Buy Altium Designer Software
November 2025 Sale!
Limited time: 5% discount on all products! Ends December 1.
Altium Designer
| Version | Price & Buy |
|---|---|
| 25.8.1 | |
| 24.10.1 | |
| 23.11.1 | |
| 22.11.1 | |
| 21.8.1 | |
| 20.2.7 | |
| 19.1.8 | |
| 17.1.6 Build 538 |
What Does Altium Designer 25 Do?
Altium Designer 25 brings electrical, mechanical, and manufacturing workflows into a single platform, eliminating the tool-switching that slows down design teams. Instead of juggling separate software for PCB design, mechanical integration, and simulation, your team works in one unified environment where all disciplines stay synchronized in real time.
The platform combines PCB design, MCAD integration (SOLIDWORKS and PTC Creo support), harness design, and embedded simulation tools—all updated instantly across your team. This means when an electrical designer modifies a board layout, the mechanical designer sees the change immediately. When you run signal integrity analysis, those results integrate directly into your design workflow without manual file transfers.
Unified Design Environment Eliminates Tool Switching
Working across multiple software platforms creates bottlenecks. Design changes in one tool require exports, imports, and manual synchronization. Altium Designer 25 removes this friction by consolidating all design domains into shared workflows where changes propagate instantly across ECAD, MCAD, and harness design.
One Platform Supports Single-Board to Complex Multi-Board Systems
Whether you're designing a single circuit board or a multi-PCB system with rigid-flex interconnects and harness integration, Altium Designer 25 scales from simple to enterprise complexity without requiring different tools for each project type.
How Does Altium Designer 25 Speed Up Design Cycles?
Teams using Altium Designer 25 consistently report dramatic time compression. Real-world projects show design cycles shrinking from 146 hours to 59 hours—a 60% reduction achieved through streamlined workflows and real-time collaboration. The same projects cut design operations from 3,279 clicks to 650 clicks, indicating how much friction the platform eliminates.
Real-time collaboration sits at the core of this acceleration. Instead of designers working sequentially (electrical finishes, then mechanical takes over), your team works simultaneously on the same design. PCB CoDesign enables multiple people to edit different areas of the same board at the same time, with live notifications showing who's working where and automatic conflict resolution.
Real-Time Collaborative Design Workflows Accelerate Team Velocity
When your electrical and mechanical teams work in parallel rather than sequentially, design cycles compress dramatically. Compare/Merge panels handle simultaneous edits—you don't have file-locking delays or manual coordination. One designer can work on signal routing while another refines enclosure integration, both seeing updates instantly.
Automated Design Checks Prevent Costly Rework
The constraint manager automatically enforces design rules—via clearances, trace widths, impedance targets, and manufacturing requirements—throughout your design process rather than catching violations at the end. Collision detection identifies mechanical interference issues before you send designs to prototyping. Automated design checks catch errors that would otherwise trigger expensive manufacturing restarts.
Design Efficiency Impact: Automated design checks reduce manufacturing errors and eliminate late-stage iterations by catching conflicts during active design work rather than at fabrication handoff.
| Design Phase | Without Automation | With Automated Checks |
|---|---|---|
| During Design | Manual rule verification | Real-time constraint enforcement |
| Pre-Manufacturing | Late-stage error discovery | Early prevention of conflicts |
| Result | Costly design iterations | Reduced rework cycles |
Which Industries and Products Benefit Most?
Altium Designer 25 serves as the primary design environment for product categories where electrical and mechanical integration demands precision and speed. Complex interconnected systems—IoT hubs, 5G equipment, industrial controllers, automotive modules—benefit most because these products require multiple boards working together perfectly.
Products with tight mechanical constraints gain significant advantage. Wearables, compact consumer devices, and industrial equipment need ECAD and MCAD teams in lockstep—any dimensional mismatch between board and enclosure triggers expensive redesigns. Altium Designer 25's bidirectional MCAD synchronization prevents these conflicts.
Distributed teams compress design schedules by working concurrently instead of sequentially. Global organizations can now run parallel workflows across time zones, with real-time collaboration replacing the traditional handoff delays that added weeks to schedules.
Key Application Areas
- Multi-PCB Complex Systems — Products requiring inter-board connectivity management (industrial equipment, telecom equipment, automotive systems)
- Mechanical Integration Products — Designs where board fit and mechanical alignment are critical (wearables, medical devices, rugged equipment)
- Harness-Heavy Applications — Products with complex interconnects requiring wiring diagram synchronization (aerospace, industrial automation)
- High-Speed Signal Design — Applications demanding power and signal integrity validation before prototyping (5G modules, high-frequency boards)
- Distributed Global Teams — Organizations with engineers across multiple time zones needing parallel concurrent design workflows
How Does Altium Designer 25 Improve Cross-Functional Teamwork?
