Altium Designer 14 . sneak preview

[free_electron]

Coming early October to a computer near you ...

Make sure you are sitting down firmly for this one...
Note: I'm not responsible for chins slamming into desks , eyes popping out of their sockets, nor for mopping up puddles of drool.
I'll upload the HD later today



This is a semirigid board. The round parts are rigid boards and they are interconnected with a flex part.
You can define the bend radiuses and bending order and direction. Altium will do the entire placement verification in 3D . So if you place a part on one of the hard boards , and a part on the other hard board , Altium will verify that they won't touch once the board is folded in 3d space.

Oh, and there's one more thing. Keep your eyes peeled for the press release coming in the next few weeks.
AD14 will have an Eagle importer ... and there is a reason for that ... that's all i will or can say.

[Fsck]

Someone telling you to sit down usually means bad news.. scared to watch it.

[EEVblog]

Oh, and there's one more thing. Keep your eyes peeled for the press release coming in the next few weeks.
AD14 will have an Eagle importer ... and there is a reason for that ... that's all i will or can say.

It's the "entry level" version they are supposed to be coming out with.
My guess is they will screw up the pricing and/or target market feature set, but I hope I'm wrong.

[george graves]

My guess is they will screw up the pricing

You mean, not "free" for entry level users?  Otherwise I'll stick with eagle.  It does what I need it to do, and I hate learning new cad software.

[c4757p]

I held onto my jaw to keep it from dropping.... but all that happened was I couldn't fit my coffee cup to my mouth...

AD14 will have an Eagle importer ... and there is a reason for that ... that's all i will or can say.

That's frightening.

[EEVblog]

You mean, not "free" for entry level users?

I don't know, but that would be my guess on the first way they can screw this up.
They MUST offer a free version in order to capture the hacker/maker/hobbyist market from Eagle.
The other way would be to sell the entry level version for 4 figures instead of 3 figures.

[mariush]

It doesn't have to be free...

(if it was up to me) I'd probably make it 50-60$ with some limitations (2 layers only let's say, less than one pcb panel size, *maybe* pin/pad count restrictions like diptrace), no tech support just forum access and a simple protection, like username or serial.  Then offer a version with less limitations like 4-6 layers, full panel etc for 100-150$ with option to upgrade to higher versions, fpga support etc etc.  I'd buy one of those 100-150$ versions any day.

The cheap version will be pirated easily (due to easy to crack protection) and basically capture the eagle market, hobbyists etc and it's basically just like free but altium maintains their reputation and so on...

[george graves]

The cheap version will be pirated easily (due to easy to crack protection) and basically capture the eagle market, hobbyists etc and it's basically just like free but altium maintains their reputation and so on...

Well checking thepiratebay shows that ver 13 has been cracked and you can pirate it.  Sooo....even with that, I rarely see any hack/makers using it.  So as Dave said, they will have to make it free IMHO.

[EEVblog]

The cheap version will be pirated easily (due to easy to crack protection) and basically capture the eagle market, hobbyists etc and it's basically just like free but altium maintains their reputation and so on...

If you know that then why not have a free version and make it legit?
Maybe make it non-commercial. With an exact same $50 version making it "legit" for commercial use.
For people like me to be able to say "use Altium because it's FREE" is a huge deal. No bloggers or websites etc will publicly go out and encourage you to pirate it.

I would not make the next rung up version any cheaper than say $250. I think $250-$500 is the sweet spot.

[AlfBaz]

Is it really fair to price a tool like altium in the same range as eagle?

[fpga]

It is very disappointing. 

Instead of focusing on fixing and improving their core product (PCB design software) they are ignoring what engineers really need and focusing on the flashy, sexy stuff for their sales guys to show off.

Their PADs importer has been broken for years. Yes, it kind of, sort of works, but it creates a such a mess with phantom nets, missing nets, mis-sized and misplaced text, mis-sized pads, etc. Generally with so many hidden issues, that one is generally safer off redoing the artwork from scratch. Yet, converting PADs and OrCAD/Allegro customers is a far more lucrative endeavor than Eagle customers or hobbyists.

Their support for routing high speed parallel traces, such as DDR3, is buggy and awkward. It is very messy to do pad to pad length matching and there is no support for taking into account package delays. Both latest version 12 and version 13.3 report erroneous trace lengths. Everyone I've talked to either does this manually, trace segment by segment, or simply uses another tool for for boards with DDR3 memory.

Their support for automating the creation of complex symbols from FPGA constraints files is unusable. For some reason, they choose to ignore how today's boards with complex FPGAs are designed and what is really needed.

Their design rules checking is outdated.

Their signal integrity is a bad joke. I wouldn't expect a 3D solver, but at least a basic 2D solver for identifying crosstalk and impedance related issues.

These are the capabilities that today's board designers need and want. But instead, they give us:

Vaults -- to store our design databases in Asia. I'll keep my design data on a secure NAS behind a firewall.

MCAD -- cute, but anyone doing real 3D machining will use a real 3D CAD package such as SolidWorks.

FPGA tools -- to replace latest vendor provided IDEs, IP, and FPGA support with decade old FPGAs, proprietary, hobby/academic methodology, and buggy IP with no verification.

Embedded Software tools -- that only work with their Nanoboard based designs.

BOM integrated to distributors -- importing erroneous distributor parts data into you design and linking to broken web links, no thanks.

Extensive vault based symbols -- that are all autogenerated and generally unverified. I was lured to their parts symbols, only to find useless material. I'll stick to doing all symbols myself.

3D Viewing of Semirigid boards -- cute, but I doubt even 1% of customers would do semirigid boards, and of those perhaps .01% would rely on Altium for that.

