What’s new in Xpedition 2510

The Xpedition 2510 release reinforces our vision of a scalable PCB design platform—one that adapts to every stage of growth, from individual innovators to global engineering organizations. Powered by the same trusted Xpedition technology, each tier offers cutting-edge performance, tailored to the needs and scale of your design team.

PADS Professional Essentials, powered by Xpedition technology, delivers professional-grade PCB design to independent innovators at an entry-level price.

Xpedition Standard expands on that foundation with a feature-rich, budget-friendly environment designed for small teams.

Xpedition Enterprise delivers enterprise-level systems design and concurrent, multi-domain collaboration to scaling businesses and enterprise leaders with global, multi-disciplinary teams.

The 2510 release focuses on practical speed-ups and clearer collaboration—from everyday schematic edits to RF co-design and multi-board assembly checks. You’ll see faster, more intuitive interactions in Xpedition Designer, richer 3D-aware libraries, tighter ECAD/MCAD handoffs, and modernized enterprise workflows that keep data clean, secure, and reusable.

Design capture: Smarter, faster, and more intuitive

The 2510 release refines the Xpedition Designer experience with a clear focus on speed, usability, and precision. Every improvement was guided by user feedback and Siemens’ broader UX modernization effort—bringing a cleaner, more predictable interface to all Xpedition users.

A modern, context-aware interface. The 2510 update continues the journey toward a unified Siemens UX. Dynamic, context-sensitive commands adapt instantly to your workflow—surfacing the right actions when placing, wiring, or editing—so designers spend less time searching menus and more time designing. This approach minimizes the learning curve and delivers a more fluid, responsive experience across the schematic capture environment.

Faster wiring and cleaner schematics. Common operations—like placing Ground, Power, No Connect, and Link symbols—now require fewer clicks, while wiring selection has been re-engineered for flexibility. Designers can quickly choose a continuous path, an entire branch, or all wires on a sheet to make sweeping edits with confidence. Differential-pair creation and visualization have also been streamlined, with immediate graphical feedback that makes high-speed design intent crystal clear.

Smarter hierarchical navigation. Complex, multi-sheet designs benefit from an upgraded cross-referencing engine. The new capability supports hierarchical nets, buses, and even block-pin annotations, letting engineers trace connectivity across every level of the schematic. Whether you’re reusing design blocks or integrating legacy content, cross-references remain accurate and easy to interpret—significantly improving review efficiency and design readability.

Together, these enhancements reduce friction, shorten onboarding time, and help every designer—from entry-level to enterprise—move through schematic creation with greater confidence and consistency.

Library management: 3D content integration and usability

The 2510 release transforms library management into a more connected, efficient, and visually intuitive experience—empowering librarians and designers alike to build, manage, and verify component data with less rework and greater confidence.

3D model management, built in. Library Manager now treats 3D content as a native asset, enabling direct import, mapping, visualization, renaming, and deletion—all without leaving the tool. Models appear in the Library Manager navigator, and associations remain intact even when cells or parts are renamed. This capability greatly reduces manual rework and ensures consistent 3D integration when working with tools like Footprint Expert.

Smarter part-building and visibility. Updates to the Part Builder enhance how symbols regenerate when property data changes, ensuring accuracy and consistency across parts. Filter status visibility in all table headers has been improved, making it easier to identify and manage active filters—streamlining bulk updates and quality checks.

Navigator improvements for control and clarity. All dialogs and windows are now resizable, and scope-switching within the Navigator is smoother and more predictable. Designers can delete referenced cells directly from the Navigator tree, while refresh and rename consistency ensures that every view reflects the latest library state—giving users a sense of control and trust in their data.

Faster access to Footprint Expert. Footprint Expert is now fully integrated as a standard command in Library Manager. It appears in command search results, supports predictive search, and can be pinned to the top bar for one-click access. This improvement makes advanced footprint creation more discoverable and cuts navigation time between symbol, cell, and 3D definition tasks.

