Altium Cancel Circuit Maker Newsletter

[EEVblog]

Got an email blast about this and how cancelling the newsletter doesn't mean anything for the long term support of the product.
Yeah, and I have a bridge to sell you...

[DerekG]

Dave did you notice the link to Circuit Studio for half price on the bottom of the newsletter?

I have detailed it here:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/altium-designer-licence/msg1204739/#msg1204739

[james_s]

How much are you asking for the bridge? 

[tszaboo]

Nobody asked for a newsletter in the first place. I only registered, becuase I wanted to see how bad the product is, suspicion confirmed. And they started bombing me with big corporation hackaday 2.0
IDK what is going on in Altium HQ now, but it looks like they are doing constantly 180 and 360 degree turns. with CS repositioning with price, Attina (or whatever its called) appearing and going away.
At one point I got 30 letter from them, because I supposedly checked out a project in circuitmaker, so every time someone edited it, I got a mail. No unsubsribe button. I have to go into a software, which I have no longer installed and do something to stop receiving mails.

[daveyk]

Got an email blast about this and how cancelling the newsletter doesn't mean anything for the long term support of the product.
Yeah, and I have a bridge to sell you...

I loved Circuit Maker and still somewhat use CircuitMaker 2000 Pro.  I laid out a rather complex two sided I/O signal cross-over board for our service department; which is still today. TraxMaker did a wonderful job. 4PCB made the boards for us a great rate. I never looked elsewhere since CM was killed and haven't done much circuit board work since. CM simulation always worked well for me. It even works in Win10!

Dave

P.S. - I didn't ever know there was a newsletter; I thought it was a killed off product somewhere around 2001 anyway give or take a few years.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[thm_w]

I loved Circuit Maker and still somewhat use CircuitMaker 2000 Pro.  I laid out a rather complex two sided I/O signal cross-over board for our service department; which is still today. TraxMaker did a wonderful job. 4PCB made the boards for us a great rate. I never looked elsewhere since CM was killed and haven't done much circuit board work since. CM simulation always worked well for me. It even works in Win10!

Dave

P.S. - I didn't ever know there was a newsletter; I thought it was a killed off product somewhere around 2001 anyway give or take a few years.

This is circuitmaker released in 2015, not the one you are thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CircuitMaker
But yes old CM sim worked quite well.

[DerekG]

Got an email blast about this and how cancelling the newsletter doesn't mean anything for the long term support of the product.
Yeah, and I have a bridge to sell you...

I loved Circuit Maker and still somewhat use CircuitMaker 2000 Pro.

Yes, Altium/Protel go around in circles like a headless chook. They sold off part of their Protel schematic program, then a few years later bought the much improved product back again (now called Circuit Maker 2000 (Pro).

Altium then found that is competed a little too successfully against their full blown (much more expensive) Altium Designer ........... so they canned it.

Then Altium find they had no entry design software, so they resurrect it.

A bit like they moved the head office from Australia, to the USA, to China, then back to Australia.

As I said, a headless chook.

[daveyk]

I loved Circuit Maker and still somewhat use CircuitMaker 2000 Pro.  I laid out a rather complex two sided I/O signal cross-over board for our service department; which is still today. TraxMaker did a wonderful job. 4PCB made the boards for us a great rate. I never looked elsewhere since CM was killed and haven't done much circuit board work since. CM simulation always worked well for me. It even works in Win10!

Dave

P.S. - I didn't ever know there was a newsletter; I thought it was a killed off product somewhere around 2001 anyway give or take a few years.

This is circuitmaker released in 2015, not the one you are thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CircuitMaker
But yes old CM sim worked quite well.

Is/was CM2015 entry level inexpensive also?

I don't think I would use it enough anymore to worry about it. My creative years are behind me now - lol.

I switch to writing test software in VBA (my favorite) and VB6 - yea I need to update. I have some extremely extensive test programs interacting with Agilent attenuators, function Generators, power supply and Tek Scope all in Access.

Anywho....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[thm_w]

Is/was CM2015 entry level inexpensive also?

