ECAD-MCAD CoDesign with Altium 365 & SOLIDWORKS

MCAD CoDesigner allows for seamless collaboration between electrical and mechanical domains and has the exact fit and form factor of your printed circuit board and enclosure. It aids in the ease of adding essential features, such as Holes, Cutouts, Keep-outs, and Placement of Components, through a ribbon panel to your design while keeping it secure in the Altium 365 cloud-based server. Using the built-in version control for your project data and tracking changes using the Commenting feature ensures that all changes are preserved. In addition, you have the functionality necessary for post-analysis, such as displaying Copper and Vias in both engineering domains. The final release package created in Altium Designer can be shared with Fabrication and Assembly Houses or other team members.

During this special webinar, you'll learn how to:
How to install the MCAD CoDesigner add-on (from the web).
Add Project to Altium 365, and share it with the mechanical engineer (in Altium Designer).
Modify the Board outline based on Enclosure for Fitment purposes (in SOLIDWORKS ).
Add Holes, Cutouts, Board Constraints, and Move Components (in SOLIDWORKS ).
Show Modifications, Add Tracks, and Vias (in Altium Designer).
Enable Copper and Vias to verify data (in SOLIDWORKS ).
Release Project for Manufacturing (in Altium Designer).
Show Comments, Supply Chain, and History (in Altium Designer).
Use the new Virtual Workflow (in SOLIDWORKS and Altium 365).

To learn more:

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About Altium LLC
Altium LLC (ASX:ALU), a global software company based in San Diego, California, is accelerating the pace of innovation through electronics. From individual inventors to multinational corporations, more PCB designers and engineers choose Altium software to design and realize electronics-based products.

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[piotradamowski]

Thanks for this stunning video 🤗!

Dear Altium Software Development team, the features we need most in the CoDesigner are:
1) An email notification system that keeps the MCAD engineer informed about new versions of the PCB design being pushed into the CoDesigner by the ECAD engineer and vice versa. Without that there is no true collaboration possible
2) Different variants of a PCB design should be imported into your CAD system as configurations of the same file. This shouldn't be the default behavior, but the MCAD engineer should have an option to do this (e.g. when using SolidWorks)

Thanks in advance for taking this into account in the future release of the CoDesigner :)

[DannyBokma]

Is there a possibility to supress 3D models / prevent 3D models to be send / export from Altium to the CAD tool? I would like to have the mechanical parts in Altium during routing and component placement ( but don't want to push it to the CAD tool).

[mmorena]

Are there plans to integrate with onshape?

[murdochfilm]

does Altium Co-designer work with 3d experience version of SolidWorks?

[asifmhusainable]

It would be great to make a similar video using Fusion 360.

[mattwaclawek]

Great except. It does not allow you to create a simplified representation of the PCB. So the file ends up being huge and crashing your SolidWorks. This might work if your electronics team is using the same CAD management system. In our case the EE are storing their files somewhere. While our CAD files are in Windchill. You pull the board and it's great. All those details. But the only option to save it is as assembly. And you can't upload external assembly to Windchill because you are going to get thousand of tiny parts together with it. So you need to convert this highly detailed board to Part file. But because there are so many details it takes hours and you will frequently crash your PC. The CircuitWorks in the SolidWorks enables you to filter out components, the same as the Co-Designer, but also to simplify elements to simple squares and circles. Something that the Co-Designer seems to be missing.