Jan 10, 2011 
With the ever-growing demands for newer, more interesting products, or products that make more creative use of components, along with the steady stream of new and interesting parts appearing on the market virtually every day; it can quickly be overwhelming trying to keep up…Much less building and maintaining a system that can keep on top of the engineering and supply chain intelligence that goes into the right part choice. And with easily 90% of the finished board cost wrapped up in your choice of components, the pressure to get it right has never been greater.
Components are the atoms of electronics design, the fundamental building blocks. Drop the ball with components and the entire project comes to a halt.
Enter Altium’s Next Generation Component Management System – the framework you need to manage components at the engineering level, in the design, and across the design and release domains. It extends existing models of storing and managing ECAD component data to capture the engineering and business intelligence now needed to make real sense of the component management challenges engineers and designers face each and every day. This new system includes...
A new component model to capture the intelligence behind part choices
Altium Designer 10 introduces a new, higher level model of the component object, separating the engineering part from the manufacturer or vendor parts. It's through a series of "Part Choices" that the engineering component can be mapped to one or even multiple manufacturer or vendor parts. Making it possible to now truly capture the concept of parts equivalents and leverage the engineering intelligence behind the decisions experienced engineers make every day.
A powerful new where-used system to track components across any design or release document.
Altium Designer 10's new Vault system finally brings together component information and library data, with the designs and releases that use those components. This powerful new system makes it possible to track where any component might be used across any design.
Powerful Revision and Lifecycle management capability to the level of components and individual component models
Altium Designer 10 provides complete revision and lifecycle management capabilities, extending this all the way down to the component and even individual component models. With AD10 you can finally build your parts revisioning and approval processes directly into your design environment.
A new system for the live linking of component to the supply chain
Altium Designer 10's new live supplier-linking system maintains real-time links to your supply chain and provides real time updates to pricing and availability information as changes occur at any stage along the way.
And so much more!
Watch this brief introductory video and get a sneak peak at this exciting new technology, coming soon in Altium Designer 10!: http://ad10.altium.com/
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