SOLIDWORKS PCB Product Update
Monday August 16, 2021 at 4:05pm
Since launching in 2016, SOLIDWORKS PCB has been providing customers who design printed circuit boards and mechatronics products with capabilities and workflows that allow ECAD and MCAD engineers to optimize product development processes and significantly enhance communication between design teams.
Now as SOLIDWORKS look to the future and expand their portfolio, SOLIDWORKS are seeing the PCB design landscape change and, more importantly, seeing changes in the way our customers want to work to develop electronic and mechatronics products, therefore they have decided to focus their PCB product strategy to electronic and mechanical integration only and for a wider range of industry-available PCB authoring solutions.
As such, SOLIDWORKS and Altium have made the decision to discontinue the SOLIDWORKS PCB and SOLIDWORKS PCB Connector.
Altium will now focus the partnership on connectivity to the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform where a wider range of industry-available PCB authoring solutions will share PCB parts as well as library components for electronics and mechatronics product design.
The SOLIDWORKS PCB product retirement process will occur in two phases; the end of sales of new licenses and the end of product support.
For the end of sales of new licenses, SOLIDWORKS will no longer sell the SOLIDWORKS PCB or SOLIDWORKS PCB Connector products effective August 14, 2021. Existing quotes will be honored, but no new sales will be accepted after August 14th.
For the end of product support, both the SOLIDWORKS PCB and SOLIDWORKS PCB Connector products and workflows will continue to be supported through August 14, 2023. This coincides with the planned SOLIDWORKS 2023 SP5 release which will be the last supported release of SOLIDWORKS PCB and SOLIDWORKS PCB Connector. After that, neither product will be included as part of the SOLIDWORKS release media.
Subscription (maintenance) contracts for technical support and product updates can continue to be renewed for one additional year until August 14, 2022.
This new strategy for electronics and mechatronics product design allows us to support more scenarios for ECAD design / data management and 3D ECAD-MCAD collaboration along with more advanced technologies for circuit and thermal simulation, and project / product / IP management and better integration with our 3DEXPERIENCE Works Portfolio.
3DEXPERIENCE Works is positioned as the hub of electro-mechanical co-design and the system of record for electronics product design to manufacturing.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
We understand that this change is potentially disruptive and we are committed to doing everything possible to help minimize the impact on you.
Thank you for your understanding and attention to this change. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact SOLIDWORKS or us directly.