Altium has an ECAD-MCAD CoDesigner integration with A365.
I set it up on Solidworks 2019 following the instructions here: https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/ecad-mcad-codesign-ad?version=19.0
To show the Co-Designer panel, click on Options → Add-Ins:
Check this box, and you can check the start-up box if you want as well, though it will slow Solidworks down if not using it for Altium Imports:
Then you’ll have the panel on the right where you can sign in to Altium and then push/pull boards from the server as you want, just as the article above mentions.
Note that the boards must first be pushed from Altium Designer using the MCAD CoDesigner Panel before trying to pull them into Solidworks. Sometimes you need to pull it into Solidworks twice before the correct configuration appears (the board shape was consistently incorrect on the first pull, but was fixed with a second pull).
We will restrict the collaboration to only pushing data from ECAD (Altium) and only pulling from MCAD (Solidworks) as our design process only happens in this direction usually. If you’re going to push from MCAD, make sure you have talked with the board owner first. This could be useful for defining connector placement, but is much more useful for larger boards with dedicated enclosures.
I’m not too sure how Altium handles multiple local copies of the MCAD, so for now we will restrict it to one person (Micah Black) owning the main links. I’ll update the Electrical Integration GrabCAD folder with all the board files:
Open the Solidworks assemblies, and if it tells you that a component has been updated, click USE THIS FILE ANYWAY (or any other way of telling it to use the file - I have seen a few different versions of the text, not sure why):
And we get an accurate, full featured 3D model of the board:
