# Altium Develop Reviews **Vendor:** Altium **Category:** [PCB Design Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/pcb-design) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 996 ## About Altium Develop Altium Develop is a collaborative platform for electronic product development that connects requirements management, 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. Teams can work together in a shared workspace, ensuring that all stakeholders—from design to procurement—stay aligned with up-to-date project data. 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 and design integration: Link design decisions to project requirements for better 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. ## Altium Develop Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **ease of use** in Altium Develop, finding it intuitive and efficient for PCB design tasks. (272 reviews) - Users appreciate the **powerful collaboration features** and tools of Altium Develop, enhancing teamwork and design efficiency. (218 reviews) - Users value the **user-friendly interface and integration** of Altium Designer, making PCB design efficient and enjoyable. (145 reviews) - Users value the **collaborative environment** of Altium Develop, enhancing teamwork and design efficiency significantly. (136 reviews) - Users appreciate the **efficiency** of Altium Designer, enhancing productivity with streamlined workflows and powerful integration tools. (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 report a **steep learning curve** in Altium Develop, requiring significant time to gain proficiency with its features. (93 reviews) - Users find Altium Develop **expensive** , making it a barrier for hobbyists and preventing wider adoption and learning. (91 reviews) - Users note the **missing features** in Altium Develop, particularly in editing options and task utility, hindering productivity. (65 reviews) - Users find the **complex interface** challenging, requiring extensive knowledge for effective schematic and PCB design. (57 reviews) - Users experience **slow performance** with Altium Develop, particularly during project loading and component management. (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. 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. ### 2. Best PCB layout software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Electronics | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium is the best software I had used in my 10 years of experience as an electronic engineer. I use it daily in my projects due to its easy schematics drawing, footprint upload and pcb layout and routing. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I think the circuit simulator could be improved. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating pcb designs. ### 3. 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. ### 4. Migrating from Mentor with ease **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Martin T. | Concepteur électronique senior, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 27, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** There is a ton of videos, explanation and the documentation is very done. The software is easy to use, I use on a weekly base doing review with a large team of engineer. I love the home page and learning center section with easy access to the community and support. The educational videos are well made and the host Zach Peterson is great ! The implementation of the vault is pretty straight forward using the documentation and the 365 web access to share design between team is a must and the possibility to joint the PCB and mechanical in the same software is simply awesome. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Integrating part libraries from a different software can be difficult or from previous version and requires some work to be imported correctly without errors. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have a large team of engineer all around the world and we are working on multiple aspect of the product CAD, PCB and mechanics. The cloud base Altium 365 is great in our context. ### 5. simplifies complex tasks with powerful tools. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** davis s. | Full time Masters Student, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The software helps for schematic capture, PCB layout, and 3D visualization. The ability to view the entire design in 3D is incredibly helpful for detecting potential issues. Also the extensive component libraries and ease of collaboration makes it a complete package. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** For beginners, it takes time to get comfortable with all the features.And its a little bit expensive compared to the other design softwares (but i got it completely free using my student identification). Personally I felt that, some of the components are not available in the library.So that we need to create by our own. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design Errors-The robust Design Rule Checking (DRC) and automated error detection minimize the risk of design errors, helping to ensure that the final product functions as intended. 3D Visualization: The 3D visualization tool allows you to see how the design fits together physically before it's manufactured. This helps avoid mechanical interference. ### 6. 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. ### 7. Buggy, Crash-Prone, and Not Worth the License Cost **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 12, 2026 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium is not good software, and it is definitely not worth the money that the license costs. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** It's free, has bugs, and crashes with data loss. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I design in Altium Electronics together with my team and clients, but I think that soon I will consider moving to a different environment. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > We apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced with Altium. We take your feedback seriously and are constantly working to improve the stability and performance of our software. Please reach out to our customer support team for assistance with any data loss or bugs you have encountered. ### 8. The most comprehensive electronic design software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ronan L. | ISE Senior program developer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Have a single software for the entire design process. Altium Designer even includes component procurement management and sending deliverables to subcontractors. I also like the support for a multitude of formats as well as the integration with 3D CAD. Customer support systematically responds to requests. