--- title: Altium Develop Reviews meta_title: 'Altium Develop Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 1050 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Altium Develop works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 1050 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-26' parent_category: name: CAD url: https://www.g2.com/categories/cad --- # Altium Develop Reviews **Vendor:** Altium **Category:** [PCB Design Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/pcb-design) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 1,050 ## About Altium Develop Altium Develop is a collaborative platform for electronic product development that connects requirements management (via Requirements Portal), ECAD design, supply chain, and manufacturing into a single, unified environment. Built on Altium Designer® and Altium 365®, it enables real-time collaboration across engineering, design, and operations teams, reducing delays caused by disconnected tools and file-based workflows. Designed for electronics teams and organizations managing complex PCB and hardware development, Altium Develop supports cross-functional collaboration throughout the entire product lifecycle. Through Requirements Portal, stakeholders can contribute to and review requirements in a centralized workspace, helping ensure alignment from definition through design and delivery. Key capabilities include: • Real-time collaboration: Shared workspace for ECAD design, reviews, and project coordination • Component and supply chain visibility: Access to live component data, pricing, and availability • Requirements management (Requirements Portal): Capture, review, and link product requirements to design decisions for end-to-end traceability • BOM and workflow management: Manage bill of materials, sourcing, and change processes in one platform • ECAD-MCAD co-design: Enable collaboration between electrical and mechanical teams By centralizing design data, workflows, and collaboration, Altium Develop improves visibility, reduces rework, and helps teams bring electronic products to market faster. The platform is particularly well suited for organizations looking to streamline PCB design processes, enhance collaboration, and scale development across distributed teams. Altium Develop is used by teams evaluating alternatives to tools like Autodesk Fusion, KiCad, Cadence OrCAD, and SOLIDWORKS for PCB design and collaborative electronics development, including requirements management for hardware and electronics systems. ## Altium Develop Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **intuitive ease of use** of Altium Develop, enhancing their PCB design efficiency and workflow. (272 reviews) - Users love the **extensive collaboration features** of Altium Develop, enhancing teamwork and speeding up design processes. (218 reviews) - Users appreciate the **user-friendly interface** of Altium Designer, praising its ease of use and seamless integration. (145 reviews) - Users value the **collaborative environment** of Altium Develop, enhancing teamwork during design and prototype testing. (136 reviews) - Users praise Altium Develop for its **efficiency** , with streamlined workflows and quick project setup enhancing productivity. (101 reviews) - User Interface (92 reviews) - Sharing (86 reviews) - Customer Support (82 reviews) - Users find Altium Develop to be incredibly **intuitive** , facilitating faster PCB design with helpful features and shortcuts. (82 reviews) - Library Management (82 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users face a **steep learning curve** with Altium Develop, requiring considerable time to gain proficiency. (93 reviews) - Users find Altium Develop **expensive** , which hinders access for hobbyists and beginners trying to enter the ecosystem. (91 reviews) - Users find Altium Develop's **missing features** frustrating, limiting options for editing and project management capabilities. (65 reviews) - Users find the **complex interface** challenging, needing more intuitive menus and tutorials for better usability. (57 reviews) - Users experience **slow performance** with Altium Develop, particularly during internet-dependent tasks and project loading times. (51 reviews) - Users report **performance issues** with Altium Develop, including bugs, crashes, and slowdowns on large projects. (48 reviews) - Learning Difficulty (46 reviews) - Software Bugs (40 reviews) - Lack of Features (36 reviews) - Complexity (35 reviews) ## Altium Develop Reviews ### 1. Seamless PCB Design and Collaboration, Though Some Workflows Feel Overly Complex **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tony X. | engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 26, 2026 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I like Altium Develop best for its seamless integration of design, collaboration, and automation tools that make complex PCB development feel fast and intuitive. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I dislike that Altium Develop can feel overly complex at times, making certain workflows slower than they need to be. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium Develop streamlines multi-discipline PCB workflows by unifying schematic, layout, real‑time collaboration, and automation into one environment, which saves me time, reduces handoff errors, and lets me iterate designs faster. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Hi Tony. Thank you for sharing your feedback on Altium Develop. We're thrilled to hear that you appreciate the seamless integration of design, collaboration, and automation tools that make PCB development fast and intuitive. We understand your concerns about certain workflows feeling overly complex, and we are continuously working to enhance user experience and streamline processes. Your input is valuable in helping us improve our product. If you have any specific areas where you find the complexity challenging, please feel free to reach out to our support team for assistance. We are here to help and ensure you have a smooth experience with Altium Develop. Thank you for choosing Altium Develop for your PCB design needs. ### 2. Promising direction, but some features are unclear / missing **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 12, 2026 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I use it daily to design HDI and RF boards. The current pricing is very favorable for startups and small companies for the feature set it provides. As we had previous experience with the Altium Designer the switch to the Altium Develop was mostly seamless for us (minus missing managed templates). The unlimited A365 accounts make it easy for the entire team to collaborate with the designers and integrates into our workflow well. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Not all features are available. Some important ones, such as managed templates and project review, were presented during the trial but were removed after I subscribed to the software. Customer support is only done via forums and it is visible that the Altium team does not have clear narrative or knowledge what Altium Agile or Develop should provide or contain. A clear comparison table of the features available in both versions would be helpful. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It empowers us to design HDI and RF boards quickly and with ease. Collaboration and design reviews are seamless, making it straightforward to work together and validate designs as we go. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Thank you for sharing your experience with Altium Develop. We understand the importance of managed templates and project review, and we are working to address these concerns. We will also consider providing a clear comparison table of features between versions to assist our users in making informed decisions. Thank you again for sharing your feedback. ### 3. Intuitive Interface and Sleek GUI That Make Tasks Quick **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2026 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The interface is intuitive, and it only takes a few "clicks" to perform the action I want. I also like the look of the GUI, even though that doesn’t really affect my efficiency. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The roaming license has been removed, and using the site with a poor internet or cell phone connection can be challenging. I also have some difficulty understanding how plug-ins are purchased, including the cost and related details. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a small business, I find the Altium365 solution really helpful because it lets me easily share projects with customers and EMS. Altium Develop is also very fast to work with, especially compared to tools like Allegro or KiCAD. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > We're glad to hear that you find our interface intuitive and efficient. We understand the challenges with the roaming license removal and poor internet connection, and we are continuously working to improve the user experience in such situations. As for the plug-ins, we apologize for any confusion and will work on providing clearer information about their purchase and related details. ### 4. A well rounded and complete software solution even to get started with no experience **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gianni F. | CEO and Lead Designer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Started using Altium when it was called DXP (Design Explorer) to complete a project at School. It was mostly self learned and did not received formal training and within a couple of weeks I was successfully capturing schematics and making PCB layouts. Altium is very intuitive and easy to use, but at the same time very powerful. The power and complexity doesn't get in the way of the interface and the ease of use. The library tools, to create schematic symbols and footprints is excellent, very easy to use. It gives me all the flexibility to design the footprint based on the application and manufacturing requirements. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I can't think of any negative on the software itself. I would like to see a more seamless integration for footprint providers like Ultra-librarian or SnapEDA. The import of models can be a bit of a hassle sometimes. Overall, it's a great software. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a small business owner, I can't afford to outsource the design of certain components of our products so we design them in-house. Altium, easily allows us to capture the schematic and create a PCB that we can send out to manufacture. The generation of the Gerber files is quite powerful and easy to use. Making changes is very easy and straight forward. The ability of customize the design rules and the way the software highlights and adjust the PCB traces to fulfill the constraints is very helpful, it makes the design so much easier and we really value that feature. The Layer management is very good as well, as we do a QC at the end of the design to make sure everything is within spec, we can filter easily highlight the layers and work on the layers one at a time. The schematic to PCB cross probe is also amazing, highlighting the traces/nets on the PCB as they are selected in the Schematic. ### 5. Starting with Altium **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mark A. | Embedded System Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** At first glance, Altium Designer can feel intimidating due to the sheer number of features packed into it. However, once you start exploring its capabilities, you quickly realize how powerful and indispensable it becomes in your workflow. From schematic capture to advanced PCB layout, Altium offers a level of integration and precision that significantly boosts productivity and design quality. I use it almost every day, which makes it easier and more intuitive to pick up and work with. The interface becomes second nature with regular use, and the workflow feels streamlined once you're familiar with it. The ease of integration was also a big plus—adding the component library plugin was both helpful and straightforward. Altium makes it easy to incorporate external libraries and resources into your designs, which speeds up development and keeps everything organized. In terms of ease of use, once you understand the structure, navigating the environment and accessing the tools you need becomes fluid and efficient. And when it comes to implementation, setting up projects and getting started—whether it's a quick prototype or a complex multilayer board—is faster than you’d expect for such a feature-rich platform. I highly recommend it to anyone serious about taking their PCB design career to the next level. Once you get past the initial learning curve, it becomes an essential part of your engineering toolkit. I’d also like to highlight the excellent customer support I’ve received. I’ve worked with the Altium support team in Italy, and they’ve consistently responded quickly and professionally. Their assistance has truly made a difference and reflects well on Altium’s commitment to supporting its users. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** That said, there are some drawbacks—particularly from the perspective of a freelancer. My projects tend to be complex but very focused, and I often only use a small subset of Altium’s full capabilities. Despite this, I still pay a premium for the entire suite, most of which goes unused. A more flexible, modular pricing model would be a huge improvement, especially for independent engineers who don't need every enterprise feature. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 helps me streamline the entire PCB design process, especially when it comes to calculating track impedances and designing high-quality, professional-looking boards. The built-in tools and simulations save time and reduce guesswork, allowing me to focus more on functionality and design optimization. As a result, I can deliver cleaner layouts and more reliable designs, which ultimately benefits both my workflow and my clients. ### 6. Altium 365 importance in my work. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** lavit s. | Adminstration , Logistics and Supply Chain, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium 365 plays very important role in my work as i use this software to learn and implement my skills of how to make PCB, FOOTPRINTS, SCHEMATICS ,ETC and implement also its have many features like footprint wizard, 3D mode , etc . This software makes my work easy and helps me a lot . It is easy to use and reliable . and customer support is also good they provided me student license to use and learn . **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Sometimes i get stuck in many place like in footprint makjng because in Altium some footprints are not available so i have to make them by myself **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 is providing me a platform to learn and practice my PCB designing skills and it also provide learning portal to educate me and help me in any problem which occurs while using this software ### 7. Altium designer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I’ve been using Altium Designer for a while now, and honestly, it’s one of the most powerful PCB design tools I’ve worked with. The all-in-one workflow—from schematic to layout to generating manufacturing files—makes it really efficient once you get the hang of it. What I really like is the intuitive routing tools and the 3D preview, which is super helpful for spotting mechanical issues before prototyping. The component libraries and integration with part suppliers also save a lot of time. That said, it’s not perfect. The learning curve is steep—especially if you’re new to PCB design—and the software can be a bit heavy on system resources. Also, the price is definitely on the higher side, which might make it hard to justify for smaller projects or hobby use. Overall, I think Altium is amazing if you’re working on serious or complex designs. It’s professional-grade, but it takes some time (and budget) to fully appreciate. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Beginners may find the interface overwhelming at first. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 solves collaboration and version control issues by letting me share my BQ fuel gauge IC design with teammates in real-time, get feedback faster, and keep everything organized in one place. ### 8. Great designer tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Remo R. | Electronics Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 27, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium Designer is the best designer tool I have used so far. It has an easy-to-use interface which makes PCB design a fun activity. The varied shortcuts Altium Designer has makes designing in Altium much more simpler and fast. I really love the interactive routing tool where the net selected is highlighted and optimized routing patterns and strategies are suggested. I adore that the new Altium Designer 25 comes with replicating PCB layout, more of git integration, advanced version control and MCAD integration. The customer support is really awesome and I love all the Altium webinars especially the ones with Zachariah Peterson. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I think Altium 365 could have more improvements. I really love working in my local machine but would also want to have the same experience working online (Altium 365). **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium Designer is helping me minimise the time taken for a PCB release. It is extremely beneficial for sharing my design to my colleagues for review and external stakeholders for manufacturing. ### 9. Smarter with altium development platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Graphic Design | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 13, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It's a support schematic capture and routing all in one platform. This platform has easy access to libraries, component and all supplier data. This offers scripting and design rules customization for efficiency. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Altium develop offer's a high cost of subscription fees , especially for small team. And required a powerful computer for smooth performance. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps to improve accuracy, like 3D visualize and board verification. And Handel multi layer and high density design. ### 10. A PCB Design Odyssey: One Engineer, One Software, No Comparisons **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 02, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium is the first professional PCB design software I have used, and I it almost every day in my work day, whether reviewing old designs or working on new ones. I am the main admin for Altium in my small company, managing the workspace, libraries, templates, etc. Altium is a great all-in-one solution for schematic and layout. Importing a standalone library file into a new, clean, altium-managed library is easy once you set up component templates correctly. The templates for new projects, schematics, components, etc. makes creating new items becomes very easy. Integrating into our current QMS is easy, using the project releaser you end up with a nice clean package of files that you can upload to keep the quality team content. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Some of the library management is wonky to get started and has poor starting templates. There's no reason to have a default part ID be "CMP-asdf97sdf67s" - that doesn't help anyone. After getting into the templates and giving them reasonable ID's like 'CAP-0001' and 'RES-0001', along with some standardized names and part descriptions, makes the libary management much better. Customer support is sometimes slow, and to learn how to use the tool you need succumb to a sales pitch masquerading as an info session, rely on 3rd party youtube videos, or pay for many of Altium-run the courses. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** The web-based / workspace library management has been great after transferring from a clunky / disorganized file-based library. It is much easier to understand which schematic symbols and footprints are attached to which components, and to edit-en-masse. It also enables us to use the automated 'Library Health' utility to possibly give us a heads-up as we design new PCB's that a component is going or is already obsolete and shouldn't be used for new designs - without having to go look up each component individually or send it out to the purchasing team. The web-based project management / git control integration has also been great in collaborating with a small team. ### 11. No longer recommend Altium Designer **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Been a professional user of AD for 15+ years having also used Allegro, PADS, KiCAD, EAGLE, etc. UI Design is the best in the industry for ease of use. Particularly the "properties panel" and "Design Rules" graphical interfaces. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** New subscription model and price gouging by 4x is disrespectful and bad value. My org already left SolidWorks for similar mis-behavior. AD hasn't added ANY practical "features" and continues to ignored bugs 6+ years old one of which is a CAM output error that causes A LOT of headache. New tools they've added like wire harness design are VERY far from feature complete compared to competitors like Enterprise Harness which my org uses. Overall Altium has lost touch with their userbase and their executives are clearly going for the short term cash grab and willing to let Altium slide slowly into irrelevance. Seen it so many time before. I've been using KiCAD lately after it made HUGE strides in features and anticipate being able to migrate my organization to KiKAD in the near future after just a few key features are added. So Altium better get their act together because open source is GOING to take their lunch. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Board design ### 12. Altium 365 recommondation **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Amit G. | Senior Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** 1. we do not need to make or attach symbol over and over again if we have made a templete. 2. we can organise components by giving their types and catagories. 3. we can search any component by any parameter given. 4. it is easy to get any component in project. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** we can not see how much space (in MB or GB) we have used. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 has reduced the time of using and creating a component. it is very useful while we are using same parts in different projects. it provides us a whole library we can use any component we want in any project easily. it is good to use centralised library. ### 13. The best PCB CAD tool I have used so far! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** What I love most about Altium Designer is how everything I need is in one place: schematics, PCB layout, footprints, simulation, and more. It makes the whole design process so much smoother and saves me a lot of time switching between different tools. I find it intuitive, reliable, and it really helps me stay focused on designing instead of managing software. It’s become an essential part of my workflow. The customer support, ease of implementation and integration has been flawless. I have been using it for the past 8 years and compared to other design tools, I like it the most. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The amount of RAM Altium Designer requires for big PCB design is huge, but I have been able to go over it with a boosted computer. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It allows me to do impedance matching, length matching easily and fast track our design processes. ### 14. Efficient, collaborative PCB design in the cloud. Altium 365 has made remote collaboration on PCB. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sushil L. | Werkstudent: Fab Simulation & Data Analytics, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The real-time collaboration and version control features are incredibly helpful. I love how easy it is to share design files with team members and get immediate feedback. The integration with Altium Designer makes the transition to cloud-based workflows smooth and intuitive. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The initial learning curve can be steep, especially when transitioning from purely local workflows. Also, occasional syncing issues can cause minor delays, and the pricing might be a bit high for smaller teams or individual users. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 is solving the challenge of team-based PCB design by enabling seamless collaboration, centralized data management, and real-time project updates. Instead of emailing design files back and forth or dealing with version conflicts, my team and I can work on the same project from anywhere, with full visibility into changes. This has greatly reduced miscommunication, sped up our development cycle, and improved overall productivity. ### 15. A great assistant for PCB layout engineers **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** 玮 . | R&D Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I mainly use Altium 365 to design the schematic and PCB of communication module products. For our platform based design, Altium 365 can quickly modify the schematic and export the PCB. We use it almost every day in our work. For complex designs, it can also be divided into different modules for design and is easy to integrate. Experienced engineers rarely make mistakes, which ensures the delivery of our products to customers. Even if there are problems encountered during use, customer service personnel can patiently help solve them。 **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** It's also related to my own software usage ability. I think setting PCB routing rules is quite complex and involves some programming, which may not be very user-friendly for beginners. However, after learning and proficiently using it, it will be much better. Of course, I still need to strengthen my practice **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** We mainly use Altium 365 for the schematic design and PCB layout of our products, as well as the output of design and processing files. It is an indispensable part of our product development and production ### 16. A tool which works, fast **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dmitry I. | Hardware Electronics Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 13, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** PCB layout process is especially smooth for me. It's hard to summarise such a complex process, but I will try to list a few processes which I find especially satysfying when using Altium ( I am using version 25) - Amazing support for .step 3D bodies. Visualising the fit of components is extremely easy on tight boards. Never having to worry about having an "exceedingly complex" step file - the speed of rendering is great. Positioning even the most awkward 3D bodies is easy using the "snap points" feature. - "Work guides" feature makes positioning pads within a footprint easier. For some reason, footprint drawings in the datasheets seem to be drawn by people who never had to create one. Why give dimensions to the edge of the pad, not the centre? Pads are always placed by the centre. Anyhow, work guides go a long way towards solving this issue, as it's easy to visually alight the edge of a newly placed pad to the work guide. Presto. - Draftsman tool makes generating quality assembly drawings a breeze. It takes a few clicks, and it looks great. Get massive kudos from manufacturing colleages who are used to old-skool documentation generated from Gerber layers - Routing is generally very smooth, including differential pairs. Push-and-shove is brilliant. xSignals are really valuable too for complex, impedance- and length-controlled designs. - The repeatable output generation using Output jobs is a massive time saver. The degree of customisation of the output leaves not much to be desired - Custom queiries in Design Rules allow almost infinite degree of precision when specifying pretty much every aspect of the design - Powerful library model allows each company to find a level of complexity/simplicity of library organisation which suits their size and style of working, from simple file-based to database-based There will be lost of other positives, these are just the ones which stand out. The quality of documentation is generally brilliant, which makes it fast and easy to upskill and become productive, fast. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** It mostly "just works", however there are some small niggles (as with any products). The ones I specifially came across are: - Sometimes the design rules don't seem to work quite right with custom queries. For example, trying to create a rule to ignore supposedly interfering components don't always work. Specifically, if one creates a "Component clearance" rule, "where the first object matches" X and "where the second matches" Y, and set the minimum vertical and horisontal clearances to 0, it's meant to be a canonical way of ignoring a collision. However, it's a guess whether the "collision" will actually be igonored - more often than not I find the rule just does not work unfortunately, even with the priority set right. - Another example of seemingly awkward/unworkable rule seems trying to ignore an unconnected class of polygons. I have a design where I have a few unconnected (no net) polygons underneath the switching inductors to prevent magnetic field from coupling onto the rest of the place. Altium correctly marks them as an "un-routed net", however I've not found a way to create a rule under "un-routed net" category to ignore them. Further on that point, the same query, "InPolygonClass('L3_unconnected')" works in PCB filter but does not work in the rule dialog. More consistency would be great. One can always waive the resulting violations, but that does not convey the design intent as well. - My colleagues and I found that sometimes the track length calculation ignores small segments of the track on a certain layer. This is potentially a big problem when trying to precisely tune/match track length. -Very occasionally, Altium hangs with a memory violation error or some such error. I guess it's mostly inevitable for a product of such complexity, but it's still a bug! **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Producing quality PCB's fast. Drafsman tool in conjuction with Variants is very useful for any real-life product which need correct production variant management and quality assembly instructions. ### 17. Altium saves time in my work **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kirill Z. | Electronics Design Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 13, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The company has upgraded from PADS to Altium and this feels like buying a Ferrari. Differential pair routing and multi-layer board design using layer stack managet has helped us get through EMC testing. ActiveBOM is a fantastic feature in assisting with REACH/RoHS requirements. Tool is very esay to use and is intuitive, great integration with manufacturer part seach and schematic design. There are lots of guide videos with good commentary. I now use Altium pretty much every day and happy to continue doing so. I like that there are frequent software updates. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** So far we have not seen any issues with Altium. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** With the help of Altium Designer, we have redesigned the PCB as 6-layer board with differential pairs of matched impedance. These changes helped in passing the EMC testing, resulting in product launch on the market. Altium Designer's API with major component suppliers and IHS market help a lot during component selection process. We save a ton of time now, as pretty much every component that is needed has REACH and RoHS information, which helps us in making the decesion on whether the component can be used or not in the early stage of the deisng. ### 18. Great Tool for PCB Design **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hemant A. | ECE Student, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I like Altium 365 because it’s easy to create and edit library components, and the project and library management tools are great for handling complex designs. The PCB layout editor is smart and customizable, and the 3D view helps with visualizing the board and checking it against enclosures. I also appreciate the ability to create custom project templates, which saves time when starting new designs. It’s relatively easy to implement, and I can use it almost every week for various PCB designs. The integration with other tools works well, though sometimes there are small issues when importing or exporting files. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** It can be slow to start up and access files, especially on a network. Some of the default settings, like the connection matrix, create unnecessary warnings that make it harder to spot real issues. The Bill of Materials feature takes a while to generate and needs to be updated if changes are made to the schematic. The software can slow down when working with larger designs, and although it integrates well with third-party components, sometimes there are issues with different footprints or symbol standards. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 helps me design PCBs more efficiently with its intuitive tools and better project organization compared to other software. The ability to create custom project templates saves me time, and the 3D view and layer customization make it easier to visualize and fit-check my designs. The visualization also allows me to see where the heat-sensitive components are and where to place things like fans, helping to avoid errors in heat management and improving the overall design process. ### 19. The best PCB design software I have used! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 09, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I have been using Altium Designer almost daily for the last 17+ years and have designed over 100 boards from simple 2 layer boards to complex 6 layer boards. Altium and more powerful an the UI is more intuitive than other software I have tried over the years. I have previously used Pulsonix, Easy-PC, KICAD and Eagle. The features in Altium have saved an enormous amount of time spent designing PCBs. One of the many amazing features is the hug and push mode for interactive routing. This feature allows board modifications to be made easily without having to redo all the previous routing. Another great feature is how easy it is to manage the 3d models for components and the ability to import and export to and from SolidWorks. The web based documentation portal is great, especially for features that don't get used all the time. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Steeper learning curve due to the configurability and feature set of the software. Creating the board layout can take a long time due to the limited capabilities. The outline must be created from lines and arcs. The work around for this is to just import a DXF that contains the board outline. The new subscription based pricing model is a substantial increase in price. The layer stack configuration for flex circuits is kind of clunky. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easily create electronics designs through schematic capture and PCB layout. ### 20. This tool is user friendly and easy to learn **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Darshan B. | Design Engnier, Design, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** easy to genarat gerber and here we can anylisis the CAM it is very use full and tool is very feiller to leare and simulation is good all options are esay to access **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** length match is difficult making of highe seep desigan is very complicaed but making scrit is difficult and intrtfaceds res tio diu incresss and decredsds to making all the types **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Scripting langvage is not easy ### 21. Highly Detailed and Intuitive CAD Software for PCB Design. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Trevor M. | Hardware SubTeam Lead, Railroad Manufacture, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 17, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** My favorite things about Altium designer is its intuitive platform and relatively easy to use features. From my experience of Altium, I would say that it has a relatively steep learning curve (compared to other software I have used). The curve is very rewarding however. If someone learning Altium takes the time to learn all of the keyboard shortcuts and hidden (but necassary) features, the time and effort that goes into PCB design can be cut in half. I especially like the Altium 365 environment. It has enabled me and my team to work colaboratively together on many projects. My superiors are able to view and comment on my work remotely. This is very helpful for a team scenario. I also really like the "Manufacturer Part Search" feature. With previous softwares I have used, every component needs to be loaded separately which creates a whole file management nightmare and takes a lot of time. The ability to have many common components already on altium is very refreshing and saves a bunch of time. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** One thing I would say that can be improved is adding more components to the "Manufacturer Part Search." Another thing, which may be a little niche for my scenario, is making the software somewhat easier to navigate without a mouse. I work a lot from my laptop and do not always have a mouse with me. Right clicking and dragging on a mouse pad is incredibly obnoxious (mostly the laptop designers fault not altium). My only other suggestion comes when defining board size. Recently I needed a board that was exactly 50mm x 50mm. It can be really hard to draw lines that are exactly a certain size. My solution was to set the grid size to 1mm and just figure it out. It could be cool to have a display of how long your line drawings are or the dimensions of the figure you have drawn. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is helping use solve being able to design and manufacture PCB's quicker. It has many features and rules to use that help us make PCB's exactly what we want. ### 22. Experience with Altium 365 **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Parveen J. | IoT Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 17, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** -Best thing about Altium 365 is its web interface -It allow collebration with differents developers -Provide a interactive and easy to understanding type user interface is provided by Altium 365 -Next thing is version control is always very helpfull for a devloper - Documentation are always be a good guider to resolve the problems and for get a path to make things possible so, thatwhy i this i don't need any customer support -Best part is integration with 3D shapes -Before altium I used almost every pcb designing software but when i start using altium that provide a amazing experience now, i am use altium frequently. Altium Designer is known for its intuitive and unified design environment, which significantly enhances productivity of devs that is the ease of implementation of Altium 365. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** So many times i face a issue with altium 365 that is Project sharing, altium allow devs to share project using URL but that not in working it reflects an error for that was need customer support. one more thing altium is a very heavy software local system are not capable to use it frequently if web application is also provided then i think that will a best thing for user. Altium needs to provide more content on simulation and VLSI designing. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am basically a developer i used to design PCB with Altium I think best part of altium 365 is varsion control and ability to project sharing using URl ### 23. Altium 365: The perfect tool for PCB design and collaboration **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Angel O. | Freelance Marine Electrician, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 10, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** What I like most about Altium 365 is the relentless way it facilitates collaboration in the cloud. It's perfect for working on PCB design projects in real time, which is ideal for international teams. The seamless integration with Altium Designer and the ability to access designs from anywhere makes it, for me, the most convenient tool (the one I use practically every day). Additionally, for those of us who use version control tools (such as Git), we really appreciate the centralized library management and the option to reuse designs that help speed up the development process. The interface is intuitive (like any tool, you have to invest in some time to understand the different functions so you can actually discover how easy it is to implement in practically any PCB project) and the support from the growing community is key. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** This may not apply to many users, but for me, given the environments in which I occasionally work (nautical or outdoor environments), the dependence on a stable Internet connection is very inconvenient, since like any cloud platform, it presents a problem in places with poor or intermittent connectivity (although it is logical that in the absence of Internet, there can be no data exchange, and then proper interaction, I think that one or another mechanism for offline work can be improved). Also, the cost of the tool can be a tremendous challenge for small teams or individual users. Finally, I haven't interacted enough with customer support to generalize, but perhaps there is an area of opportunity in response times and ticket resolution. Otherwise, I think everything else is very well done. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 solves several key problems in PCB design, especially in relation to collaboration and version control. The platform facilitates simultaneous teamwork, which reduces errors and speeds up the development process. By centralizing design files and component libraries in the cloud, all collaborators can manage the same information, avoiding problems with outdated versions and missing files. Also, similar to Git, the ability to track changes and revert to previous versions helps to strongly counteract all kinds of errors, which is key to meeting customer deadlines and ensuring the highest quality of projects. In short, it optimizes teamwork, saves us time and allows us to focus the effort on what really matters, the design. ### 24. Altium has been a better and far more complete design experience than using OrCAD or PADS **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tim T. | Hardware Design Consultant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 13, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium Designer comes with everything you need to get a design entered and laid out in one tool. You don't have to pay for additional functions - it's all there. Schematic integration with large part databases with pricing and availability and powerful manufacturing BOM generation is very slick. SPICE is there for analog simulation. Layout with Altium is great with support for matched length routing, controlled-impedance, differential pairs, guided manual and auto routing. It's a real time-saver once you learn how to use it. The way 3D mechanical models are integrated into the design and output for use in mechanical design is very helpful. Altium Designer is by far the best electronic design tool I've ever used. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The price can be high, but there are some attractive options to make it more affordable. When you consider what you would pay for other tools with similar features it's not unreasonable. The CAD world has been moving toward a subscription model for some time now and that can help to manage budgets. Customer support is not as fast as some others, but their staff is very knowledgable and helpful and there is a hugh user base to draw on for support. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I enjoy the way high-speed and differential pair routing are handled in Altium, making things easier. Adding new parts to a design is much easier with pricing and availability up front in the selection process. For a small company this can be a huge time saver. I also really appreciate the way 3D models are handled. It's really nice having 3D design integrated so well in the design process. ### 25. Altium Designed is the best tool in the industry **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Industrial Automation | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium provides all the tools needed to design complex PCBAs all in one package. I like how centralized all the features are and the interface. You can do part/library creation, schematic capture, and PCB layout all in one tool, which facilitates both design as well as other tasks, like board review or debugging a boad/bringup. I have used it for 10+ years and it is now my tool of choice. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Some of the licensing options are very complicated to understand. For example, Altium Nexus licenses can be very complicated, so much so that even the reps sometimes get confused! **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I design boards. Altium is a one-stop shop for all my needs - part/library creation, schematic capture, board layout, and generating files/documentation for manufacturing. It allows me to do all this on one tool that is very powerful. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > We're thrilled to hear that Altium Designer has been your tool of choice for over 10 years! We appreciate your feedback on the centralized features and interface. We understand that licensing options can be complex, and we're constantly working to improve clarity in this area. ### 26. Excellent Beginner Experience **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Juan M. | Biomedical Engineer Internship, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 27, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It offers a wide range of tools for PCB design, simulation, and verification in a single platform. Also, it has an user-friendly interface with customizable workspaces that streamline the design process. Personally I like that it has an excellent integration with mechanical CAD tools, particularly SolidWorks, for ECAD-MCAD collaboration. Lastly, it is used in a wide variety of industries, which gives its users a high value in multiple industry domains. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Being a specialized software, Altium Designer can be complex and feature-rich, which may overwhelm beginners. Additionally, more complex designs require significant system resources, potentially leading to performance issues on less powerful machines. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium Designer's integration with Molded Interconnect Devices (MID) technology enables me to create 3D circuit carriers that combine mechanical and electronic functions in a single component. Although integrating mechanical design and PCB can sometimes be time-consuming, this feature helps reduce both the time and complexity of production. MID integration also breaks the constraints of traditional 2D PCB design, allowing greater flexibility in component placement and routing, even though it is still a niche technology. Regarding the PCB design process, the schematic capture with hierarchical design capabilities helps me organize and manage complex or modular designs much more effectively. Without these capabilities, such designs would otherwise be a headache to work with. When working on complex projects, it can be easy to overlook design rules necessary for correct PCB manufacturing. The automation of this process with Design Rule Checking (DRC) ensures that the PCB complies with manufacturing standards, avoiding costly mistakes in the production stage. ### 27. Altium Designer has been my AMAZING primary tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nithya . | NIL, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 02, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The user interface is intuitive once you get past the initial learning curve and interactive routing help with fast, accurate layout. I also appreciate how customizable the UI is. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** From a company perspective, the licensing model can be expensive, especially when scaling the team. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our company uses managed libraries, and Altium’s support for lifecycle management helps reduce issues with obsolete or incorrect parts. ### 28. Altium 365: The Ultimate PCB Tool for Learners and Pros **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Arun P. | Research assistant, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 11, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I've been learning Altium 365 for a while now, and it has been fun. After searching for a good PCB ECAD software, I found Altium was the most recommended too and probably has the best learning resources and tutorials. Therefore, I went for Altium 365. User-base is also bigger than others, which is pretty helpful when you need to ask somebody. The GUI is intuitive and everything is well integrated. Component libraries are pretty extensive. That makes it a comprehensive and powerful PCB design tool, and working with it is always fun. Plus, they keep updating it with new features, which is always a plus. As a student, you get a free standard license for such an expensive software, which was the most attractive factor for me to go for it. Overall, Altium 365 is definitely a solid choice for PCB design and I highly recommend Altium 365 to both beginners and seasoned professionals in the field. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The software is demanding on hardware and can take some time to load. Additionally, the subscription model has become increasingly expensive. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** A single goto software for PCB design which helps to carry out works efficiently. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Hi Arun. Thank you for sharing your positive experience with Altium 365. We're thrilled to hear that you find it comprehensive, powerful, and fun to work with. We understand your concerns about the hardware demands and subscription cost, and we're constantly working to optimize performance and provide value to our users. Your feedback is valuable to us, and we appreciate your recommendation of Altium 365 to both beginners and seasoned professionals. ### 29. Altium Designer, THE GOOD ECAD **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Genaro S. | Electrical/Computer Engineering Intern, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 08, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium Designer is hands down one of the best tools out there for PCB design. The way it keeps adding new features and tools just makes life so much easier. The whole design experience is smooth, and the ERC (Electrical Rule Check) is like having a buddy who catches your mistakes before they turn into big problems. I really love using harnesses—they make connecting everything so much cleaner and more straightforward. One of my favorite things is how you can create libraries straight from existing schematics. It saves so much time and hassle, cutting out a lot of repetitive work. The multilayer interface is also super easy to work with, letting you manage complex designs without losing your mind. Altium Designer just gives you that feeling of control, making it easier to get your projects right the first time. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** As much as I love Altium Designer, it's not all sunshine and roses. The learning curve can be pretty brutal, especially when you're just starting out. The massive UI, while packed with tools, can feel overwhelming at first. I think having more informative tooltips as a default would be a huge help for new users. It would make navigating the software a lot easier and save people from constantly hunting for what they need. Another thing that could be improved is the design check process. It’s powerful, but it’s not the most user-friendly. For someone new to ECAD, it can be tough to figure out all the tools at your disposal, and that can lead to wasted time and a lot of frustration. Making this process more intuitive would go a long way in keeping users sane as they get up to speed. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium Designer is solving the problem of complexity in PCB design. Whenever I think of something that could make my design process easier, Altium already seems to have a tool or feature ready to go. It's like they’ve anticipated every potential roadblock. When I start researching how to tackle a specific issue, Altium often has a solution that transforms what could have been a chaotic mess into a neat, organized circuit diagram. This benefit is huge for me because it takes the stress out of designing. Instead of getting lost in the weeds of endless options and potential mistakes, I can rely on Altium to simplify the process. It turns what could have been a disaster into something straightforward and manageable, saving me time and a lot of headaches. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Hi Genaro. We're thrilled to hear that Altium Designer has been such a valuable tool for your PCB design needs! It's great to know that the features like ERC, harnesses, library creation, and multilayer interface have made your design experience smoother and more efficient. Thank you for sharing your feedback! ### 30. Altium Designer, the future of Electronics Design **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tigist M. | System Engineer, Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** What I like best about Altium Designer is its unified design environment, which integrates schematic capture, PCB layout, and component management seamlessly. The software's advanced tools for high-speed design and 3D visualization are incredibly powerful. Collaboration features like Altium 365 facilitate real-time sharing and teamwork. Customizability and automation options streamline workflows, while the comprehensive component libraries save time. Overall, its intuitive interface enhances productivity and design accuracy. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The thing that frustrates me about Altium designer is that the subscription fee is too high and beginner designers like me find it hard to afford it. Also as the features are many and hard to understand it would be great if there are more free online courses on the tool. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium Designer solves problems by integrating schematic capture, PCB layout, and component management into one platform, which streamlines the design process and reduces errors.It helped me to make most efficient dedigns for my academic projects and also for small scale projects I do for my clients. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Hi Tigist. Thank you for sharing your positive experience with Altium Designer's features and collaboration capabilities. We understand that the subscription fee may be a challenge for some users, and we are committed to exploring ways to make our software more accessible. Your feedback about the need for additional free online courses is valuable, and we will explore opportunities to enhance our educational resources. Here are a few of our free learning resources that might be helpful in the future https://www.youtube.com/@AltiumAcademy, https://resources.altium.com/, and https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer. ### 31. Extremely useful but slightly confusing **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shawn P. | Coding Instructor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 03, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I like how easy it is to make a PCB from a schematic sheet and how it then generates the Gerber file instantly without any other steps and it just works. I think the part manufacture selection is very useful but sometimes is lacking in the number of available parts for specific purposes but it is extremely useful instead of having to make each part by hand. The PCB design is quite intuitive and I would say well designed to edit each layer and also when adding anything needed onto it. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I feel like a lot of the buttons that need to be pressed to do stuff are pretty poorly chosen which makes it confusing to figure out how to use it properly, I also wish there was like a key bind image that could show you a picture of the different shortcuts to help out since they are not that intuitive making it difficult to do a lot of things. I also feel like the amount of onboarding for the app is quite poor there are only a few YouTube videos that I could say are actually useful compared to the rest which don't really show what is actually needed and or aren't really geared towards beginners making the experience quite poor. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium designer is helping me make electrical schematics that I can then turn into PCB's, it has become quite an integral part of my workflow since I'm a student in an engineering college doing comp sci and electrical meaning I have a lot of needs in having a good all in one electrical and PCB designing app. Specifically due to my need for robotics and stuff within comp sci and electrical, it was very useful due to all of the available parts and all of the systems that exist to help expedite the process of making an electrical system and a PCB. I think the biggest thing is the fact that the schematic instantly transfers over to the PCB which I find very useful and is something that I would dread if I had to do it fully on my own. ### 32. Best in Class Product. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Manufacturing | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 28, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium has it all from simulation software to intricate Design rule checks. The complete customizability and advacned features that are offered make alitum the best CAD program for PCB design. Altium provides an easy to use interface. My favorite feature is the ability to add design constraints to my PCB layout to ensure I am within specification and never second guess my work. With proper setup, my layouts can be flawless. I use this software every day and still find new ways that altium helps elevate my designs. The cloud features are great and allow me to track any design updates as well as go back on revisions if i need to. The ease of implenting my designs and exporting them to manufucturers is great. I am able to integrate the manufacturer into altium which allows for easy access to my fab files. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Some of the menus within altium can be hard to navigate. My least favorite feature is the project releaser feature. While it has great functionality, I find it confusing and convoluded. I also dislike the the fact that I cannot change the name of my releases. Once you make your intiil release you are stuck with that name. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Altium for all of my PCB designs. There is no reason to use anything else. Altium is in-depth and easy to use. ### 33. Great CAD tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Design | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** What I like most about Altium is its intuitive interface, powerful design tools, and seamless integration for PCB design, which streamlines workflows and enhances productivity, making complex projects manageable and efficient to execute. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** What I dislike about Altium is that it does not allow modifying PCB library footprints directly from a design. It should enable opening the original logic symbol or footprint and updating it seamlessly. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design all sort of modules ### 34. Altium Designer, The best PCB design software I have used. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 30, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium has some of the best features on the market, I have used many other alternatives but settled on Altium as it is the most intuitive to use. I use Altium pretty much every day. The manufacturing part search is the most amazing feature I have used. Another amazing aspect of Altium is the huge library of useful plugins. Support is amazing when using Altium, when starting to use Altium you are presented with practically unlimited guides are resources on how to use it. Altium is also very easy so implement in a company thanks to its many management features. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** At times Altium can be slow and painful to use, especially on a slower internet connection. Altium can also be fairly hard to run on lower-end devices. The lack of support for macOS is very frustrating at times as I use both a mac and PC during my day. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium allows me to easily manage everyone else working on a project with me to make sure everything goes smoothly. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Thank you for your positive review of Altium Designer! We're glad to hear that you find it intuitive to use and appreciate the manufacturing part search and library of plugins. We're committed to enhancing the user experience and addressing compatibility issues. We're pleased to hear how Altium has helped you manage your project effectively. ### 35. Modern software that makes PCB design fun **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 28, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The modern UI, making it feel good to draw schematics and design PCBs, and the extensive online documentation **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The fact that it has become a bit slow as of late **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** High-quality PCB design with manufacturing files that we can trust ### 36. Very Easy to Use and Comprehensive **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 30, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium Designer is amazing! - The web viewer is very convenient when I want to quickly show my design to a colleague - The software is incredibly optimized, it runs smoothly on my less-capable devices - The schematic and PCB editors are very intuitive and easy to use **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** There are a few minor nitpicks: - Creating library components is very repetitive and complicated, there are definitely ways to streamline the process - There's no ability to replace "manufacturer part search" components, which makes me have to redo my layout and routing when I do need to replace them - Some "manufacturer part search" components don't come with ECAD files when they are actually readily available online **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using Altium Designer to collaboratively design my PCB boards. It is an industry-standard tool with a plethora of resources, making it easy to solve technical issues. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > We're glad to hear that you find Altium Designer easy to use and comprehensive! The web viewer and optimization are features we're proud of. We appreciate your feedback on creating library components and the ability to replace manufacturer part search components. We're constantly working to improve our software and will take your comments into consideration. ### 37. Altium Designer was very user-friendly, making PCB design smooth and efficient **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It is easy to learn and it is very user friendly. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I had difficulty to find many components from Altium Library Loader V2.2. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I designed the PCB that I needed for the development of a device. ### 38. Altium: A Game-Changer for PCB Design **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ricardo A. | R&D engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 19, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** What I like best about Altium Designer is how it combines a powerful set of tools with a user-friendly interface. It makes designing PCBs easier with features like real-time design rule checking and an intuitive layout editor. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** What I dislike about Altium Designer is that it can be quite pricey, which might be a stretch for smaller teams or individual users. Additionally, while it’s powerful, the software can be a bit complex and have a steep learning curve, especially if you’re new to PCB design. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium Designer solves the problem of having to juggle multiple tools for PCB design by providing an all-in-one solution. It integrates schematic capture, PCB layout, and simulation into a single platform, which simplifies the design process and keeps everything organized. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Hi Ricardo. Thank you for highlighting the benefits of Altium Designer in simplifying the PCB design process. We aim to continue providing an integrated platform that streamlines the design workflow for our users. We appreciate your feedback! ### 39. The best CAD package for any electronics team **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Will M. | Electronic Design Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 25, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The power of the tool when designing higher speed with embedded PCBs allows for a far greater chance of right first time. The ability to automatically calculate signal propagation delay based on the PCB stack-up and create signal widths to target impedances saves huge amounts of time and potential errors when making these calculations by hand. The MCAD co-design features are brilliant for working and integrating with mechanical teams when validation and adjustments need to be made in order to satisfy mechanical constraints. Switching over from other CAD products was the easiest experience I have had with CAD products, the 365 library made implementing new designs very easy. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** As I use Altium most days at work there are a few issues that you sometimes notice, on one of the recent updates performance did take a hit. However, this was fixed quickly, as are most issues after opening support tickets. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium is used for the design of all electronic products that are designed in-house. THe high-speed design features have allowed us to design products not only ourselves but also faster than before. ### 40. Review by a new junior engineer. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Achille R. | Junior Engeneering, Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 30, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I was really surprised of the shortcut and the cleaning controls. One of the upside is the f1 button, really comfortable. It's a really powerful software that allows you to do everything regarding the pcb design. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The thing that i disliked the most is the user interface, sometimes I struggle to find a function. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I develpoed electronic board and I think is the best software to do it. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Hi Achille! We're thrilled to hear that Altium Designer has been instrumental in your electronic board development. We understand the importance of a user-friendly interface and are committed to making improvements to enhance your experience. Thank you for sharing your feedback. ### 41. Pleasantly surprised! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Renewables & Environment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 26, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I have used other PCB design software in the past, but this was my first time trying to use Altium to make a full project from start to finish. I really enjoyed the interface and ease of use. Everything was fairly intuitive and easy to navigate through the commands. I also like the manufacturer part search that is built into the software. This is a big selling point for me on Altium because the most time consuming part of a project for me always comes down to footprints and 3D models. Altium has made this considerably easier. Once I actually made it to the PCB for routing and placing components, I saw where Altium was superior to other software packages that I've used. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I am not a big fan of the cloud saving. Maybe I am old fashioned, but I prefer the local saves. This is only a minor inconvenience and even though I don't necessarily like the cloud saving, I see why they want to do it and why it is beneficial for users. Also I am not a big fan of the change from the old design rules to the new constraint manager. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium is making my PCB design process much faster by having a lot of very helpful built-in features. It did not take a long time to pick up and learn, which is always a benefit. Also the project output functionality when you are finished with a project, but need to export the Gerber and Drill files is very easy to use and useful. ### 42. The best electronic cad ever!!! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Davide A. | Operation Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Ease of use, very intuitive menus and controls **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** the cost of the annual subscription, I prefer the perpetual license solution **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** creates 3D PCBs that are very useful for interfacing with mechanical CAD ### 43. Easy to use with lots of resources available. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian Z. | Avionics Member, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 29, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Sleek design, lots of resources/support, intuitive. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** random UI changes creates issues, the price is too high - would not use unless sponsored by company. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allows my team to create custom solutions for aero applications. Allows teammates to share and collaborate on projects easily. ### 44. The Go-To Electronics Design Package **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Iain H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 12, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium Designer is the most complete and versatile electronics design software out there - I've used several different packages in my career, and Altium is the easiest to use, most intuitive, and produces the best results. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** A tiny niggle with Altium is that the licencing screen can sometimes be confused - for example if the software has previously crashed (doesn't happen often, but all software does sometimes), you're unable to use it again for a while because the license is still locked to the previous (crashed) session. There's workarounds though. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Designing innovative PCBs, and allowing creative freedom of electronic design. Closing the loop betweem PCB design and mechanical integration by allowing inport/export of 3D bodies for MCAD collaboration. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > It's great to hear that Altium Designer is helping you design innovative PCBs and integrate mechanical design! We're committed to providing tools that enable creative freedom and seamless collaboration across disciplines. ### 45. Although the learning curve is fairly steep, Altium is a great software tool for PCB layouts. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 27, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The user interface and tools are straightforward and 3D visualization of the board is decent. