Vintage aircraft instrument becomes an USB peripheral.

A professional interface and soft learning curve can help you elevate your design skills to the levels demanded by industry leaders and professional PCB designers. Instead of using an outdated application structure in the free KiCAD EDA suite, use the advanced set of design and manufacturing tools found in Altium Designer. When you’re ready to move into the realm of professional PCB design, make sure your software helps you stay competitive and productive.

Collaborate with your team and share design data through the Altium 365 ™ platform.

Access real-time sourcing data for your components and PCB libraries inside Altium Designer.

Altium Designer’s PCB routing tools provide greater automation than the routing features in KiCAD, which helps you stay more productive.

Altium Designer’s layer stack calculator includes a built-in field solver for highly accurate impedance calculations.

Schematic capture tools give you access to comprehensive component libraries.

Altium Designer’s integrated analog mixed signal simulation engine includes SPICE capabilities and IBIS model support.

Comprehensive multichannel, hierarchical schematic capture that supports multi-board assemblies.

Large teams and experienced professionals trust the powerful interface and complete set of design tools in Altium Designer for their projects: Industry-standard capabilities like CAM tools, a layer stack editor with integrated field solver, high speed analysis features, and many powerful extensions are included in Altium Designers.

The biggest advantage Altium Designer offers over KiCAD is the ability to access all the essential PCB design features in a single program. Altium’s mission in developing Altium Designer was to create the most powerful yet easiest to use PCB design application, where all professional design features are available in a single platform. Important design features are split into 5 different applications that isolate tasks and capabilities, and the KiCAD EDA suite misses many important features that are demanded by industry professionals.

However, it was built with the same disjointed architecture as many other open-source PCB design programs. KiCAD was built to satisfy the needs of hobbyists, startup companies, students, and new designers interested in free PCB design software. Which is better: Altium Designer or KiCAD?

Convert altium to kicad