Enhanced Display of DRC Violations

The Summer 09 release extends the use of detailed custom violation graphics to include the majority of design rules that can be checked as part of Online and/or Batch DRC. Complemented through the provision of a definable violation overlay, you now have even greater flexibility over how DRC violations are displayed in the workspace.

Customization of Net Colors

The Summer 09 release brings even greater control over the highlighting of nets on your PCB documents, using your own overriding color scheme. Now, instead of purely having a net object colored using its respective layer color, you can assign to use a specific alternative color. Add to this a range of preconfigured color override patterns and you have a powerful enhancement to your PCB visualization arsenal.

Increased Mechanical Layers for Board Design

The Summer 09 release of Altium Designer heralds the arrival of 16 new mechanical layers available for board implementation. This doubles the available layers, bringing the total number of mechanical layers to 32.

Plus...

Enhanced Glossing and 'Glossing Off' Mode  Available in SP1
PCB-Specctra Interface Improvements
3D Single Layer Mode
Improved Testpoint System

Improved DirectX Rebuild Speed

The DirectX graphics engine for Altium Designer's PCB environment has been enhanced in this release, with respect to the rebuild speed. This has been achieved by not rebuilding unless absolutely necessary (a rebuild is seldom required) and optimizing the DirectX data filling routines. As a result, there is a 20% speed increase for scene rebuilds and toggling layer visibility no longer needs any rebuild at all.

Schematic Net Class Definition - by Area

Altium Designer already allows you to create user-defined net classes on the schematic side using Net Class directives attached to each 'member' wire, bus or harness. When a PCB is created from the schematic source documents, the information in a Net Class directive is used to create the corresponding net class on the PCB. Assignment of nets to the required classes using this method is, however, time-consuming, prone to error and also creates unnecessary clutter in the schematic source documents. The Summer 09 release of Altium Designer delivers a streamlined, time-efficient and visually-tidy new method of net class definition, using the new Blanket directive.

Graphical Editing of Assembly Variants and Board-Level Annotations

The Summer 09 release of Altium Designer heralds the arrival of graphical editing with respect to assembly variants and board-level annotations. Performed from within the compiled document views of the source schematic documents, this feature enables you to make changes in-situ quickly, efficiently, but more importantly, visually – providing a faster and more intuitive alternative to the Assembly Variants and Board-Level Annotation dialogs.

High-Level Software Development

As software development technology has progressed there has been a distinct trend towards higher-level, more abstract software development languages and tools – from machine code, to assembly language, to procedural languages to object oriented languages. Altium Designer already supports software development using C, which is a procedural language. With the Summer 09 release, support for software development using C++ (a higher level language) is now provided. This support includes full compilation and debugging capabilities.

Wishbone Probe Instrument

The Summer 09 release of Altium Designer sees the introduction of a new Wishbone Probe instrument (WB_PROBE). This instrument is a Wishbone Master that essentially allows you to tap into a Wishbone bus and 'probe' any of the Wishbone-compliant slave devices connected to it. It allows you to view and/or modify the content of registers in peripherals, and the memory space in memory devices, from its run-time panel, without having to use a processor instrument or source level debugger. It is particularly useful when you are using Wishbone without a processor!

Connected FPGA Scripts

Altium Designer already offers a Custom instrument, with the ability to design and script a simple virtual instrument in an FPGA. The Summer 09 release improves and extends these abilities by allowing more powerful script applications to be built in a more intuitive and user friendly environment, using the new configurable NanoBoard Interface instrument.

Plus...

Automatic Firmware Updates (NanoBoard 3000)  Available in SP1
Improved Memory Management
Support for Multiple Software Platform Repositories
New FPGA Peripheral Core Components
New Configurable Generic FPGA Logic Components

Memory Instrument

The Summer 09 release of Altium Designer sees the introduction of a new memory instrument (MEMORY_INSTRUMENT). This instrument provides an area of configurable memory – located within the instrument itself – with the ability to view and modify the contents of the memory from other logic in your design, or from a connected PC, via an instrument panel.

On-Demand Licensing System

The Summer 09 release of Altium Designer heralds the addition of web-based, on-demand licensing to the software's overall licensing system. Tightly integrated with customer accounts through the Altium Portal, web-based on-demand license management allows a license to be used on any computer without the need to move license files or activate on each machine. This provides a global floating license capability - within the geographic scope of your license and the conditions set out in the EULA - without needing to implement your own server.

Read more about On-Demand licensing...

Plus...

Option to Include Not Fitted Components in the BOM for a Variant  Available in SP2
Option to Allow Connection with Altium or Remain Completely Disconnected  Available in SP1
NanoBoard Registration and Usage Tracking  Available in SP1
Browser-Based License Management & Reporting
New-Look Home Page
Altium Labs
Private Server Licensing
Opening Internet links in an External Web Browser

Supplier Data Improvements

The Summer 09 release of Altium Designer expands the support for live linking to component supplier information. Two new suppliers are available – Newark and Farnell. For any given Supplier Item found through a search in the Supplier Search panel, you can now import its parameters, data sheet links, pricing and stock information, as parameters of a target library component (SchLib, DbLib, SVNDbLib), or placed component on a schematics sheet. In addition, you can also create whole new components in a target library directly from Supplier Items! Provision is also made for converting the display of supplier pricing information into one of a number of supported currencies.

Read more about live links to supplier data...