The biggest source of design delays isn't sketching circuits or routing traces—it's the coordination between electrical and mechanical teams. Manual file handoffs, version confusion, and the need to re-verify mechanical fit after each electrical change add weeks to development cycles. Altium Designer 25's MCAD CoDesigner eliminates this friction.
Your SOLIDWORKS or PTC Creo models stay synchronized bidirectionally with your PCB design. When you move a connector for routing efficiency, the mechanical model updates automatically. When mechanical needs to adjust an enclosure dimension, the electrical design reflects that change instantly. No file exports, imports, or manual verification—just synchronized workflows.
Harness design integration keeps wiring documentation accurate throughout the design process. Instead of manually creating harness BOMs and wiring diagrams after PCB layout is complete, Altium Designer 25 maintains these automatically as your connectivity changes. This prevents the transcription errors that typically cause assembly delays.
Cross-Functional Workflow Benefits
| Coordination Element | Traditional Workflow | Altium Designer 25 |
|---|---|---|
| MCAD Updates | Manual export/import cycles | Bidirectional real-time sync |
| Harness Documentation | Post-design manual entry | Automatic generation and updates |
| Design Change Communication | Email notifications and file sharing | Live notifications and real-time visibility |
| Verification Time | Multiple rounds of checking | Continuous synchronized validation |
Why Integrated Simulation Matters for Design Quality
Testing designs in simulation before you build prototypes catches issues that would otherwise surface in manufacturing or field deployment. Altium Designer 25 embeds power and signal integrity analysis directly in your design environment—no separate simulation tools, no manual result interpretation, no design-simulation workflow interruptions.
Signal integrity analysis by Keysight lets you validate high-speed routing in real time. Power analysis verifies your power distribution design meets voltage and current requirements. Ansys CoDesigner extends thermal and mechanical simulation accessibility. These tools integrate directly into the design editors, so analysis results influence your routing decisions immediately.
Automated design checks ensure manufacturing readiness before fabrication. Collision detection identifies mechanical interference in multi-board assemblies. 3D visualization confirms component placement and enclosure fit. These validations catch design flaws that would require expensive redesigns after prototyping.
Quality Assurance Strategy: Integrated simulation and validation tools catch issues during design rather than after manufacturing, reducing expensive prototype iterations and accelerating time to production.
Key Quality Assurance Capabilities
- Validation happens throughout design, not just at the end
- Simulation results integrate directly into routing and layout decisions
- Automated checks catch manufacturing issues before production
- 3D visualization confirms physical assembly feasibility
- Reduced prototype iterations due to early-stage issue detection
- Power integrity and signal integrity analysis embedded in design workflow
How to Get Started With Altium Designer 25
The platform scales intuitively from straightforward single-board projects to multi-board systems, so your team doesn't need specialized training for different project types. Consistent design editors and workflows mean you apply the same approach whether designing a simple circuit or a complex interconnected system.
Built-in templates and design workflows accelerate project setup. Real-time guidance throughout the design process helps both experienced designers and those new to the platform work productively. Teams transitioning from legacy tools find the unified environment reduces learning friction compared to adopting multiple disparate programs.
Implementation Advantage: Unified design methodology across all project complexities eliminates the need for separate tools and specialized training for different board types.
Getting Started Successfully
- Single design methodology for all project complexities
- No steep learning curve for team transition
- Templates and workflows for rapid project setup
- Consistent tools across single and multi-board projects
- Real-time design guidance throughout the process
- Support for migrations from legacy design tools
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I import existing PCB designs into Altium Designer 25?
Altium Designer 25 supports importing designs from other CAD platforms, with migration workflows that preserve your existing work while gaining access to new collaborative capabilities.
How does real-time collaboration handle simultaneous edits on the same board?
PCB CoDesign uses Compare/Merge technology to track simultaneous edits in different regions of your design. The system alerts team members about overlapping work and provides conflict resolution tools to consolidate changes without manual reworking.
Which MCAD software does MCAD CoDesigner support?
Altium Designer 25 integrates bidirectionally with SOLIDWORKS and PTC Creo, maintaining real-time synchronization between electrical and mechanical designs.
How long does onboarding typically take for teams new to unified design workflows?
Teams usually reach productivity within days rather than weeks, since the platform consolidates tools they were already using separately—they're gaining integration efficiency rather than learning entirely new software concepts.
Can harness design integrate with existing manufacturing and assembly workflows?
Harness design generates manufacturing-ready documentation (BOMs, wiring diagrams, connectivity specifications) that integrates directly with your manufacturing partner's assembly systems, eliminating manual documentation steps.
Does collision detection work for complex multi-board assemblies?
3D collision detection identifies mechanical interference across all boards in multi-board systems, checking both inter-board connections and components against enclosure geometry in one unified verification pass.
Is multi-board design appropriate for small design teams?
Multi-board design scales from teams of one designer to large distributed groups. Small teams benefit from automated coordination that would otherwise require manual synchronization across tools and team members.