Altium MCAD Co-Designer: Solidworks

[robotix3]

Has anyone used the MCAD Co-designer? I got a quote and wow.... Is it worth the money?

[free_electron]

doing an extensive test right now. it does require a vault and the projects need to be vaulted.

[robotix3]

So do you need to buy the standard Vault plus the MCAD vault?

[dhofer]

I've used it. It's the same Altium<-->SOLIDWORKS integration that's built into PCBWorks. As free-electron said, you connect thru a vault and the projects are managed in the vault. One thing to be aware of is that you are limited as to how you create features in SOLIDWORKS. For example, if you have a board with 4 mounting holes in the corners, you would normally create a sketch with 4 circles and then extrude-cut the entire sketch to get the 4 holes. If you do it this way, when you push the board back over to AD (or PCBWorks) you will  get an error. You have to create each feature separately. E.g. 4-seperate sketches/extruded cuts. This isn't necessarily a big deal but it's defiantly contrary to the way any SOLIDWORKS user would naturally create these features. The problem is that to my knowledge, there isn't any documentation (yet) that tells you what the constraints are so you have to find them out yourself.

In SOLIDWORKS, it's all about DESIGN INTENT when you are creating features, etc. This restriction does not allow you to design using these "best practices".

[dhofer]

No, the vault comes as part of the "Add-In". It's not a full blown Altium vault. It's a small version that's called the "collaboration server". It's used as the interface between SW and AD. So there's three parts. 1. Install the extension in AD. 2. Install the vault (collaboration server). 3. Install the ALTIUM DESIGNER-SOLIDWORKS COLLABORATION ADD-IN into SolidWorks (extensions are called add-in in the SW world).

[robotix3]

Eek that sounds complicated lol. I think i'll stay with exporting STEPs... Thanks for the info!

[ajb]

Can you create holes in SW and have them show up as pads in Altium, or do they only come in as outline primitives?  If the latter, then I'm not sure why you'd want to create circular mounting holes in SW rather than place suitable pads in AD anyway, especially if they can be placed to match the assembly in SW.  Board contours and cutouts defined by MCAD constraints obviously are a different story, but it generally makes sense to do each one as a separate sketch anyway. 

Out of curiosity, can you use the hole wizard or hole series tools to create mounting holes?  That would be pretty neat if you could create pads through the hole wizard.

[D3f1ant]

What I do is place the mounting holes in designer (I have mounting hardware in schematic so screws/posts are in boms for costing) and then position them in solidworks enclosure assemblies. I seem to have more luck establishing a working/reliable link if I do the board outline in SW.
 It really is a nice system/idea, with a few teething issues.

[KenGaler]

I bought MCAD collaboration last summer and still haven't got it working.  I've tried three times and got so frustrated I gave up.   I just wrote to my sales rep and told him that if I can't talk to someone to help me get it installed and working, I want my money back.  If I knew that it used the silly vaults I wouldn't have bought it in the first place.  GRRRR!

[D3f1ant]

Yep, I had similar experience getting it working. Altium licencing is a pain in the arse. I have a standalone licence for Designer, and had to get a network licence for mcad collaboration (I really. didn't understand their explanation for
why that is). I dread having to do a rebuild of my PC, it took a lot of pain to get it working.
Fairly sure I will not be renewing collaboration licence when it expires, its nice but doesnt save me quite enough effort to justify the cost. It should be included given how expensive both solidworks and Altium Designer are anyway.

[Gazza9]

Does the PCB Connector work with other MCAD systems, besides Solidworks?

If not, how do I interface say with PTC/CREO.  Would I just use STEP models or is there a IDX/ecad-mcad collaboration interface?

TIA...

[D3f1ant]

No it only works with solidworks. Use step models.