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** For me, the only drawback is the lack of support for platforms other than Windows. Support for Linux and MacOS would be a real asset. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium allows managing the entire design chain, including supply management and sending manufacturing elements to the subcontractor. ### 9. 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. ### 10. 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 ### 11. Good Experience Compared to Other Software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium has a lot of tools that streamline development that save a ton of time. The sharing features allow easy use between electrical engineers and 365 allows for sharing between non-electrical engineers. Altium also has a lot of online and paid trainings. This makes learning how to use the software a bit easier. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** While it is a benefit that there are a lot of tools, there can be a lot of rules and settings that have to be correct. The first couple times, it can be convoluted. Another aspect is speed of the program (this could be my machine as well). When I run small board projects, it performs fine. However, when I run large projects, the PCB software tends to lag. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium is essentially solving all of my problems. Since we started using, we have been able to import older projects in different file types, update them, and implement revision control. We have also begun using the harness design feature to bring in harness CAD into Altium and their perspective projects. Altium also makes it extremely easy to share files without having to send project packages so there aren't multiple copies and other users who don't have Altium can view them through 365. ### 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. Difficult to get up and running but worthwhile **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Semiconductors | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The most helpful feature of Alitum 365 is the web-based viewer. It's incredibly convenient to be able to see the progress of the rest of my team without having to fully launch Altium's software. In addition, I find the secure sharing feature very helpful. If everyone in my organization had to manually send files each time changes were made, our productivity would suffer. Altium 365 makes changes instantly viewable by my entire team. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** When trying to join my organization's workspace earlier this year, I found it difficult to accept the invitation. The website was giving me generic error messages, giving me the option to request access from the organization's leader. The leader told me that when I used that option, it requested for me to join their personal workspace and not the workspace of the organization. The issue ended up being too many spots were taken in the organization, but Altium 365 didn't inform either one of us this was the case. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 is helping me to solve the issues of seeing where the rest of my team is in their work, being able to share my progress efficiently and ensuring I'm using the standardized library of my team. This is benefitting me by letting me contribute more to the work of my team. ### 14. collaboration and real-time PCB project management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Airlines/Aviation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium 365 makes it incredibly easy to collaborate with team members across different locations. The ability to share PCB designs in real-time, manage version control, and leave comments directly on schematics improves our workflow significantly. It also integrates well with Altium Designer, so there's no need to switch tools to manage cloud access or documentation. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The platform can sometimes feel sluggish when loading large projects or switching between workspaces, especially with many users accessing the same files. Additionally, the learning curve for new users can be a bit steep, particularly for those unfamiliar with cloud-based design platforms. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 helps solve the challenge of distributed collaboration in PCB design. It allows my team to work together remotely without the hassle of manually syncing files or dealing with version control issues. Everyone stays on the same page, reviews can happen in real time, and the design cycle moves faster. This has improved our productivity and reduced miscommunication significantly. ### 15. 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. ### 16. 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. ### 17. 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 ### 18. Altium 365, What a tool! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yibeltal Manaye F. | Electronics Design Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** While using Altium 365 what I liked the best is its cloud based interactive feature to show the design and collaborate with teams in the project. It's easy to use and share designs with others. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The subscription fee is a little expensive to afford as an individual beginner designer. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Most of the times I got difficulties to open projects on Altium Designer software due to my computes specifications, but on Altium 365 I could open my designs in seconds. So its cloud based interactive design showing feature is a good thing for me. ### 19. Altium is a user friendly all-in-one PCB design software. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh L. | Senior Engineer, Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium Designer has a large archive of new and legacy components that can be imported into a project which makes new designs quicker. When using the software daily, the advanced features can save a lot of time. The software also easily integrates with SolidWorks. