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

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Accurate ECAD and MCAD Design Data

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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

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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

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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.

SOLIDWORKS®
SOLIDWORKS®
PTC Creo® Parametric™
PTC Creo® Parametric™
Autodesk Inventor®
Autodesk Inventor®
Autodesk Fusion 360®
Autodesk Fusion 360®
Siemens NX
Siemens NX
Functionality

Get the MCAD CoDesigner Feature Matrix in PDF format

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MCAD CoDesigner App
BASIC
ADV
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.

Resources

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Start collaborating today!