A few questions regarding Altium Designer

[Mihai]

Hi,

I have a few questions regarding Altium Designer and maybe somebody can response to them:


1. Is there a standard of usage and defining of the mechanical layers? (e.g. Mechanical layer 1 goes to board outline, etc.)
2. I have the same Altium Designer version (currently 18) on 2 PCs, is there a way to import the whole program settings from one PC to the other one?
3. At this moment is worth to move to version 19 and start designing PCBs or should I expect another updates to fix the current bugs?

I think this is for now, if I have others I will add them here.

Many thanks,
Mihai

[mairomaster]

1. There is not standard, which is a real bummer in my opinion.
2. You can export your settings to a file from the preferences window.
3. I have been working with 19 for a week now, doing schematics/layout and it looks alright so far. It's not a huge improvement to 18 though in term of funcionality, so I wouldn't really rush. I was just curious to try it.

[robertferanec]

Just would like to add to mairomaster's answer

1. Altium IPC Compliant Footprint Wizard uses MECH1 (not sure what is here), MECH13 (3D model?) and MECH15 (Assembly?). Also Altium Vaults may use similar layers (I do not use Vault components, but you may want to have a look what they use). However, now it is maybe going to be easier and you may feel free to use your own layers. Have a look at my video here: https://www.fedevel.com/welldoneblog...-in-libraries/

[Mihai]

​mairomaster and robertferanec many thanks for your answers.

PS: it is worth to have a Altium Designer subscription? I know it gives you access to a lot of things including updates, but I really worth it? I currently have a license plus subscription for this year, and I will see if I need to extend the subscription.

Cheers,
Mihai

[mairomaster]

If you have plenty of money to afford it sure. The biggest benefit is having new updates and having support for different issues. Otherwise it's not really worth it. If you already have 19 and assuming they will issue an update which is almost bug free, you can happily work with it for years to come without updating. Altium doesn't change too much nowadays to be really worth the money for updating every year in my opinion. The biggest change in the recent years was between 17 and 18.

[Mihai]

Thanks for your info, mairomaster .

[robertferanec]

Almost any Altium version is good for designing any kind of board - you do not really need subscription (10 years ago I designed 10cm x 10cm AMD motherboard in Altium - no problem). Just choose the Altium build with as few bugs as possible.

PS: Actually, based on behavior of many other companies which are selling software, I would not be supersized if by each new update would not Altium go the direction to make you more and more dependent from Internet and their systems and solutions.

PSS: It would not be fair if I do not say, that Altium does sometimes introduce interesting features .... features which can make your life a little bit more comfortable, but you can easily live without them.

[Mihai]

Thank you Robert!