Evaluation of AD - how to start?

[esuan]

Hello,
long time lurker, first time poster here.

After using Eagle professionally for a few years, I'm starting to look around. Since I'll probably change my daily job (PCB design, electronics design, firmware) in a half a year or so, I'm trying to gain more knowledge to enhance my portfolio. Apart from other two packages I selected; learning at least basics of Altium designer may give me somehow better chances of finding next employer. I know I can't get very fluent in short time frame, but I want to at least dip my toes and expand my horizons.

I made some basic research and as far I understand (it is not easy to navigate through all the "awesome", "powerful", "low-cost", "creative" buzzwords) Altium offers three packages:
1, Altium designer - flagship product. Most expensive (~10^4 USD/year), fully fledged one.
2, Altium circuit studio - cheaper (~10^3 USD), cut down of Altium designer.
3, Altium circuit maker - free, more cut down, bound to online service.
Is my understanding here correct?

The problem here is how to gain the and skill.
- Obtaining full AD license just for sake of learning is way out of my hobby budget.
- CS is somehow cheaper, but still not exactly cheap for the same purpose.
- CM is free - but how much it differs from AD? Is skill gained from CM relevant to AD?
- There are shady ways of getting AD package, but I'm not much keen on running binaries from suspicious sources; what more - cracked software may have bugs/crashes (been bitten by this once).

What is your opinion on dipping my toes into Altium world? What is good way to start here?

[DerekG]

What is good way to start here?

If you enroll in an electronics course, you can supply that information to Altium who supply the full version of AD for $100/year to students.

[ajb]

You can get evaluation licenses for Altium, but there's a LOT to learn about how to use it effectively, so you'd really have to dedicate some time to get a good handle on it within the demo period. 

It's been a while since I messed with circuitmaker, but from what I recall the overall workflow was somewhat similar to AD, but with vastly different library setup and a completely different user interface (ribbon-based and none of AD's hierarchical shortcut keys).  I'm honestly not sure how much you'll get out of working in CM that will translate to AD. 

I would say the best way to gain some proficiency with AD without having to shell out for a full license will be to take some time to go through some of the instructional videos and then get an evaluation license and set aside some time to really focus on it as much as possible.  If you can do it over a holiday or even take a few days off from work to work on it, so much the better.  (Or best of all, convince your employer that they should evaluate AD and do it during working hours!)  Have a couple of existing designs ready ahead of time, maybe things you've already designed in Eagle or whatever, and redo them in AD--that way you can set aside all of the electronics design and focus exclusively on learning the tool.  Make sure to take time to experiment with the PCB and SCH filter system, the rules engine, and hierarchical/multichannel designs.  There are some fairly inexpensive courses available that may be worthwhile--Fedevel, for instance, offers some courses for <$100.  I'm not familiar with their courses, but their videos are pretty good from what I recall, and the courses are an absolute bargain compared to the official Altium training.

[esuan]

That is wealth of information here, thank you guys. I'll probably start as ajb suggested.

[KaneTW]

AD student version is about the same in Europe, plus VAT.

[esuan]

I'm not a student for a few years, so this is probably not directly applicable to me.