Altium Designer 13 released

[santiniuk]

Hello folks,

Just wondering if anyone has installed A.D 13 and actually noticed a difference

We have two licenses at work so just installed it. Its a fresh install so lets you keep version 12 also.

Although I really do like the program and use daily almost at work I'm just a little surprised that the full incremental version number release is warranted ?

I'm not complaining, the company pays for the licenses, I was just maybe expecting more when I saw a full version increment.

Thanks

[Bloch]

http://wiki.altium.com/display/ADOH/Release+notes+for+Altium+Designer+Version+13.0

[EEVblog]

The problem is, a couple of years back Altium abruptly changed to this incremental development and release model, effectively making the concept of major version number releases (and the subsequent big new feature addition jumps) obsolete.
Now they realise that people like the traditional big version number feature release system (and marketing need it too to give them something "new" the sell), so they have gone back to big version numbers. But the old development system is still in place, so the version number is just a sham. If you auto updated a few weeks before the release of "version 13", you'd have almost exactly the same product. Version 13 is just a marketing label.
Dave.

[free_electron]

There's more than meets the eye ....

13 is made using a newer version of the Borland Compiler.
I have both the latest 12.xx build and the new 13 build installed.
The looks of all menu's , controls, tabs etc are slightly different. Looking at the Borland runtime libs they are newer versions between 13 and 12...
That's why 13 is a separate install. it does not overwrite 12.

i doubt on a project like this you would switch compiler in the middle... so i believe this is built using the new Borland compiler.

hmm. yet the actual build number is still 10 ... 10.1531.27391
AD12 was 10.1377 i believe.

[EEVblog]

Yes, that's likely, they usually update the compiler when a new version in available.
I don't know if they are still using the incremental update release model, but they were last time I heard.
But if you buy "version 13" today, I believe it's not much different feature wise to "version 12" you could have bought last month.
The old release model was the traditional method of holding off a swag of new features until they released the next major version (6 monthly during the stupid summer/winter thing), and interim .X releases were mostly bug fixes.
That system would also require two development paths internal in the company, one for the current version, and one for the next major version.
The idea being that you eventually end up with a super stable current version, and then a new version with a lot of new bells and whistles, but probably less stable. So customers got to decide whether the new upgrade was worth it, or if they would just skip it and keep running the old version.

But I believe they are still running with the new model where new features and bug fixes get pushed out on a continuous basis. So the "major releases" effectively just become marketing labels as I said.

Although I don't keep in-the-know on this stuff any more.

Dave.

[free_electron]

Well there's a bunch of new things in 13 that are not in 12.
Also the licence key has changed. 13 is installed in parallel with 12 and you get a new key for 13.

Anyway. They can do whatever they want. As long as it works. I've been messing with 13 all day , haven't seen a lockup yet. ( and i've thrown some gnarly stuff at it doing the board for the new book... got all kinds of 'funky' stuff in it .

[EEVblog]

Well there's a bunch of new things in 13 that are not in 12.
Also the licence key has changed. 13 is installed in parallel with 12 and you get a new key for 13.

Sounds like they may be changing back a bit to the old model  then 

Dave.

[sacherjj]

I think they are still in the incremental model.  You cannot get even bug fixes without the Subscription.  This is because bug fixes are tied in with the incremental updates.  (That was from my sales rep as we were purchasing my current license which I received yesterday.)   Along with this is the major versions.

[santiniuk]

After a week or so usage no major problems with R13 personally. Installed fine on 3 of our work machines.

I monitor the Altium Live forum and seems like a lot of people having install issues. Don't think it's gone down too well.

I guess the features added for me are not that important, I could create a much longer list of things I see asked for often.

They seem to be rolling out more library releases which is promising. Microchip this week...

[sacherjj]

I've had a one file access issue since switching to 13.  My files are on a backed up network share that I have offline syncing.  This may be where the issue comes from.  DXP occasionally goes nuts.  I am switching between the WiFi network for our corporate network to my test network where the Android test boards are to SSH and ADB over network into them.  I don't think it is transitioning to offline and online for the files, when I switch Workspaces.  I don't think 12 had this issue.  I've sent in detailed error reports.  I'm usually doing software when I switching so I just close Altium down and haven't had issues with it.