PCB Studio Altium Connector

Cloud-Native Co-Design: Onshape & Altium 365

Onshape and Altium 365 are both cloud-native platforms that specialize in different areas of product development. Onshape is a cloud-based CAD & PDM platform that lets designers work together in real time from any web browser or mobile device, eliminating traditional file-based headaches.

Altium 365 is a cloud platform for electronics design that connects stakeholders in the PCB design process, providing a single source of truth for design data, facilitating real-time commenting and reviews, while integrating with CAD systems like Onshape. By combining the strengths of these two platforms, a team can achieve seamless electromechanical co-design, ensuring that the enclosure and the circuit board fit and function together perfectly from the earliest stages of a project.

What is the PCB Studio Altium Connector?

PCB Studio’s Altium Connector allows users to link their Onshape account to their Altium account, browse Altium workspaces, and import Altium boards directly into PCB Studio without the need to use files. Once an Altium board is imported into PCB Studio, it can be created in Onshape using the same tools already used for boards imported from file formats like IDF.

The Altium Connector is bidirectional, so changes to the board outline shape or component positions can be made in Onshape, reimported into PCB Studio, and then pushed back to Altium.

Unlike IDF files, boards imported into PCB Studio from Altium are created with decals that show the board’s copper, solder mask, and silkscreen. Any associated 3D component models that exist in Altium are imported and added to the PCB Studio component mappings library.

Prerequisites

To use PCB Studio with Altium, you’ll need an Altium login, access to relevant Altium Workspaces, and edit rights to Board Projects. Collaboration on the Altium side is via Altium’s MCAD CoDesigner extension.

Setting up Altium 365 for use with PCB Studio

The Onshape PCB Studio Connector App must be enabled in each Altium workspace before PCB Studio can access that workspace. Note that Administrator rights are required within the Altium workspace to complete this step.

Log in to Altium, select Admin and then Apps from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen. Select the Onshape PCB Studio Connector app as shown below:

On the Onshape PCB Studio Connector screen, click Activate:

Finally, click Activate again on the confirmation message to add the app to the Altium workspace. The integration can be removed from the workspace at any time if required by returning to the same screen and clicking on the Deactivate icon, which replaces the Activate button.

Setting up PCB Studio for use with Altium

Once the Altium capability has been enabled for your Onshape account and within the Altium workspace, the next step is to associate your Altium account with your Onshape account. Watch the video demo below, or follow the steps below to add the Altium Integration to Onshape:

1. Log into Onshape, select your name in the top-right corner of the screen, and select ‘My account’ from the drop-down menu.

2. On the ‘My account’ page, select 'Integrations’ from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen. Assuming you have access to the Altium capability, there should be an ‘Add Altium 365 Account’ option shown under the existing Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive account integrations.

3. Select ‘Add Altium 365 Account’. This will redirect you to the Altium login page if you’re not already signed in. Log in to Altium 365 using your Altium credentials if required:

4. Altium will display an Access Request page asking you to grant Onshape permission to access certain information from your Altium user identity. Click Allow to accept the request and continue:

5. If the login is successful, Altium 365 will redirect back to the OnshapeIntegrations page and show the time that the Altium 365 integration was successfully added. Your Altium and Onshape accounts are now linked.

Using PCB Studio with Altium

The Altium integration adds three new icons to the PCB Studio toolbar:

  • Import board from cloud service – used to browse Altium workspaces and initially import boards from Altium 365 into PCB Studio.
  • Push board to cloud service – used to push changes made to a PCB Studio board back to its Altium equivalent.
  • Pull board to cloud service – used to pull changes made to an Altium board into its PCB Studio equivalent.

This video shows the process of importing a board from Altium to PCB Studio, then into Onshape, modifying it, and pushing those changes back to Altium.

Limitations and known issues

This version of the integration currently has some limitations, which we hope to address in future releases. These include:

  1. Collaboration must start in Altium. Unlike PCB Studio’s IDF functionality, where it's possible to define the board’s initial shape in Onshape and send it to ECAD, Altium collaboration must currently start by importing a board from Altium.
  2. Copper, Silkscreen, and Soldermask are non-collaborative. Although PCB Studio can read this information from Altium and use it to create realistic decals in Onshape, changes made in Onshape to these decals won’t be sent back to Altium.

Detailed components: The use of the ‘Import detailed components’ option on import from Altium may cause confusion. Importing each detailed component model from Altium to Onshape and adding it to the library takes some time. Consequently, even with this option selected, the board may appear in PCB Studio with ‘simple’ component models first while the detailed models continue to translate in the background. To see the detailed models, the user will need to click the ‘Update library document to latest version’ icon. As each new detailed component is added to the PCB Studio library, a new library version is created, and the user may need to wait a few minutes and click this icon several times before all the detailed components are displayed. We plan to add feedback when detailed components are imported in the future.