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Customer service is ticket based and can sometimes take a while to resolve an issue. I would prefer having live chat or a person that I could call to address issues quicker. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium Designer is solving the problem of needing multiple software packages to go from product concept through production. ### 20. Altium Instrumentation PCB **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 15, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I like using altium because it is the industry standard for designing pcb's. It was easy to use and share in collaboration with my instrumentation module partner to design our pcb in real time,track our changes and make our custom parts when we couldnt download them from the necessary website **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** It can be a bit rigid sometimes and has a slightly less user friendly interface than KiCad **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps a lot in line with my personal and university projects to design a pcb for my circuits minimizing erros and improving performance ### 21. A robust tool with real tradeoffs. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Individual & Family Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** What I like most about Altium 365 is its seamless cloud-based collaboration, which allows real-time teamwork on PCB designs, version control, and easy access from anywhere. The unified platform integrates design, component management, and manufacturing workflows, making the entire electronics development process more efficient. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** What I dislike about Altium 365 is its steep learning curve making it hard for beginners the high cost which can be a barrier for small teams and hobbyists the reliance on a strong internet connection limiting offline work and occasional slowdowns with large complex designs **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** PCB design collaborating on team projects accessing component libraries and testing circuits before manufacturing while developing professional skills This keeps it clear and concise in a single sentence as requested focusing on key student benefits without bullet points ### 22. The Most Intuitive PCB Design Software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aakash N. | Avionics Member, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It's great for easily being able to access other projects and work with a team. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Altium does require a lot of resources so it can be quite slow sometimes. That is, however, also a consequence of my less powerful computer. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I previously used AutoCAD electrical and it was very complicated and just didn't look all that good, making it hard to work on a project for long periods of time. With Altium I am able to follow a pretty concrete process so that the weeds of PCB design aren't very time-consuming. ### 23. Nice program with a lot of features **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The fully comprehensive set of features is really useful for designing high quality boards and sending the information to manufacturers easily with minimal manual processing. The documentation on the website is pretty good so I have been able to find the information I need when looking up how to use features that I require. The shortcuts and controls have saved me time designing circuit boards and I am looking forward to learning more of the features as I design more PCBs, as Altium makes it very easy to create quality boards. I really like the Altium 365 online viewer and workspace features as it makes it easy to see other designs within the organisation - this is a really useful feature and I would highly recommend Altium 365 for this function. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The program has a steep learning curve. While the inbuilt tutorial is helpful, and the online documentation is good, I feel an introduction/tutorial to some of the more advanced features and settings would be useful so that it is easier to make use of the full range of features and to help show users that they exist. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design of complex and varied PCBs, makes it easy to send production data to manufacturers, easy to integrate within company and enable collaborative working. ### 24. Altium Designer, the perfect compliment to Electrical Design **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Chemicals | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I find Altium to be a incredibly capable and effective tool for both schematic design and PCB Layout. Besides all of the great technical tools and shortcuts that can be utilized, the best thing about Altium is the incredibly extensive documentation available at any step of the design process. Personally, when I get stuck, its easy to just start googling away and eventually I will find my answer, but in Altium, simply hitting F1 will pull up documentation relevent to the issue you have highlighted in your design. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Altium, as expected, is very computationally demanding requiring a capable computer. My biggest annoyance with the software is the long bootup times when opening the application. This can be frustrating when trying to access a design to collaborate with others quickly and efficiently. Luckily, that is what Altium 365 is great for, pulling up projects quickly on the web-based app. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium helps me quickly find, place, and connect components with extensive customizability of design rules and requirements. This leads to a streamlined and efficient design process where I can get the vast majority of the "grunt work" done quickly. This is beneficial to me, as it saves me time that I can use on other projects, and the company, as I am able to spread my reach further with more availability. ### 25. 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. ### 26. 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. ### 27. 