Altium Designer 16

[snoopy]

Looks like they have added more 3D content creation in the PCB footprint wizard. Nice

[kaadam]

I downloaded these bodies before from 3dcontetncentral.com. Actually, i'm more intrested in visible clearance boundaries! Do you know the release date?

[jd]

It is supposed to be "Early November"

[ajb]

That's pretty neat.  At this point I've already got models for most packages I'll need, but this looks like a good way to get nice and consistent models across all of your parts -- it's a little annoying to have very slight stylistic differences between similar footprints because they came from different 3DCC users.  It'll also save a god deal of time for those just starting out who now won't have to try to find the good models that have the right size, pitch, height, etc among all of the options out there.

The visible clearance boundaries look quite nice as well.

[free_electron]

There is a lot of new stuff coming in 16. it will, amongst others, be able to read parasolids directly. no more mucking about with crappy step files.

[ajb]

Will it read parasolids without the SolidWorks co-design license?  15.1 indicates the ability to link or embed parasolids, but only with the additional license.

[rx8pilot]

I want Altium pretty bad. All of my work is in very tight spaces and 3D geometry. Using Eagle at the moment, but feel that I am spending tons of time working around the software more than I am designing a PCB.

[VEGETA]

Will this have any effect over CS or CM?

[BMF]

The 3D wizard is very nice but I wish there was a way to push/pull a cut in an extruded shape.

[free_electron]

A really neat new thing in 16 is autosnap and trace boundaries.

Autosnap : just like in visual studio : when you move an object ,it snaps to edges of other objects and little bluie guidelines appear. This also works with vertexes of step objects. So you can now directly align footprints to edges or centerpoints of other elements.

Trace boundaries : when routing a trace an additional overlay is shown that tells you the clearance rules in effect. This gives you a visual que on how much of an opening you really need to get somewhere. Also works on multiroute.

Its got some really neat stuff.

[ehughes]

The Push/Shove component places looks nice!

https://blog.live.altium.com/#Blogs/new-features-you'll-only-see-in-altium-designer-16

[free_electron]

yep, that is the autosnap i was talking about. you see how extra guidelines appear automatically. once parts have bene aligned ot these auto guides they will shove automatically depending on placement rules.

[DutchGert]

yep, that is the autosnap i was talking about. you see how extra guidelines appear automatically. once parts have bene aligned ot these auto guides they will shove automatically depending on placement rules.

That is indeed very nice. Gone are the days ot tediously tapping the Arrow keys to move your cursor so you can see if something is alligned or manually checking all coordinates.....

[Spikee]

The worst thing ever in old altium is when components (mainly passives) are not drawn on the center while other passives are. Now you need to do a bunch of clicking and aligning to get it centered.  rrrhuum vh_altium lib

[Zman]

The 3D wizard is very nice but I wish there was a way to push/pull a cut in an extruded shape.

oops

[hamdi.tn]

well it's nice for standard IPC component, but since those generated by altium are not really complicated in shape and form and most of them are available on 3dcentral, i can't think of it as a useful option. for none standard component you will not avoid the need to draw it your self in an external CAD

[mrpackethead]

I want Altium pretty bad. All of my work is in very tight spaces and 3D geometry. Using Eagle at the moment, but feel that I am spending tons of time working around the software more than I am designing a PCB.

I'd leave altium alone. Its a buggy ugly program from a company that doe'snt think that supporting its customers is important.    Seriously save the heartarch...   the bugs have remained for several versions.

I'm a very unhappy Altium Cusomter with multiple seats of licences and ive not renewed it.

[mrpackethead]

But it is a really productive tool. I can get things done in hours with AD compare to getting things done in days with KiCAD. Never used Eagle, so I won't comment on it.

Not when it just crashes. Not when it just looses nets. 

Bugs are there, but as long as you get used to them, you will know how to avoid them. Surely there are some bugs that can not be fixed by changing user's behavior, such as some random bugs, but these bugs got fixed pretty soon after discovered.

Memory leaks are just sloppoy programming.  Not good enough.

So it is worth its price? I would say yes. It is worth its subscription price? I would say no.
[/quote]

[ajb]

What's the last version you used?  They put a substantial amount of work into stability and bugfixes in 14.x, in fact there was one quarterly release within 14 that was nothing but bugfixes.  It's annoying that they were necessary, of course, but you can't legitimately suggest that they're not making any effort to improve the software.  Many of the bugs that people consistently complain about not getting fixed (eg, gerber generation) I've never once seen, so your mileage may vary.

Anyway, AD would hardly be the first high dollar design software to be occasionally buggy and unstable (have you ever used AutoCAD, especially in the 2012-2014 range?, and even with its faults, on the whole it's still a vast improvement in productivity over Eagle or KiCAD, although it has a longer learning curve.  I haven't used any of the other big EDA packages, so I don't know how it compares in productivity or reliability there, but as far as I know it's substantially less expensive than the other big players, so you'd have to balance any increased productivity against the increased cost.

[mrpackethead]

What's the last version you used?  They put a substantial amount of work into stability and bugfixes in 14.x, in fact there was one quarterly release within 14 that was nothing but bugfixes. 

14.7.4 is what we currently use and will be sticking with. It was the best of the batch.

It's annoying that they were necessary, of course, but you can't legitimately suggest that they're not making any effort to improve the software

They have, but the improvements have been at the cost of not spending time and effort getting Altium stable.   

Anyway, AD would hardly be the first high dollar design software to be occasionally buggy and unstable (have you ever used AutoCAD, especially in the 2012-2014 range?, and even with its faults, on the whole it's still a vast improvement in productivity over Eagle or KiCAD, although it has a longer learning curve.  I haven't used any of the other big EDA packages, so I don't know how it compares in productivity or reliability there, but as far as I know it's substantially less expensive than the other big players, so you'd have to balance any increased productivity against the increased cost.

They've lost the plot and forgotten the rule about customers.. read their own forums, and facebook pages to see that!

[ajb]

It's out!  Installing now, and looks like there are some new im/exporters available, including for Circuitmaker.  Or maybe I just haven't notice them before?

[reagle]

Just tried installing it. Crashed on start first.
Then after restarting and trying out the new "show clearances" feature, it crashed my video driver and bluescreened the machine.
This is on Intel Core i5 laptop with Win7 64bit. Graphics is Intel integrated HD3000  with 9.17.10.3190 drivers

[Bud]

Can you people please mention your OS version, CPU (intel/amd) and graphic card when posting reports. Thank you

[tszaboo]

I wish they would work a little bit more on the 3D content. My main issue now is the generated PCB assembly 3D step. Basically when I export it, and the mechanical department improrts it to solidworks, it takes like hours to import a PCB with ~1000 component  with these detailed STEP files. And it generates hundreds of megabytes of data for them.
Does anyone know if this parasolid thingy is a solution to this?

[DutchGert]

I wish they would work a little bit more on the 3D content. My main issue now is the generated PCB assembly 3D step. Basically when I export it, and the mechanical department improrts it to solidworks, it takes like hours to import a PCB with ~1000 component  with these detailed STEP files. And it generates hundreds of megabytes of data for them.
Does anyone know if this parasolid thingy is a solution to this?

Yes I know the problem. Wierd thing is that when I import the STEP files of models they create it works flawless and looks way nicer in Altium than in Solidworks.....  They even try to get me to make exploded views with the movie maker functionality.....

But its wierd that the 3d rendered from altium seems to work way better then Solidworks's solution....