What’s New in Altair 2025.1 for Electrical Engineers

Often, end users of the Altair Electrical Engineering tools may see the “sub” or “minor” releases of their tools and choose to delay until the next major or yearly version is announced. In that case, users are missing out on some powerful enhancements. In fact, Altair recently completed releasing its entire portfolio of 2025.1 versions for their entire engineering solutions portfolio. Let’s take a closer look at some of the more impressive and interesting changes that can impact any electrical or electronics engineers using one of the following tools: Altair Flux, Flux Motor, PSIM, & FEKO. The newest releases of every software solution can always be found here: Altair Marketplace, shown in Figure 1 below.

Fig 1. Altair Marketplace with Search Box (1) and Suite Filter (2) highlighted.

Altair FluxMotor

To begin, FluxMotor, Altair’s template-based approach to designing, testing, and exporting rotating machines, received a nice new upgrade: previously this tool only allowed engineers to analyze several types of AC motors, but v2025.1 has introduced the Permanent Magnet DC (PMDC) machine. This expands the capabilities of the tools significantly! Just like with the other AC motor designs, the PMDC motor design comes with several pre-built menus and options to fully parameterize and customize your machine.

Fig 2. Initial creation menu of PMDC machine in Altair FluxMotor.

Figure 2 above shows the initial display of the Motor Factory for a PMDC machine, which should look familiar to FluxMotor users. Similar to the process of designing other machines in this tool, users can follow the templates along the top menu, selecting options such as rotor and stator geometry, magnet definitions, material properties, and more. Figure 3 below depicts just a few examples of the possibilities.

Fig 3. Examples of customization menus available for PMDC machines in Altair FluxMotor.

From there, users can still perform electrical tests on their newly designed PMDC machine, or they can export it for further analysis in other tools. Please note that some of these testing and exporting features are still in BETA stage. Figure 4 showcases what is currently available with this type of machine.

Fig 4. Examples of testing and exporting features of PMDC machines in Altair FluxMotor.

Altair Flux

Flux, Altair’s more general-purpose solution to low-frequency electromagnetic simulation and design, also received some commendable new features. As some users may already be aware, many features of Altair Flux and its solving capabilities are being migrated into Altair SimLab, and this version provides a route to simplify this process. This allows engineers to stay in Flux (if you prefer the classic look of Figure 5), move over to SimLab, or collaborate with users across both tools!

Fig 5. Motor ready for export in Altair Flux.

To complete this process, symbolized by Figure 6, users will just need to export their Flux project files as Abaqus files and then import them back into SimLab. Since this is a new feature, there are currently some limitations: if the model was solved in Flux, it will need to be re-solved in SimLab, and geometric parametrization is lost during the import. However, rest assured that the developers at Altair are working diligently to improve these processes every day!

Fig 6. Representation of file transition process from Altair Flux to Altair SimLab.

Once the model has migrated over, users are ready to perform their electromagnetic analysis (using the Flux solver) or multiphysics modeling such as NVH, thermal, or electrostatic simulations, all within the simplified GUI of Altair SimLab, highlighted in Figure 7.

Fig 7. Completed import of 3D motor model into Altair SimLab from Altair Flux.

Altair PSIM

Altair’s circuit schematic design and analysis software, PSIM, hasn’t been forgotten either. This tool has always attempted to ease the setup, design, analysis, postprocessing, and optimization of circuits, motor drives, and control systems. It accomplishes this via prebuilt design suites, an extensive library of parts, models, and examples, and a variety of included automations. In v2025.1, PSIM received a new automation: a script to automatically generate efficiency contour maps using OML (this can be compiled and run in Altair Compose, a tool you get access to with PSIM).

Fig 8. Use of new Efficiency Map Script in Altair PSIM.

This upgrade can be accessed via the scripting menu, displayed in Figure 8 above, which is being used to generate the efficiency map for a simple motor drive system. Once this simulation has been completed, an OML file will be created, which can then be placed into Compose to generate a plot like the one seen in Figure 9.

Fig 9. Custom & automatically generated efficiency map generated by OML script from Altair PSIM.

Altair FEKO

Last, but not least, Altair FEKO, the 3D high frequency electromagnetic simulation software received several improvements across the board, including increased solver accuracy, faster convergences, and tighter mesh controls. However, a more immediately noticeable addition is the new Sinuous Antenna in the Component Library, visible in Figure 10. This specific device has six design variables, and I bring it up to showcase the FEKO team’s continued dedication to expanding the libraries and capabilities of this software. We will not stop seeing new electrical devices, structures, materials, and other improvements any time soon!

Fig 10. Addition of Sinuous Antenna to Component Library in Altair FEKO.

This has been a brief overview of what Altair 2025.1 has to offer for Electrical Engineers in particular. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the complete list of changes for each of these tools; if you would like to learn more about the recent updates of these software applications, or if you have any questions about the Altair portfolio of engineering solutions, please be sure to check these blogs often, subscribe to our YouTube channel, or reach out to us directly.