Together, these enhancements make Xpedition 2510’s library management experience more unified and intuitive—bridging schematic, layout, and 3D workflows while ensuring the quality and consistency of every component in the design chain.

Enterprise-level collaboration and data management

The Xpedition 2510 release strengthens the enterprise foundation of the platform, advancing both collaboration and data security through powerful updates to EDM Collaborate, DAR, and the EDM Server platform. These enhancements streamline multi-user workflows, improve performance, and ensure that every design decision—across global teams—is based on trusted, properly-controlled data.

Streamlined design reviews and data visualization. EDM Collaborate’s Data View and graphical interface have been refined to make design inspection more efficient. Engineers can now use expression-based filters for complex queries and switch seamlessly between tabular and graphical views with unified column and facet controls. The new interface aligns with Siemens’ modern UX standards, providing a cleaner and more intuitive experience during design reviews.

Smarter access control for secure collaboration. EDM 2510 introduces expanded data-access restrictions, ensuring users only see information relevant to their assigned production libraries and permissions. Reports and data views dynamically respect these rights, minimizing the risk of unauthorized exposure while maintaining agility in cross-team collaboration.

Modernized and hardened infrastructure. The EDM server platform has been upgraded with open-source component updates, new proxy security support, and more efficient memory and CPU utilization in distributed vaults. These improvements enhance scalability and reliability—keeping enterprise-class design environments running smoothly under growing data and user demands.

Constraint reuse for speed and consistency. A major workflow advance enables engineers to reuse constraints directly through EDM, eliminating the need for side files and reducing definition time by as much as 80 percent. This improvement not only accelerates design setup but also ensures that constraint intent remains synchronized across projects and disciplines.

Together, these advancements make Xpedition Enterprise 2510 a more powerful, secure, and scalable collaboration environment—linking teams, data, and disciplines within a unified digital backbone for complex electronics design.

Layout innovations: Summary of what’s new

In 2510, layout gets a focused upgrade across five areas: assembly-aware 3D DRC, tighter MCAD exchange (IDX 4.0/5.0 with change proposals), more controllable physical reuse (silkscreen handling), streamlined manufacturing data outputs, and a modern integration between Xpedition and Keysight ADS—all aimed at faster iteration and more reliable release.

Let’s drill down a bit more.

Enhanced ECAD-MCAD collaboration

The Xpedition 2510 release enhances how electronics and mechanical design teams collaborate—bridging ECAD and MCAD workflows through tighter, more intelligent IDX (Incremental Design Exchange) integration. The result is faster convergence, cleaner communication, and fewer surprises during enclosure and mechanical integration.

Higher-fidelity data exchange. With support for IDX schemas 4.0 and 5.0, Xpedition 2510 improves the precision and efficiency of design data shared between ECAD and MCAD environments. Designers can now exchange incremental updates containing only what has changed, ensuring smoother synchronization across disciplines and eliminating redundant iterations.

Automatic change proposals for full traceability.  The new change-proposal mechanism automatically identifies and documents when part numbers, schematic variants, or component placements are modified. Each proposal provides both ECAD and MCAD teams with clear visibility into what has changed and enables quick review or approval—establishing a transparent, traceable loop throughout the electro-mechanical design process.

A more integrated product design flow. Whether working within a small integrated design group or a global, multi-disciplinary enterprise, these enhancements reduce turnaround time and risk at the ECAD–MCAD boundary. By tightening electro-mechanical collaboration, Xpedition 2510 ensures that form and function come together more predictably—from concept through to production.

Precision assembly validation for complex 3D designs

As designs grow more compact and mechanically intricate, ensuring proper fit between boards and components has never been more critical. Xpedition 2510 introduces a major enhancement to 3D Design Rule Checking (DRC)—empowering engineers to validate assemblies with unprecedented accuracy.

Smarter Z-axis clearance control. Designers can now define a unique clearance for the Z-axis, enabling more granular enforcement of spacing between stacked boards, connectors, and mechanical parts. The DRC engine respects these Z-clearances during validation, delivering a truly three-dimensional check for mechanical integrity.

