Migrating to Altium Designer translates to success for Photometrics.
“Altium Designer provides a complete, seamless and flawless database and library translation process, without the headache of manually recreating years of work. From our experience, Altium Designer is the ultimate electronics design solution.”
David A. Rappaport
Senior CAD Design Engineer, Photometrics
The need
Electronics design success is a combination of several different factors. The design tool, external environment and management must all work symbiotically in order for true innovation and success to occur. Without a working relationship between these forces, designers find it increasingly difficult to deliver the results required by the demanding electronics industry.
It’s a delicate balance, and one that is difficult to maintain in an industry that is in a constant state of flux. This is something Photometrics, a US based developer and manufacturer of high-performance CCD camera systems, found when it merged with Q-Imaging in Surrey, BC, Canada. Each company had its own separate database, design software package and processes for schematic capture and layout. And it soon became clear, that to successfully manage this merger, a way to unify the two companies’ processes, databases and legacy designs was needed.
The challenge
Senior CAD Design Engineer, David Rappaport was assigned to discover an electronics design solution that could seamlessly transition both Photometrics and Q-Imaging’s design database and libraries into a system that complemented both parties. Translations of legacy designs can be a headache for any designer, causing considerable disruption to production and development. No organization can afford downtime, so finding a solution that could complete design translations quickly, without having to manually recreate any aspect of existing designs, was paramount for Photometrics.
The solution
David surveyed all the available options and concluded that Altium Designer was the only solution that could translate these databases in a timely manner. Altium Designer’s advanced wizard-based translators are more than a simple file transfer system. Altium Designer’s Import Wizard processes compile the design, developing it into a complete ready-to-use project within its unified environment. This means that designs that have been created using traditional point tools will translate in Altium Designer and assemble the various designs into one dynamic document.
“Database and library translation of over 20 years of designs, all completed in different CAD packages was an incredible challenge. Altium was the solution,” David Rappaport, Senior CAD Designer Engineer.
The results
By standardizing on Altium Designer, the Photometrics team found it was able to have a design translated and ready in less than five minutes, each without having to rebuild any libraries manually. The time required to create a library and the component footprint creation parts is much easier within Altium Designer. As a result, time spent on schematic design has been reduced by a significant amount (see below).
In addition, Photometrics is benefiting from Altium’s unified environment, which streamlines development. Designers can move between hardware, software and programmable hardware, all within one application. This means Photometrics not only gained a standardized design tool and database, but also greater design flow efficiencies.
| |
Before Altium Designer |
After Altium Designer |
| Time to layout PCBs |
5 days |
2 days |
| Time to do revisions |
3 days |
1 day |
| Man-hours spend on each PCB |
80 |
35 |
| Design throughput for each month |
5 - 10 |
15 - 25 |
Product information
Photometrics develops and manufactures high-end charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras for use in the life sciences sector. One of Photometrics’ more popular products – the first of its kind designed for the field of Microscopy – is the Cascade II, an Electron-multiplying Charged-Coupled Device (EMCCD), 16-bit megapixel camera featuring thermoelectric cooling to -60ºC.
Customers can also customize their equipment with a range of sophisticated microscopes, host computers or complement their camera with software and filter wheels.
Customer information
Photometrics was founded in 1978 and in 1998 became a division of Roper Scientific. For thirty years, Photometrics has developed a reputation for superior quality and has become renowned for its state-of-the-art CCD camera systems.
Photometrics has offices in Britain, Benelux, France and Japan, and resellers in other countries around the world.
For more information, visit http://www.photomet.com/