Muzak while routing -- (unconfirmed).

I spend far more money each year on Altium than on the computer equipment. I really do want Altium Designer to be the ideal tool for PCB design. However, rather than seizing the opportunity to overtake the competition, they have grown complacent with their core product, neglecting it with overgrown bugs, and rather are chasing over the sexy show features.

Mentor has started to admit that their products have serious issues, and have started promising to get their development team back on track. Perhaps its time for Altium to do the same.

[AlfBaz]

Muzak while routing -- (unconfirmed).

[fpga]

Oh, forgot to mention:

Altium has removed all product manuals and tutorials. Their reasoning is that it impacts their ability to sell training classes. If customers cannot figure out how to use their product by trial and error, they will be forced to take their training classes. Besides, they have a shortage of English speaking employees. Their answer to documentation is community forums. 

My opinion is that if their training classes are so bad (or expensive) that they have problem selling them, they should improve them and offer better value, not remove the product manuals.

[AlfBaz]

Their support for routing high speed parallel traces, such as DDR3, is buggy and awkward. It is very messy to do pad to pad length matching and there is no support for taking into account package delays. Both latest version 12 and version 13.3 report erroneous trace lengths. Everyone I've talked to either does this manually, trace segment by segment, or simply uses another tool for for boards with DDR3 memory.

I have done that on V10, a very lame experience and am bitterly disappointed they haven't progressed in this area, especially in this day and age.

I've seen how Allegro handles this sort of thing and is something altium really need to get onto. The purported time saved with their BOM/vault bullshit is wasted exponentially in having to work around lacking core functionality

[EEVblog]

Altium has removed all product manuals and tutorials.

Since when?
http://wiki.altium.com/display/ADOH/Getting+Started+with+Altium+Designer
http://altiumvideos.live.altium.com/

Yes, they don't have a decent fixed PDF manual any more, but that's been that way for along time now.

[AlfBaz]

Oh, forgot to mention:

Altium has removed all product manuals and tutorials. Their reasoning is that it impacts their ability to sell training classes. If customers cannot figure out how to use their product by trial and error, they will be forced to take their training classes. Besides, they have a shortage of English speaking employees. Their answer to documentation is community forums. 

My opinion is that if their training classes are so bad (or expensive) that they have problem selling them, they should improve them and offer better value, not remove the product manuals.

That's odd, their wiki is still up

[fpga]

Oh, forgot to mention:

Altium has removed all product manuals and tutorials. Their reasoning is that it impacts their ability to sell training classes. If customers cannot figure out how to use their product by trial and error, they will be forced to take their training classes. Besides, they have a shortage of English speaking employees. Their answer to documentation is community forums. 

My opinion is that if their training classes are so bad (or expensive) that they have problem selling them, they should improve them and offer better value, not remove the product manuals.

That's odd, their wiki is still up

Ok, I jumped the gun on this one. But much of the material on their wiki is becoming dated. When I asked an Altium FAE about it, he said that they will be doing away with it.

They used to have PDFs, but they stopped updating them when they released version 10, and now they can no longer be found on their web site. They also had a nice tutorial on the 2009 version, which they have since removed.

As for the videos -- I do find them entertaining during a coffee break. But good luck actually learning from them -- they just fly through a scripted, edited demo without much explaining. It's better than nothing, but a nicely written manual would be very useful.

[Rufus]

Instead of focusing on fixing and improving their core product (PCB design software) they are ignoring what engineers really need and focusing on the flashy, sexy stuff for their sales guys to show off.

Current support for flex circuits is pretty abysmal. The 3D folding bollocks might be useful but I just hope it is backed up by proper support to create the complex and mixed stackups available with flex and flex rigid boards.

And yes I agree that there is plenty of other stuff that needs fixing and improving.

It looks like the 'no more versions, new content continuously streamed to subscribers from the cloud' idea lasted about 2 minutes.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Well I guess they had a change of management, so changes in direction were always on the cards.
I am assuming this is the first major release under the new management.

[EEVblog]

It looks like the 'no more versions, new content continuously streamed to subscribers from the cloud' idea lasted about 2 minutes.

That's "The Altium Way"
Remember the Summer/Winter naming fiasco, or the "we are never going back to high priced tools", or "Turning the world electronics design upside down by making the PCB tool optional extra", or *insert Altium-ism here*

[fpga]

Well I guess they had a change of management, so changes in direction were always on the cards.
I am assuming this is the first major release under the new management.

Looks like no one is in charge now -- the programmers are free to code whatever they like.

Apparently debugging and fixing old code is not fun so they won't do it.

[fpga]

It looks like the 'no more versions, new content continuously streamed to subscribers from the cloud' idea lasted about 2 minutes.

Actually, they did live up to 'no more versions' for a while -- there was no version 11 or 12 -- the program reported version 10.xxxx.xxxxx. They incremented the version with 13, but that proved to be an unlucky number so now they are jumping to version 14.

[EEVblog]

Looks like no one is in charge now -- the programmers are free to code whatever they like.

Well, there is probably little adult supervision in the Ukraine programming centre.

Have just completed a 13min rant video, uploading soon...

[IanJ]

Code: [Select]

if (AD14hobbyist_cost <= $500 && AD14hobbyist_limitations == reasonable) {
    hitbuynowbutton = 1;
} else {
    stickingwitheaglehobbyist = 1;
}

Ian.

[EEVblog]

Code: [Select]

if (AD14hobbyist_cost <= $500 && AD14hobbyist_limitations == reasonable) {
    hitbuynowbutton = 1;
} else {
    stickingwitheaglehobbyist = 1;
}


That's my video in a nutshell.