Viewing Altium Schematic and board files - ? about Designer Viewer

[mjkuwp]

hi All,

(totally new to Altium - I use Eagle for personal/home)

My company uses Altium but only does design at another remote office.  I'd like to review the design files and I've been trying to figure out how to get Altium Designer Viewer running.  First, I assumed it would be free but it seems maybe not?  I got as far as registering my Live account and linking to my company.  Altium kindly issued a trial license to me for the viewer but I cannot figure out how to download it.

Download location takes me back to the "would you like a free trial?" page.  I'd go in circles if I followed that route.

Overall, I've not found Altium to be very smooth to deal with.  I've had emails back and forth and they seem to queue actions that each take 1 day to go through.

Are there other options for viewing these files?


Our local office does have a couple of network served old licenses for the full designer package but we don't pay the annual extortion fee for service.  I am not part of the EE design group so I am not trying to activate a full license. 

[ajb]

Last I looked once you were logged in you could download it from Products > Download  > Download viewer, but you're right, that just takes you to the trial registration form.  I hope they don't intend to start charging for the viewer, that would be seriously stupid.  I'd give your sales rep a call and see what's up.

[mjkuwp]

Thanks, never did get it figured out.  The people at Altium just couldn't offer direct answers.  Last they told me is that I need to download the license first.  I coudln't understand how downloading a license could lead toward beginning an installation....

in the meanwhile my coworker got our single full-package (floating license) working and so I used it to make PDF versions of the documents I wanted to study.

Altium is a very tough company to work with.  The people seemed nice and helpful but the processes and systems are pretty messy and ultimately just didn't work - at least for the Viewer.  Twice they tried to get me to call a phone number instead of continuing with email support but I didn't go for that because service over the phone is much tougher than with email and I didn't want to be trapped on the phone.  really...phone! service for a product that is serviced via and downloaded from the web?  that's pretty silly.

if I were starting from scratch I would definitely be tending to be against Altium at least at the start based on this experience.

[free_electron]

viewers are free , but you still go throught the normal process.

There is no difference between the viewer or the full blown product. the downloaded installer is the same. it is the licence key that determines what you can and can not do.

So : get a key first  (there is nothing physical there, not even a download. it is just a number assigned to your 'account'), then log in to the altium website with your account information, download the installer , deploy.
From inside altium it should pick up your key automatically now. The altium account holds a list of all the keys you own. and you can switch between them on the fly.

[mjkuwp]

Thanks! free_electron.

I was able to get viewer mode working by downloading the Viewer license file *.alf and loading within the Altium Designer software in the MyAccount tab.

The Altium person probably missed explaining this to me because it so obvious to them - and maybe to 'normal' Altium users.  The license for viewing is good for one year so I've got that long to figure out another plan or to get my company to purchase more licenses.