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Innovation

Altium and Macrofab Collaborated to Create an Industry-first Integrated PCB "Design with Manufacturing" Application

On January 27, Altium LLC (ASX:ALU) and MacroFab, Inc. announced the immediate availability of Altimade, the electronics industry's first "design WITH manufacturing" application. Altimade, which is hosted on the Altium 365 cloud platform and is directly connected to MacroFab's fully digital, elastic manufacturing platform, enabling customers to obtain an instant price and place an order for PCB assembly production without leaving their design environment.

While the electronics sector is renowned for generating cutting-edge technology, the process of manufacturing a newly designed printed circuit board has persistently remained low-tech. Incompatible tools and data formats and a lack of up-to-date supply chain information all slow down the process and result in costly rework for both design engineers and their manufacturers. Altimade modernizes and accelerates the prototyping process by linking design, production, supply chain data and professionals via the Altium 365 cloud platform, resulting in an intuitive user experience.

"By integrating Altium’s cloud platform for PCB design with MacroFab’s modern, digital-first manufacturing platform, Altimade represents a huge step towards the digital transformation of the electronics industry,We’re no longer designing FOR manufacturing as a separate activity, but designing WITH manufacturing in a collaborative environment."

-Ted Pawela, Chief Ecosystem Officer of Altium.

Altium and MacroFab have modernized PCB design and manufacturing, by bringing them to digital-first, cloud platforms," stated Misha Govshteyn, CEO of MacroFab. "Combining them truly redefines the PCB design for the manufacturing process and has the potential to accelerate product development and unlock enormous value for our customers.

Altium users can use Altimade to receive continually updated component and manufacturing pricing and lead times and place orders for printed circuit boards right within the design environment. Without file translations or exports, the entire data essential for manufacturing is communicated via the secure, cloud-based Altium 365 platform. As a result, MacroFab's network of manufacturers fulfills orders in a fraction of the time and effort required by the traditional design-to-manufacture procedure. Altimade produces, preserves, and displays a comprehensive and continuous digital data trail for each step of the PCB design, procurement, and manufacturing processes. Any modifications to the original bill of materials or design specifications update the golden record automatically.

Altimade assists customers in achieving higher-quality printed circuit boards by keeping a digital thread between the design intent and what is physically created, eliminating the possibility of misinterpretation-related errors. Additionally, Altimade assists engineers in ensuring manufacturability by running design rule checking (DRC) on the Altium Designer software to ensure the design meets MacroFab's manufacturing specifications.

Supply chain teams use the MacroFab digital platform to manufacture everything from PCB assemblies to thoroughly tested and packed electronics products. MacroFab pools underutilized capacity among 75+ facilities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, providing a viable alternative to offshore in an environment where capacity is becoming increasingly constrained and lead times are being impacted by supply chain and freight delays. MacroFab transforms its production network of plants, logistics centers, and warehouses into a cloud resource powered by software and connected to Altium 365 via modern APIs.

Altimade is now available to all customers of Altium Designer 22 and 365. Altium.com/altimade contains further information, images, and the most recent Altium Stories film highlighting Altimade.

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