There are ways around that, such as making it look like it is all one design, by connecting tracks between the PCBs, but the money you save is not always worth the time.How much does an Altium Designer license cost? Altium Designer, from what we researched, will charge a fixed price, plus the first year of maintenance. The advantage of doing it this way, is that you keep your PCBs and Schematics separated, as well as you can update each of the designs, and the panel will update as well.īeware though, The Chinese PCB houses are not too happy when you put more designs into one panel, as they will charge you for each design in that area. Once you're done, just create the gerber files as normal from the panel. Here is a small example I have just put together Click OK and place it where you want it.Īfter that, the Embed board will pop up again, where you can pick your second PCB, and continue up to when you are happy with your 'mini panel' Here you just select the first PCB you want to include, and how many you want. In practice what you want to do is embed more board into one outline.Īll you need to do is to create your PCBs in separate files, and then create a blank one where you have defined your working outline and then you just need to click on the ' Embedded Board Array/Panelize' command from the ' Place' Menu That said, there is no built-in functionality to auto-partition a design in the manner you have suggested because there is an insufficient business case for Altium (or any EDA company) to develop such functionality.Ĭut-Paste will work fine, but as others have suggested, it's probably best to leave it as one larger PCB. If you are encountering cost anomalies with your vendor, contact your vendor and negotiate or switch vendors. Update: Re: Question Editsįrom a pure manufacturing basis two 1 unit x 1 unit designs should never be cheaper than one 1 unit x 2 unit design ceteris paribus and assuming they all fit in one panel (which is almost always the case). In that case, create a separate PCB project for each. you mean that you have 4 smaller designs in your head and you want to draft them. In that case, just use cut/paste, as you would in any other software, to move whole sections of layout into a new PCB document. you mean that you have an existing design and want to 'dice' it. It's not really clear what you are asking, but the answer is 'yes' because Altium can do anything regarding PCB sizes.

Altium designer price 2014