I don't think I would use it enough anymore to worry about it. My creative years are behind me now - lol.

I switch to writing test software in VBA (my favorite) and VB6 - yea I need to update. I have some extremely extensive test programs interacting with Agilent attenuators, function Generators, power supply and Tek Scope all in Access.

Anywho....

Its free to use.
Visual studio community version is free as well for VB. But if you have a lot of old VB6 code it would take some work to move over.

[daveyk]

[/quote]

Its free to use.
Visual studio community version is free as well for VB. But if you have a lot of old VB6 code it would take some work to move over.
[/quote]

I have been afraid to let it update and install.

One thing I need to learn, or would love to see examples of, is RS232 port communications through the Windows API instead of MSCOMM32.ocx.  I use mscomm to communicate to our instruments. That is the only thing that is preventing the software from working in windows 10..mscomm32.ocx.

If I update a machine to the free Visual studio Community, do you have to be on-line? Do the programs compile to an .exe?

I find that VB6 works on 64 but Windows 7 and can compile. The compiled program will not run in    win 7/64, although that same .exe runs fine on a 32/win 7 machine and a 32/Win XP machine!

I really need to upgrade - lol. I just gone VBA is so much fun. I've borrowed Dll and ocx files from VB6 and newer. The programs are just a pain to get running on someone else's machine. All the ocx files need manually registered is mainly it.

Well back to work. Thanks for the advice and help.

Dave


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[thm_w]

VS community does not have to be online to compile/run after the initial install. Yes the programs compile to EXE.
I used ILMerge to embed dll's into the finished exe (so only a single file is needed). But for RS232 comms I don't think this would be necessary.
It should be possible to have VB/VS running in parallel and not update the old version (its like Altium where ver 10 to 11 is not an upgrade, but a new install).

Circuit maker on the other hand, you do have to be connected to use it.

[EEVblog]

IDK what is going on in Altium HQ now, but it looks like they are doing constantly 180 and 360 degree turns.

That's what Altium specialise in, as any long term user will know.

[EEVblog]

A bit like they moved the head office from Australia, to the USA, to China, then back to Australia.

The HQ has actually gone from Tasmania -> Sydney -> USA -> Sydney -> China -> USA

[EEVblog]

P.S. - I didn't ever know there was a newsletter; I thought it was a killed off product somewhere around 2001 anyway give or take a few years.

That's the old Circuit Maker 2000. They resurrected the name only for their new free version. No code was shared.

[Gibson486]

LOL....I find this thread funny. I thought I was the only one who saw the cookiness is the Altium sales and marketing. Just a month ago, we were exploring get more licenses. They gave us an quote with "aggressive pricing" and free subscription for a year. They simply added the subscription price to the normal MSRP license price and made the maintenance fee 0 for one year.

[floobydust]

Software corporations all want us to move to "cloud CAD", where you pay monthly to have your design "private" on their cloud server.
I can't say it makes any sense to me.

If they hike the price, change the feature set, go through a merger/acquisition, get phased out, you the poor designer have to throw out all the IP you've invested - the component libraries, the sch/pcb designs, learning curve etc. - all mean nothing to these greedy chooks.

Altium drops their pricing every so often - remember 2009 the 75% cut? The CEO said something along the lines of "nah we won't raise the price". Yeah, let's trust that one.

[EEVblog]

Altium drops their pricing every so often - remember 2009 the 75% cut? The CEO said something along the lines of "nah we won't raise the price". Yeah, let's trust that one.

I was there in the room when Nick Martin said it. He said to all the staff "We've burned our bridges and we can never go back to high priced software".
I think it was back toward the old price in about a year 

[DerekG]

I was there in the room when Nick Martin said it. He said to all the staff "We've burned our bridges and we can never go back to high priced software".
I think it was back toward the old price in about a year 

Nick Martin was pushed out the door in October 2012:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/nick-martin-booted-out-as-altium-ceo/

The new board members are trying to preserve their jobs & they do this by maximising returns to their shareholders. The actual product (Altium Designer) comes in a poor second behind their shareholders.