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Steep learning curve and wish it had more manufacturing guidance, for example, design rules checking for ceramic vs. flex vs. FR4. This would save a lot of back and forth sharing of gerbers with manufacturers to get the board to something that can be manufactured. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Fast PCB design and gerber generation for manufacturing. ### 46. Intuitive and easy to learn CAD tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Omar G. | Electrical Engineering Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** its easy to work on both schematic and layout at the same time. Layout design is intuitive and easy to learn, commands are straightforward and all activity can be one on one window. UI is easy to understand and helpful. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** technical support is subpar, there is no personal interaction with technical support team, all questions are directed to their website to summit tickets and wait for answer which can take long. they also ask to look in to their web log for solutions from other users, so one have to spend time looking for answers instead of getting a quick solution from an expert. Siim Im paying for subscriptin (which is not cheap) I would expect better technical support. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** even Altium is not our companys official CAD tool, we use it for quick prototyping and to generate 3D rendering of PCBs with components to share with ME team and confirm enclosure fitting. Its easy and straight forwared, no complex process to generate new parts, forwared anotation or gerber generation. ### 47. Clean and very straightforward **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Renewables & Environment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Its tools are actually usable, its intutive and its quite accurate **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Sometimes part library migration as well as parameters are not defined well and there is not a great process outlined. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Designing PCBs for my company's product ### 48. An excellent intuitive tool for PCB design **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lakshman A. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 06, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** As a hardware designer, what's most valuable to me is how quickly I can design a PCB. Altium is just such an intuitive tool to use. There are so many useful features and shortcuts to really help speed up the process of PCB design. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The only dislike really is the high cost of the product. I belive Altium will be much more widely adopted if the price was made more favourable. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium is the tool we use to design PCBs in our company. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Thank you for sharing your positive experience with Altium Designer. We understand your concern about the cost and we continuously strive to provide the best value for our customers. Your feedback is important to us as we work to improve our offerings. ### 49. One of the most versatile software packages for hardware engineers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Manufacturing | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 02, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium is very intuitive and has a fast learning curve for new users. It helps with the integration of the electrical and mechanical designs and helps the engineers to communicate between different fields much easier. Transfer of schematics changes to PCB is as seamless as it can get and there are new features added to make life easier for hardware engineers with every update. The team supporting us is very responsive and we have had a very good experience working with them. I was originally a hardware engineer using this product and as I moved into management, I have found that the team supporting the product, are even better than the software itself. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The process of co-terming the licenses we have for my team could have taken less time. it's just a quality of life improvement and did not have any impact on productivity... **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Schematic designs, Layout (PCB) design, exports for manufacturing, checking the mechanical compatibility of the boards by importing the mechanical enclosures, ... **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Thank you for sharing your positive experience with Altium Designer. We're pleased to hear that the software has been intuitive and beneficial for integrating electrical and mechanical designs. We're also glad to hear that you've had a positive experience with our support team. We appreciate your feedback on the license co-terming process and will take it into consideration for future improvements. ### 50. Great for just about any level of design **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian W. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The tight integration between the schematic and layout spaces makes importing changes between the two easy and intuitive. Almost all aspects of the design can be specified relatively easily. Design rules can be as simple or as complex as required using almost any element/feature of the components and primitives. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Design reuse is a relatively newer feature that has evolved from design snippets that allows us to more easily reuse portions of both a schematic and layout in a new design. This feature is improving but still has a ways to go to be a major time saving feature. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium is the platform that we use to bring our electronic designs to life in a faster and more organized fashion. ## Altium Develop Discussions - [How to import and convert the OrCAD (allegro) GERBER to Altium PCB file? (reverse OrCAD GERBER to Altium PCB )?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-to-import-and-convert-the-orcad-allegro-gerber-to-altium-pcb-file-reverse-orcad-gerber-to-altium-pcb) - 2 comments, 1 upvote - [How do I format symbol parameters from a database library?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-i-format-symbol-parameters-from-a-database-library) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Is there a way to modelize in 3D the Pcb designs?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/36429-is-there-a-way-to-modelize-in-3d-the-pcb-designs) - 3 comments, 1 upvote - [How do I write scripts for example.. transform a jpeg to a logo on a silk layer.](https://www.g2.com/discussions/13888-how-do-i-write-scripts-for-example-transform-a-jpeg-to-a-logo-on-a-silk-layer) - 2 comments, 1 upvote - [What is Altium 365 used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-altium-365-used-for) - 2 comments - [View Altium Develop pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/altium-develop/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=1765706&qs=pros-and-cons§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-26+16%3A29%3A35+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=87b90f1e-96d6-4d7c-ae4d-64d7f1ca8070&secure%5Btoken%5D=c9a2da58a2777cccff05c99ff81504b85abc3feb5a7c20639adefba93162514a&format=llm_user) ## Altium Develop Integrations - [Autodesk EAGLE](https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-eagle/reviews) - [FreeCAD](https://www.g2.com/products/freecad/reviews) - [Google Drive & Docs for Confluence](https://www.g2.com/products/google-drive-docs-for-confluence/reviews) - [Jira](https://www.g2.com/products/jira/reviews) - [Know Your Customer](https://www.g2.com/products/know-your-customer/reviews) - [Microsoft Access](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-access/reviews) - [Onshape](https://www.g2.com/products/onshape/reviews) - [Oracle Database](https://www.g2.com/products/oracle-database/reviews) - [Power Analyzer](https://www.g2.com/products/power-analyzer/reviews) - [SAS/OR](https://www.g2.com/products/sas-or/reviews) ## Altium Develop Features **Design** - Drawing - Modeling - Visualize - Rendering **Metadata** - Repository **Design** - PCB layout editing - Schematic editor **Tools - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - 3D/solid modeling Tools - Rendering Tools - Drawing Tools - Editing Tools - Text Editing Tools **Requirements Authoring and Structure - Requirements Management** - Structured Requirements Authoring - Hierarchical Requirements Organization **Compliance and Governance - Requirement Management** - Regulated Industry Standards Support **Edit** - File Import - Push/Pull - Views - Grips **Data Management** - Version Control **Tools** - 3D modeling tools - Component placement **Administration** - Requirements Listing - Centralized Information - Traceability **File Options - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Export Files - Import Files - File Interoperability - Backwards compatibility - File size **Collaboration and Review - Requirements Management** - Review and Approval Workflows - Role-Based Access Control **Collaboration** - Annotate - Documentation - Data Extract **Library** - Component libraries **Communication** - Stakeholder Communication - Internal Communication Enablement **Customization - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Custom Scripts - Custom Menus - Custom Interface **Role-Based Access Co - Requirements Management** - Baselining **Platform** - Board size - Layers **Procedural** - Automated Creation & Testing **Environment - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Hardware support - Task-based interfaces - Manage Multiple Profiles - Command Clarity **Traceability - Requirements Management** - Bidirectional Traceability - Impact Analysis - Traceability Matrix Generation **Customization** - Custom interface **AI Traceability - Requirements Management** - Suspect Link Detection **Integration - Requirements Management** - ALM and Project Management Tool Integration **Change Management and Version Control - Requirements Management** - Complete Audit Trail ## Top Altium Develop Alternatives - [Autodesk Fusion](https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-fusion/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (510 reviews) - [AutoCAD](https://www.g2.com/products/autocad/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (1,837 reviews) - [Onshape](https://www.g2.com/products/onshape/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (712 reviews)