Altium has introduced technology that, reportedly for the first time, lets electronics designers fit their boards into enclosures in real time, in 3D, without guesswork. They can eliminate the numerous costly, trial-and-error, ‘wait-and-see’ ECAD-MCAD iterations that can delay bringing a product to market. According to the company, being able to manipulate the enclosure and make design decisions in real time, during the electronics design process, is a crucial step forward in unifying broader product design processes with electronics design. Altium Designer allows electronics designers to collaborate directly with their mechanical design peers. By using the non-proprietary STEP 3D file format as a mechanism, Altium allows ECAD-MCAD collaboration without forcing organizations to purchase integration add-ons or use a specific mechanical CAD package.
