New open beta program for community-driven PCB design tool

Altium has announced an open beta program for their community-driven PCB design tool - CircuitMaker will be available worldwide to all interested electronics designers, and aims to address the unique needs of the electronics maker and hobbyist community with a free software offering. Anyone interested in participating in the open beta can register now at the CircuitMaker website, with invitations being sent out from May 18, 2015, says the company. "We're incredibly excited to see how the CircuitMaker community will grow and evolve during this open beta program," said Ben Jordan, product manager, Altium. "The electronics maker community has always been characterized by a very organic and collaborative growth process, and now electronics designers of all shapes and sizes have CircuitMaker with which to voice their creativity." Addressing New Market Opportunities - The rising growth of the electronics maker community in recent years has created a unique niche market and need for a specialized PCB design tool. Altium has committed itself to addressing the need of this growing community with a PCB design tool focused on open hardware and shared design resources. The open beta testing program allows anyone to download and begin using CircuitMaker today and become part of a growing electronics design community where designs can be shared and collaborated on. This open beta process will also provide feedback and input to refine CircuitMaker so it can become the best free PCB design tool for electronic designers in the maker community. Collaborative Design Possibilities - CircuitMaker will be available at no cost to anyone interested in using the software, with no limits to design capability. This PCB design tool from Altium offers a polished and streamlined design tool for the maker community. Features include: 1 - Comprehensive PCB design technology. Built from the foundation of existing Altium technology, all of the typical features needed for modern PCB design are built in to CircuitMaker. This includes schematic-PCB integration, interactive routing, and output generation tools. 2 - Advanced community collaboration. With CircuitMaker, designers have the opportunity to collaborate in a community-driven design environment, with unlimited access to contributed design and component data. This collaboratively design process is made possible by combining an advanced, cloud-based platform and an industry-standard user experience in a native application-based design environment. 3 - Streamlined interface. CircuitMaker is a native application, and provides a streamlined interface, allowing new and casual designers to create designs quickly. This removes the traditional, time-intensive learning curve usually required for new PCB design tools. Open beta registrations for CircuitMaker begins today, and is freely available worldwide to all interested electronics designers. Those interested can register now for the open beta at the CircuitMaker website, says the company.