 15, which introduces support for both IPC-2581 and Gerber X2, keeping designers up to date while giving them a choice that broadens their selection of PCB fabrication partners.

The support for IPC-2581 and Gerber X2 resolves issues of ambiguous or missing data encountered when using older formats such as Gerber RS-274X to hand off design to fabrication, completely describing a PCB according to its design: copper layer images; plated and unplated holes, slots, routes, grooves and microvias; PCB design outline and cutout regions; complex layer stack regions; rigid and flexible board areas; material specifications; fabrication notes, tolerances and other critical standards-compliance information.

With Altium Designer 15 a new Pin Pairs feature has been added to: enable accurate length and phase tuning across termination components; enable length, phase and delay tuning traversing an entire signal path. Designers will no longer require external software or have to maintain complex lists of signals and nets, but instead will be able to plan and route groups of high-speed nets with much greater efficiency and accuracy.