What changed in Altium during the past decade?

[enz]

To be honest, the whole win8.1 system feels a lot slower than the native win7 install, which feels really "snappy".
So Altium is also slower.

But i don't think that this is a altium specific problem, because the whole win8.1 guest system is slow.
But i didn't spend time to evaluate this. This is just a fresh untuned win8.1 guest install.
My linux guest systems are much quicker.

Martin

[Omicron]

No experience here with Linux either, but Altium runs fine under VMWare Fusion on a Mac. I've used it like that for quite some time. Another thing that works very well is to run it via Microsoft's remote desktop. That's actually how I use it at the moment. I have it installed on a headless PC running Windows 10 and access it over the local network from a Macbook pro. Works fine, even the 3D stuff. Amazing really. I do have a gigabit lan so that may be a factor.

[Bud]

Many years passed and still no way to resize charts when in Simulation mode? 

[tszaboo]

Many years passed and still no way to resize charts when in Simulation mode? 

Does Altium have a simulation mode?
  I mean something worth mentioning.
I really wonder how they will handle GUI scaling with all the 4K screens and stuff though.

[BradC]

I run Altium 13 on Server 2003SP2 under a linux kvm VM with a SPICE networked graphic display and it goes like a rocket. I've not tried any of the 3D stuff, but the basic schematic and PCB work is fine.
I use the same VM to run AutoCAD and Revit. It does not do host rendered 3d, but for what I use it for it's as fast as on the bare metal.

[T3sl4co1l]

Many years passed and still no way to resize charts when in Simulation mode? 

Sadly, simulation is probably the least maintained part of the platform... (perhaps besides the FPGA stuff, though that's likely least used rather than maintained...).  I'd love to have the usability of Multisim (freaking Multisim! Come on!) with the postprocessor/grapher of Multisim or PSpice.

Tim

[jd]

I run Altium 13 on Server 2003SP2 under a linux kvm VM with a SPICE networked graphic display and it goes like a rocket. I've not tried any of the 3D stuff, but the basic schematic and PCB work is fine.
I use the same VM to run AutoCAD and Revit. It does not do host rendered 3d, but for what I use it for it's as fast as on the bare metal.

Cool, thanks.

As far as I know in AD14 and 15 even basic PCB editing requires "shader model 3", and this does not work under Virtualbox with linux host. (Just schematic editing is OK). I think at some point Altium changed it so that all PCB operations have this requirement, perhaps 13 predates this? I have no experience with KVM but would love to try it if anyone knows current Altium works....? But 13 is not that old so it seems there is hope.

I had been using linux as my primary OS for 15 years and it is very sad to have it relegated to a VM on Windows now.

Thanks

John

[BradC]

I have no experience with KVM but would love to try it if anyone knows current Altium works....?

If it wasn't such a pain in the arse getting a demo of the latest Altium and having to deal with the constant badgering from their sales drones I'd get a copy and try it for you.
KVM is not that hard to work with once you get your head around it. It uses qemu as the machine emulator. Here's the command line I use to fire up S2k3 & Win7 VM's. They live on a partitioned Samsung SSD with part5 being swap.
This gives me a 2 head remote virtual machine that works for a pair of 2560x1440 heads, 3 cores & 24G of ram. Use spice-gtk or virt-viewer to access it remotely. If you don't want to use SPICE, you can just use an SDL or GTK console.

Code: [Select]

qemu -enable-kvm\
 -m 24576\
 -rtc base=localtime\
 -vga qxl\
 -device qxl\
 -net nic,model=virtio\
 -net tap,ifname=tap0,script=/etc/qemu-ifup,vhost=on\
 -usbdevice tablet\
 -spice port=5930,disable-ticketing\
 -drive file=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Samsung_SSD_850_PRO_256GB_S1SUNSAGXXXXXXJ-part1,if=virtio,cache=none,aio=native,format=raw -boot c \
 -drive file=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Samsung_SSD_850_PRO_256GB_S1SUNSAGXXXXXXJ-part5,if=virtio,cache=none,aio=native,format=raw \
 -device virtio-serial\
 -chardev spicevmc,id=vdagent,name=vdagent\
 -device virtserialport,chardev=vdagent,name=com.redhat.spice.0\
 -smp 3,maxcpus=3,cores=3,threads=1,sockets=1\
 -cpu host\


[jd]

I have no experience with KVM but would love to try it if anyone knows current Altium works....?

If it wasn't such a pain in the arse getting a demo of the latest Altium and having to deal with the constant badgering from their sales drones I'd get a copy and try it for you.
KVM is not that hard to work with once you get your head around it. It uses qemu as the machine emulator. Here's the command line I use to fire up S2k3 & Win7 VM's. They live on a partitioned Samsung SSD with part5 being swap.
This gives me a 2 head remote virtual machine that works for a pair of 2560x1440 heads, 3 cores & 24G of ram. Use spice-gtk or virt-viewer to access it remotely. If you don't want to use SPICE, you can just use an SDL or GTK console.
[...]

Thanks I really should learn about KVM anyway. For Altium the "SPICE" documentation is not encouraging, with 3D support still on the wishlist as far as I can see.