Reduced noise, sharper focus. By distinguishing Z-axis violations from traditional XY checks, Xpedition 2510 dramatically cuts down on false positives that once required manual review—helping teams zero in on real issues faster and with greater confidence.

Confidence in every assembly. For multi-board and high-density assemblies, this means fewer late-stage surprises, faster verification cycles, and cleaner sign-off. With 3D DRC enhancements, Xpedition 2510 gives design teams the precision they need to validate every mechanical interface before it reaches manufacturing.

Keysight ADS integration: A new era

The Xpedition 2510 release introduces a next-generation integration between Xpedition and Keysight ADS, replacing the legacy dynamic link with a modern, file-based ADS Board Link (ABL) workflow. This advancement opens a more secure, flexible, and efficient path for RF and PCB co-design—without the complexities of synchronized tool installations or network dependencies.

File-based collaboration for modern engineering environments. With the new XML-driven ABL workflow, complete circuit data—including components, traces, vias, and shapes—can be transferred directly between ADS and Xpedition as a single file. Because it’s file-based, teams no longer need both applications installed on the same system or connected through a shared network. This approach simplifies integration in secure and classified environments where data must be encrypted and exchanged offline.

No library translation required. Libraries are included automatically in the transfer, eliminating the manual translation steps that previous workflows required. Designers retain the freedom to translate libraries as needed, but in most cases, it’s no longer necessary—saving time and preserving data fidelity.

Support for modern RF design objects. The integration recognizes new intelligent ADS objects—such as via stacks—and supports hierarchical layouts that are automatically flattened on import into Xpedition. This ensures accurate representation of complex RF structures within the PCB environment and a smoother handoff between domains.

Optimizing RF in the context of the PCB. By uniting RF and board-level data in a single, secure exchange flow, engineers can analyze and optimize RF circuits in the true context of the PCB design. The result is tighter performance alignment between domains, faster iteration, and greater design confidence.

The Xpedition 2510 release embodies Siemens EDA’s commitment to scalable innovation—advancing the same trusted technology foundation that supports individual engineers, growing design teams, and global enterprises alike. Each enhancement contributes to a unified design experience that’s faster, smarter, and more connected.

From intuitive design capture and 3D-aware library management to precise layout control, seamless electro-mechanical collaboration, and enterprise-grade data management, every improvement strengthens the digital thread that connects concept, design, and production. The new Keysight ADS Board Link (ABL) further extends this connectivity, enabling RF and PCB engineers to collaborate securely and efficiently in a modern, file-based workflow.

Together, these advancements make Xpedition 2510 more than an update—it’s a meaningful stride toward an intelligent, integrated design platform that scales effortlessly with your ambitions.

If you are an Xpedition Enterprise customer, you can find the 2510 downloads on Siemens Support Center:

https://support.sw.siemens.com/en-US/product/852852130/download/202504040

PADS Pro Essentials and Xpedition Standard customers can find their downloads on the Siemens Software Center. Look for the previously installed application on your desktop or download the Siemens Software Center application here, then sign-in.

Xpedition family 2510 release highlights (summary)

Xpedition	Essentials	Standard	Enterprise
Library – 3D model management	✔	✔	✔
EDM –  Supply chain integration	N/A	N/A	✔
Designer – hierarchical cross reference	✔	✔	✔
Designer – Dynamic commands UX	✔	✔	✔
Designer – Wiring selection, placement UX	✔	✔	✔
Designer – diff pair assignment & viewing	✔	✔	✔
Designer – Named User PartQuest Portal plugin improvements (new ECAD model viewers)	✔	✔	N/A
Library – IOPT model updates	N/A	N/A	✔
Designer/Layout – Product documentation assist	✔	✔	2604
Layout – Assembly 3D DRC	N/A	N/A	✔
Layout – IDX 4.0/5.0 support	N/A	✔	✔
Layout – Keysight ABL RF integration	N/A	N/A	✔
Constraint reuse	N/A	N/A	✔