Optimize ECAD-MCAD Collaboration with
MCAD CoDesigner
Easily synchronize your design between Altium Designer and the most popular MCAD systems.
ECAD-MCAD integration accelerates multi-disciplinary electronic product design
with seamless collaboration between mechanical and electrical engineers.
Watch Overview
03:20
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Accurate ECAD and MCAD Design Data
Reduce misalignments and errors between electrical and mechanical designs. MCAD CoDesigner preserves the accuracy of native data transferred between domains, ensuring that designs comply with form-factor constraints and electronics design requirements.
Elevated ECAD-MCAD Collaboration
Design better products and increase innovation by enabling bi-directional design data sharing and communications between electrical and mechanical teams. ECAD and MCAD designers work with their own preferred tools, while MCAD CoDesigner seamlessly shares data and designs across environments.
Time Efficiency
Reduce design delays and bottlenecks when exporting, sharing, and importing CAD files between teams. Seamless ECAD-MCAD collaboration cuts development time, minimizes design respins, and accelerates time to market.
Key Capabilities
Advanced Copper Geometry in MCAD
Give your mechanical designer all the data they need to perform detailed mechanical checks or FEA with advanced geometry support for extruded copper and via transfers.
ECAD-MCAD Rigid-Flex Synchronization
Design your electronics to meet the needs of today’s portable and flexible devices with rigid-flex support. Electronic designers can define rigid and flexible regions, before pushing their design to mechanical engineers for geometry modification and placement in the device assembly.
ECAD-MCAD Native Component Linkage
While Parasolid models might work well for some situations, native component models provide additional benefits. They allow engineers working in each domain (electrical and mechanical) to leverage the full capabilities of their specific software, ensuring accurate representation, data retention, and proper output generation during fabrication and BOMs creation.
MCAD-ECAD Enclosure Exchange
Enclosures can fail to fit together in the prototyping phase, and the PCB often contains restrictions based on the mechanical enclosure. Altium MCAD CoDesigner makes it easy to transfer a 3D enclosure model from the MCAD to Altium Designer.
Advanced History
The Altium MCAD CoDesigner panel displays the full history of accepted and rejected changes from both the electrical and mechanical sides. As soon as changes are applied or rejected by the mechanical engineer, you will see a notification in Altium Designer.
Supported MCAD Tools
& Feature Matrix
A built-in panel, displayed in both Altium Designer and your mechanical CAD,
streamlines ECAD-MCAD collaboration by allowing engineers to push and pull changes
with a mouse click. No manual conversion or exchange of files is required.
*Siemens NX - only with Altium Designer Enterprise license
Functionality
Get the MCAD CoDesigner Feature Matrix in PDF format
MCAD CoDesigner App
Basic ECAD-MCAD Communication
Enable bi-directional communication between ECAD and MCAD domains, allowing changes to be reflected and updated on either side.
Learn more: Technical Doc | Video
Supported MCAD tools
SOLIDWORKS®, PTC Creo®, Autodesk Inventor®, Autodesk Fusion 360®Supported MCAD tools
Siemens NX
Sync Keepouts and Rooms
Synchronize and update PCB keepout and room areas in both ECAD and MCAD environments.
Learn more: Technical Doc | Video
Advanced Copper Geometry
Create precise copper 3D models in MCAD (including vias and plated pad barrels) for FEA purposes, advanced mechanical checks, etc.
Available for SOLIDWORKS®, PTC Creo®, Autodesk Inventor®, Siemens NX
Learn more: Technical Doc | Video
Rigid-Flex Synchronization
Collaborate with mechanical engineers on the design of rigid-flex boards.
Available for SOLIDWORKS®, PTC Creo®
Learn more: Technical Doc | Video
MCAD-driven Component Placement
Place components in MCAD so that they are recognized in ECAD (available for SW, Creo, Inventor), or use the native MCAD components when transferring PCB from ECAD to MCAD.
Available for SOLIDWORKS®, PTC Creo®, Siemens NX
Learn more: Technical Doc | Video
Enclosure Exchange
Send a mechanical enclosure from MCAD to ECAD directly from your device assembly and simplify the design process in ECAD.
Learn more: Technical Doc | Video
Advanced History
View the detailed history of accepted and rejected changes between the electrical and mechanical teams, along with the rejection comments.
Learn more: Technical Doc | Video
Pull a Previous Revision
Ability to select which revision to Pull from a list of previous Pushes in MCAD.
Learn more: Technical Doc
Multiboard Assembly Synchronization
For Multiboard projects, synchronize the entire Multiboard Assembly (the full set of PCBs and the mechanical enclosure) at once and simplify checking the overall product layout in ECAD.
Learn more: Technical Doc | Video
Harness Design Synchronization
Supports transferring the Harness elements from ECAD to MCAD (connectors, wires, splices, connectivity, and harness topology) and MCAD to ECAD transfer of the physical lengths of wires, cables, and harness segments.
Learn more: Technical Doc | Video
Get the MCAD CoDesigner Feature Matrix in PDF format
Trusted by Industry
Leaders and Startups
With over ten thousand companies worldwide using Altium 365 to design electronics,
the platform has become the new modern standard in hardware design.
Senior Electrical Engineer, Quantel Laser
“With MCAD CoDesigner, we can detect potential problems like we couldn’t before. We can see silkscreens and hidden vias, make sure polarities are correct, and where copper traces are—our models are now 100% complete, including overlay and copper. I don’t have to worry about board shapes or connector placements, even in very tight spaces..”
Lead Engineer, Kinetic Vision
“We have firmware developers, system engineers, project managers, and mechanical engineers using Altium 365 as a viewer/markup tool for hardware designs. The MCAD collaboration tools and 3D visualization tools are invaluable when integrating with other teams. Altium 365’s unbeatable visualization tools give us a true experiential vision for workflow.”
Senior Electronic Engineer, YASA
“Our mechanical designers always have the most up-to-date ECAD files whenever they need them. I can push the latest design changes directly to their MCAD tool.”
Want to try MCAD CoDesigner?
Start collaborating today!