John

[mrpackethead]

FYI, I have got a baby Intel NUC, that is sitting on my DIMA FP600, which i use for hand placing prototypes..   I have some visual assist software on it,  which helps placement.   Its running windows10. I tried installing AD 14.3 and it actually runs pretty well. Was kind of suprized.  ALways handy to have it nearby, when you have those " is that what i really meant " moment.s

[David Spicer]

The pcb layout copes better with hi speed design diff routing, controlled z etc. and it's possible to have more than one engineer working on something at once. The diff routing is a nice feature. auto routing still sux badly. None of which IMHO justifies the price. As a pro user for 30 odd years I think the last version of Dxp was their best product. As a pro the cost wasn't my concern, only the speed and time to market. I did a custom Pentium 3 board with Dxp a few years back and it was an almost pleasant experience. I much prefer orcad for schem and it's now quite reasonably priced. Allegro is a vastly better routing tool, but cost prohibitive to me.

I rather feel it's like ms word. They simply ran out of useful "improvements" and cluttered it all up with useless junk which is more confusing than helpful. If you can't do the math for hi speed diff or controlled z then buy Howard Roberts book and learn.

Now I am pretty well retired and out of the loop I still use my ten year old version of DXP. It runs perfectly under WINE and there is no irritating node locking or need to be online. Since I only entrust my designs to a Linux box anyway then for me at least DXP is a good choice.

One last thing: the support in Australia is worse than useless now. They are also very unfriendly about trial versions and so on. After a 30 year relationship mostly good, i rang to get a 30 day trial. They put me off a couple of times then eventually I got a very mosey gentleman whose English speaking skills were quite inadequate.

Pity. It was a great product once. Now it's like adobe flash or air any other big platform software. They only want massive license sales to huge companies. Joe hacker in Sydney is not apparently welcome

Oh dear I'm raving again. Blame it on old age sorry guys and girls. To get back on topic, nothing has got much better since DXP, and the recent versions are just plain confusing and a case of unchecked feature creep. DXP will get you up to 100mhz easy. And get Howard's book so you can do the impedance calculations yourself. Besides with the usual Linux install obstacle course it works with a real OS

Sorry for the rant. It's such a shame when a much loved product gets trashed by th marketing guys. Visual c anyone? Ugh

[DerekG]

It doesn't really crash for me, but it starts giving you "please wait a moment", "catastrophic failure", "error 0x7556443" and such messages, then it is time to save and restart.

Remember, if you are serious about using Altium, you have NO choice but to use a GPU (added for clarity) Intel processor. Altium are quite clear about this. They do all their testing using Intel processors & do no official testing using AMD processors.

Often there can be clashes with certain video cards. Make sure you have the latest drivers for it.

If your boards are going to be smaller than 300mm x 300mm & are of average density, running an i7 processor with 8GB RAM & integrated Intel HD4000 (or better) graphics will perform very admirably for you.

I plug a 24" monitor (1920 x 1200dpi), a mouse & a full size keyboard into my Samsung i7-3610QM laptop running integrated Intel HD4000 graphics, Windows 7 Pro 64 bit & 8GB of RAM and boards of the above size just run fine.

This laptop is over 2 years old ............. so you don't need to spend an arm & a leg buying really fast hardware unless you are designing really large boards. I often have 3 or 4 boards open & the speed is fine.

My laptop also contains a AMD Radeon HD 7600M with 1GB RAM. This is the mobile version of the 7600 & so runs slower as it uses less power, yet Altium runs just fine with it too.

[T3sl4co1l]

GPU, not CPU, to be specific.  I don't have any problems with my AMD CPU, but I've seen firsthand it goes quite slow on Intel graphics (although occasionally one is seen that works fine -- go figure).  When they say they only support NVidia/ATI, they mean it..

(I have no problems with my 5 year old workstation with Quadro FX, nor my current desktop with GTX550Ti.  Curiously, Altium 15 runs in XP on the workstation, and used to work on the desktop, but something about buggy DirectX, I think, prevented it until finally migrating to Win7.  Works as well or better now.)

Also, works great with an SSD, not nearly as intensive for HD access as something like SolidWorks, but completely removes the bothersome delay during autosaves or what have you.  (I've worked out of online (VPN, cross-country connection) network folders before.  Oh man, the saving sucks.  But hey, if you're just doing a touch-up..)

Tim

[tszaboo]

It doesn't really crash for me, but it starts giving you "please wait a moment", "catastrophic failure", "error 0x7556443" and such messages, then it is time to save and restart.

Remember, if you are serious about using Altium, you have NO choice but to use a GPU (added for clarity) Intel processor. Altium are quite clear about this. They do all their testing using Intel processors & do no official testing using AMD processors.

I have a i5 at work with an AMD M7500, 12GB RAM. I've asked for an i7 and quadro, but the sysadmin (the fool) probably haven't even heard about the quadro, and bullshit company politics, that managers have to have a better Laptop for the excel.
In any case, I dont think it is a video card issue. It happens when I have Altium open for long time, and I have a dozen project open (yes, that is how I work) with like 50+ documents. Must be memory handling issues.

[DerekG]

It happens when I have Altium open for long time, and I have a dozen project open (yes, that is how I work) with like 50+ documents. Must be memory handling issues.

Actually it could be a power down after a period of inactivity type problem. Try turning off all power saving options to see if the problem is rectified.

[T3sl4co1l]

Ew... I've had Altium crash with as little as 1.1 GB memory consumption (in DXP.EXE).  Usually that happens after doing some hours of work, then running a lengthy OutJob (STEP or AutoCAD output seems to be the fatal step, usually).

It definitely leaks memory, and doesn't free it completely or promptly (or does its own allocation and garbage collection separately, who knows).  Think the most I ever had was a lengthy simulation, in Summer 09, that grew over 3GB (fine timestep, long runtime, recording all nodes) before giving in.

Tim