This is why we see so many "pyramid glossy brochures" & "Investor (shareholders) Powerpoint presentations" instead of bug fixes in their actual software.

As other competing circuit board design packages get better & better, Altium will lose traction & end up with only the top end of town. The only way to survive with this model is to increase prices by around CPI each year.

I own an Altium licence, yet I choose to work with the developers of DipTrace in implementing some of the better features of AD. Apart from legacy designs started in Altium, I now almost always choose DipTrace as my preferred tool.

[EEVblog]

I was there in the room when Nick Martin said it. He said to all the staff "We've burned our bridges and we can never go back to high priced software".
I think it was back toward the old price in about a year 

Nick Martin was pushed out the door in October 2012:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/nick-martin-booted-out-as-altium-ceo/
The new board members are trying to preserve their jobs & they do this by maximising returns to their shareholders. The actual product (Altium Designer) comes in a poor second behind their shareholders.

I can assure you that Altium Designer is now in a much better position than it was under Nick Martin.
I like Nick, but the way he ran the direction of the company and the product was crazy, and everyone with any clue knew it. That's why he was booted, he ran out of his 9 crazy direction lives.

[LabSpokane]

A corporation deep sixes a revenue sink for which there exists no revenue source or any hope thereof in the foreseeable future. That is just so surprising.

[Gibson486]

I was there in the room when Nick Martin said it. He said to all the staff "We've burned our bridges and we can never go back to high priced software".
I think it was back toward the old price in about a year 

Nick Martin was pushed out the door in October 2012:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/nick-martin-booted-out-as-altium-ceo/

The new board members are trying to preserve their jobs & they do this by maximising returns to their shareholders. The actual product (Altium Designer) comes in a poor second behind their shareholders.

This is why we see so many "pyramid glossy brochures" & "Investor (shareholders) Powerpoint presentations" instead of bug fixes in their actual software.

As other competing circuit board design packages get better & better, Altium will lose traction & end up with only the top end of town. The only way to survive with this model is to increase prices by around CPI each year.

I own an Altium licence, yet I choose to work with the developers of DipTrace in implementing some of the better features of AD. Apart from legacy designs started in Altium, I now almost always choose DipTrace as my preferred tool.

I actually agree. We moved to Altium because our parent company said to do it. I actually miss KiCad a lot. The one thing I do not miss is that if I need a PCB layout done, finding an Altium designer is easy. Finding a KiCad designer that actually knows what he is doing is pretty hard. Also, Altium has that Draftsman extension. That thing actually works pretty well. I can get ALL my output jobs with a click of a button. It works very well with our SVN manager as well. From seeing everyone's comments, I am gonna guess that will cost extra money in the future.   

[floobydust]

Circuit Maker, Circuit Studio... It seems these cloud-based offerings are a bit off target, but have great potential.
Thing is, at the end of the day everybody (at Altium) gets a paycheque so who cares if the cloud-solution succeeds or flops?
The odd silence about these products means they will either get axed or simply priced up.

[timb]

Circuit Maker, Circuit Studio... It seems these cloud-based offerings are a bit off target, but have great potential.
Thing is, at the end of the day everybody (at Altium) gets a paycheque so who cares if the cloud-solution succeeds or flops?
The odd silence about these products means they will either get axed or simply priced up.

Circuit Studio isn't cloud based AFAIK...

[Joel_l]

Circuit Maker, Circuit Studio... It seems these cloud-based offerings are a bit off target, but have great potential.
Thing is, at the end of the day everybody (at Altium) gets a paycheque so who cares if the cloud-solution succeeds or flops?
The odd silence about these products means they will either get axed or simply priced up.

Circuit Studio isn't cloud based AFAIK...

It is not. The only time you have to be online is to use the vault or for updates. I downloaded all the Altium parts libraries and have them local.

[DerekG]

I downloaded all the Altium parts libraries and have them local.

That must have taken some time as they are extensive. Did you write a script to download them all in one go or did you download each library manually (one by one)?