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. ### 28. New Altium finds abilities user coming from KiCad **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Timothy W. | Test Engineering Technician, Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The collaborative nature of Altium 365 has be well thought out. Mostly I'm working alone, therefore many features are yet undiscovered. It's been invaluable sharing with the design engineers as I implement their ideas into multilayer PCBs. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The complexity makes training essential, and the manuals are difficult to find the correct information. Often, it's been trial and error which may not be the most efficient way of doing things. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium is used throughout the corporation which helps facilitate information exchanges about our PCB designs. ### 29. 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. ### 30. A software for all your design needs **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohammad P. | Research associate, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 07, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I have using Altium Designer for more than 5 years in many different projects and I was always satisfied with my experience and recommended Altium Designer to others. The Library Loader add-on is really helpful in importing new components and managing libraries. The software supports all the features you need and is used by most of the designers in the field. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The footprint design wizard is limited and could be expanded. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am researcher and design lot of different prototype PCBs for my hardware designs. Altium Designer is helping me implementing my designs and minimize the prototyping efforts. ### 31. 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 ### 32. Altium has the best tools of any board design software I've used. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Connor R. | Electrical Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 11, 2021 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The Manufacturer Part Search tool saves me tons of time when creating a new design. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I have had difficulty using the simulation tool. I would like it to be more intuitive to use. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our company primarily handles new designs for inventors. Altium has made this process faster, saving our customers money and making our company more competitive. ### 33. Functional with small annoyances **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Electronics | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 06, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It's an all-in-one design package that gets the job done. The built-in manufacturer part search is sometimes useful. I like the ease of switching between 2D and 3D PCB view. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Needs a simple, global override function for font choice. I've set mine to Arial everything I can possibly find but half the time things still show up as Times New Roman and have to be changed manually. Off-page location referecnes (whatever they're called) frequently generate upside-down and have to be fixed manually. Waste of time. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Simple all-in one ECAD solution. ### 34. User Friendly and Straightforward **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joseph P. | University Graduate Research Student, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 17, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** • The integration between schematics and pcb design. • The ease of switching between the machine design of the board and the schematic/PCB design. • Cloud projects where I can collaborate between multiple people on the same project. • Built in footprints of common components and IC's. • Ease of generating industry standard schematics and reports of design. • Enforing a wide range of design rules that are accurately checked. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** • The software has a long startup time that did not seem to depend on system capabilities, as it was long on my home PC and laptop. • Sometimes it was easy to get lost in the tools as a beginner. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium enabled me to design a PCB for driving a microprocessor, sensors, and motors on a high-powered rocket as a reseach project for my university rocket team. This enabled the team to collaborate collectively on a complex electronics system, which ended up working as intended on the first try thanks to the altium software. ### 35. 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. ### 36. 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 ### 37. Powerful PCB design tool with the best routing capabilities **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** José B. | Integrador de sistemas y CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** For me, the more valuable characteristic of Altium Designer is its user friendly interface. It makes complex PCB designs much more manageable and efficient. I’ve been using this software since my university days, back when it was called Protel 98. The integration of schematic capture, layout design, and simulation is another big plus. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The main downside is the high cost of the license, which might not be affordable for small businesses or individual users. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** After being away from PCB design for a while, I’m using Altium Designer to practice and work on internal projects as I prepare to return to commercial hardware design. ### 38. Altium has been my daily companion for 18+ years **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike C. | Principal Staff Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Generally, Altium gets the job done in all aspects of a design process, schematics, parts selection, PCB layout, BOM and release generation and visibility to others through 365. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Support, especially through chat, has gotten worse over time. