Altium announced the new version of its flagship product, Altium Designer 14. The new release is focused on core PCB design technologies, and features support for flex and rigid-flex design, including schematic capture, 3D PCB layout, analysis and programmable design. According to the company, the platform allows for smaller packaging of electronic designs, which in turn leads to lower cost of materials and production, and increased durability. The new release includes the ability to handle the challenges of flex and rigid-flex designs, including advanced layer stack management. Support for embedded PCB components allows for more design miniaturization opportunities by placing standard components on an inner layer of the circuit board during fabrication. Simplification of high speed design rules, including automated and guided adjustment of differential pair width-gap settings ensuring pair impedance is maintained. The capabilities of the PCB Editor’s via-stitching have been enhanced to include the ability to constrain the via-stitching pattern to a user defined area. Altium has also introduced an importer for CadSoft Eagle so customers can use design files in other formats. The importer/exporter interfaces have been upgraded to support the latest versions of AutoCAD and a wider range of object types. The key highlights of this release include: - Support for Flex and Rigid-Flex Design - Enhanced Layer Stack Management - Support for Embedded Components - Differential Pair Routing Improvements - Via Stitching within a User-Defined Area - AutoCAD Importer/Exporter Enhancements - CadSoft EAGLE Importer - Ibis Model Implementation Editor - Preferences-based Control over Vendor Tool Usage - Supplier Support for TME - Support for Xilinx Vivado Toolchain - New Installation System - Browser-based F1 Resource Documentation