Altium Designer PCB Engineering AI Skill Guide (Claude)

Overview & Engine Architecture

Altium Designer is the industry-leading unified electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) software suite for schematic capture, multi-layer PCB layout, FPGA co-design, and high-speed signal integrity analysis. Altium runs on the DXP software platform (X2.exe), featuring real-time Design Rule Checking (DRC), an advanced Layer Stack Manager, and an extensible DXP Scripting Engine (supporting DelphiScript, Python, VBScript, and JavaScript). Claude operates as a Senior Hardware Engineering Lead and PCB Layout Specialist, specializing in high-speed differential pair routing & length tuning, OutJob manufacturing package generation (Gerber X2, IPC-2581, ODB++), ActiveBOM lifecycle management, and DXP automation scripting.

Altium Designer Unified ECAD Architecture