Altium Designer vs PowerWorld Simulator
Altium Designer
altium.comPowerWorld Simulator
powerworld.comSide by side
| Figure | Altium Designer | PowerWorld Simulator |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $460/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · Electrical Design Software | 8.4 (#4) | 7.9 (#16) |
| Intended users | The product page presents Altium Designer for professional PCB projects ranging from basic circuits to complex systems, including avionics. | PowerWorld says its customers include electric utilities, independent system operators, government agencies, generation and transmission developers, power marketers and traders, consultants, and academia. |
| Purpose | Altium Designer is an integrated electronics design tool covering schematic capture, PCB layout, simulation, and analysis. | Simulator interactively simulates high-voltage power system operation over periods from several minutes to several days. |
| Support | Altium lists documentation, a knowledge base, ticketed support cases, training, and community forums as support resources. | The company lists technical support by email and says license maintenance includes customer support, upgrades, and software patches. |
Plans
PowerWorld Simulator
- Simulator evaluation versionFree
- Simulator base package (first commercial license)$11,000, paid once
In their own words
Altium Designer
Altium Designer has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
PowerWorld Simulator
PowerWorld Simulator is desktop software for interactively simulating high-voltage power-system operation over periods from minutes to days. Its full package solves power-flow systems of up to 250,000 buses. The base package provides contingency analysis with automatic batch processing, full power-flow or fast linearized analysis, and result views organized by contingency or impacted facility. Visualization includes animated diagrams, automatic diagram creation and modification, contoured displays, and a model explorer. Optional add-ons cover ATC, OPF, SCOPF, reserves optimization, SimAuto, transient stability, GIC, and integrated topology processing. SimAuto allows an external program to extend Simulator. The product lists industry-standard file-format compatibility and GIS support. It runs on 64-bit Microsoft Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 and newer; no other operating systems are supported. A free evaluation version is limited to 13 buses. The first commercial base-package license costs $11,000 as a one-time purchase and includes one year of upgrades and support.