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps us to quickly design and release PCBs related to our products. ### 39. Altium has been a good product replacement. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Industrial Automation | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium has been a very versatile and full featured software set. Our company converted from another much more expensive product and after a few years of use, it matches and in some areas exceeds our previous software set in capability and features. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Altium has so many built in features and capabilities that sometimes it has been a struggle to maintain proper processes and procedures across our international company divisions. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium after 3 or more years of use has provided advanced features beyond our previous software set especially in the area of 3D graphics and checking. Some of the decisions to switch, however, had a great deal to do with cost vs. utility and ease of use. Altium was the decision at the time because of all three of these areas. ### 40. 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. ### 41. A Solid Tool for PCB Design **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** robin n. | Control room operator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I really like how Altium 365 makes it easy to work with my team on PCB designs. Being able to collaborate in real time from anywhere is a huge plus. I also love how it keeps track of all the design versions, making it simple to share updates and manage progress. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The learning curve is a bit difficult. If you're new to PCB design software, it can be hard to get started. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It hassolved the problem of managing large, complex PCB designs and keeping everything organized. Before, I struggled with sharing files and keeping track of the latest updates with my team but now everything is in one place ### 42. The best software for pcb designing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sarthak V. | Student, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 03, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** One of the best features of Altium 365 is its cloud-based collaboration. It allows teams to work together on PCB designs in real-time, sharing designs and libraries easily, which makes it highly efficient for remote and distributed teams. The ability to access and review designs from anywhere, coupled with the seamless integration with Altium Designer, is a huge advantage for design workflows. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** However, a common drawback is that Altium 365 can be resource-intensive, meaning it might require high-performance hardware and a stable internet connection to work smoothly. This can be challenging in environments with limited resources or bandwidth. Additionally, some users find the subscription model expensive for smaller teams or hobbyists. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 solves collaboration and version control issues by letting teams work together in real-time on PCB designs. It centralizes design files and component libraries in the cloud, so everyone accesses the same data, avoiding confusion and file version issues. You can also track changes and roll back when needed, which reduces mistakes. Plus, it simplifies sharing with manufacturers, streamlining the production process. This makes teamwork smoother and saves time overall. ### 43. PCB Design using Altium 365 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Prithvi R. | Engineer | Electronics Module, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 03, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I used Altium designer on a regular basis for designing PCB's. These are the best parts of Altium : 1. Simulations :- While designing a heat-sensitive PCB , I could run a simulation which showed me which parts of the PCB would heat up the most and allowed me to design appropriate cooling systems. 2. Differential routing :- The differential route tool allowed me to quickly route differential signals and ensured that my PCB was least succeptible to EMI. 3. Ease of Export : I loved the ease of converting a PCB Project into an output job with Altiums built in UI. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I disliked the lack of a native library loader for Altium. I used the extension script library loader, but would love to have that feature in built so that it functions seamlessly. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1. Multi Layer PCB Design 2. Simulation of Designed PCB's (wrt heat distribution and tolerance) 3. Differential routing ### 44. Altium Designer is the best PCB design software that we have ever used. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Victor A. | R&D Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 06, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Part libraries with links to distributor pricing and CAD model downloads. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The learning curve was steep. There are a lot of features, and it takes time to learn how to utilize them. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Shortened development-to-release cycles thanks to 3D model downloads and part sourcing. ### 45. 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. ### 46. The choice of a new generation of engineers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Since the time when Altium was a local program, engineers knew that this design software had the potential to surpass all existing programs. In my case, I started using the local version of Altium, not Altium 365, but I was already satisfied with its powerful manufacturer component search feature and the integration of the PCB editor. However, after using Altium 365, I was amazed by how much faster I could access and use the same features from anywhere on the cloud, further accelerating the design process. On top of that, I could also enjoy the excellent remote customer service that Altium is known for, as well as the seamless implementation with design file standards from other companies. Since switching to Altium 365, my usage frequency has significantly increased compared to when I was using the local version, probably because I no longer have to wait through long loading times. