The product development landscape has changed considerably within the last decade: almost all products today have embedded software and electronics. Such complexity in products requires a multidisciplinary approach to address product development and has increased the challenges of designers. The partnership between Altium and Aras closely integrates the mechanical and electronic design processes. They will provide integrated MCAD-ECAD PLM workflows for firms that need solution for their Systems Engineering or complex Mechatronics product development environments. Aras’s brings core PLM strength with its PLM suite of software to the partnership while Altium’s strength is in the ECAD design and collaboration solutions. Since most PLM customers have a multi-MCAD environment both vendors are expected to work closely with MCAD vendors to provide a seamless ECAD-MCAD and PLM workflows.
Aras’ partners already integrate Altium P-CAD tools and the Aras Innovator™ PLM solution suite via the Altium P-CAD PCB Layout and Librarian Connectors for Aras. The connector has been specifically designed for Altium Designer. With this partnership it is expected that Aras will build upon its vision of providing a complete ECAD and MCAD data management, an enterprise change system and delineating data ownership by discipline. I don’t expect any downside for Aras’s partners that offer various ECAD connectors especially with Cadence and Mentor Graphics but users should expect a deeper integration with Altium which in turn will drive enhancement of all of its existing connectors in the ECAD-MCAD space.