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Aside from the fact that it is more expensive compared to other cloud-based EDA tools, there is nothing else. However, I can confidently say that the features and convenience of Altium 365 more than justify its high price. If your organization adopts this, you will likely achieve at least a 20% reduction in design time compared to the current process. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** The biggest advantage is that it’s not on my computer. Altium is a quite heavy program. Although it supports multi-core processing, it still has long loading times and occasional instability on regular computers. However, since I started using Altium 365, these basic issues have disappeared. Additionally, taking advantage of the ability to access it from anywhere, I was able to complete the assignments given by my professor regardless of location. ### 47. I am a student with moderate PCB design experience, and I'm loving Altium. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I am able to use the project viewer to view my boards on the web when I'm using my Mac and don't have access to my PC. This is extremely helpful for assembly and debugging when I am often at school with only my mac. I also love the ActiveBOM which makes integration very easy, as well as managing part ordering. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** My customer support experience has not been the best, especially the live chat AI support. I had issues renewing my student license, and it took some back and forth creating a ticket to only find out that I was contacting the wrong team at Altium. Eventually my problem was resolved, but this process can definitely be made more clear online. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I manage the PCB designs for my student club, and we have limited access to funds. Being able to compare costs of components and sources is very helpful for managing our funds. We are also able to work collaboratively on boards which was impossible before switching to Altium. ### 48. Altium Designer is very Intuitive **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Raghavendran M. | Senior Electrical Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 16, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Learning Altium designer is such a nice experience, I feel that many of the features that you feel like its nice to have, are already imlemented and getting to use them is also very easy with a couple of online searches, **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Only time I felt that Altium is missing something is schematic and erber compare integreated, But that has been done in the last two years and I can seemlessly compare designs from altium web view. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium seemlessly combines schematic and webview and the altium web helps me maintain and release designs all in one spot, This helps with process mangement, and all design versions are easily accessible too. ### 49. Powerful Design Features **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pere M. | Hw industrialization engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 28, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The Component Library Management which is a vast, cloud-integrated component library that simplifies part selection and version control. Also, it is connected to octopart and siliconexpert that provides a full control in terms of purchasing **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** On the other side, the great number of design features implies a deep know-ho of the program. Sometimes, a faster ticket resolution would be appreciated **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Library management which implies a more efficient component selection and inventory control ### 50. A great product for beginners. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 07, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I like the amount of tips and tricks that are given to newcomers. It’s very extensive and you give many scenarios for the types of layout and board designs. In terms of software, I appreciate that the errors are explained in a way that you can search them and find good solutions. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I feel that for some wording, it might be complicated to understand. Especially when looking for certain tabs to do things to the pcb. Sometimes I can’t find certain tabs because google tells me something different from what’s on the actual software. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I’m creating PCB and it’s helping understand how to properly do it. ## 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?page=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-24+01%3A36%3A27+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=e74d08b9-dd98-442d-8975-6d721a361f34&secure%5Btoken%5D=52c56d58577cd6777ecf751d10e797858683ccb738a1d61b08a84f6c7a28f70f&format=llm_user) ## Altium Develop Integrations - [Google Drive & Docs for Confluence](https://www.g2.com/products/google-drive-docs-for-confluence/reviews) - [Jira](https://www.g2.com/products/jira/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 **Edit** - File Import - Push/Pull - Views - Grips **Data Management** - Version Control **Tools** - 3D modeling tools - Component placement **File Options - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Export Files - Import Files - File Interoperability - Backwards compatibility - File size **Collaboration** - Annotate - Documentation - Data Extract **Library** - Component libraries **Customization - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Custom Scripts - Custom Menus - Custom Interface **Platform** - Board size - Layers **Environment - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Hardware support - Task-based interfaces - Manage Multiple Profiles - Command Clarity **Customization** - Custom interface ## Top Altium Develop Alternatives - [Autodesk Fusion](https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-fusion/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (509 reviews) - [AutoCAD](https://www.g2.com/products/autocad/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (1,829 reviews) - [Onshape](https://www.g2.com/products/onshape/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (682 reviews)