Author Topic: Half price Circuit Studio  (Read 69361 times)

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Offline mars01

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #150 on: February 22, 2018, 06:27:34 pm »
Guys, Diptrace has it's own section, why don't you discuss there the benefits of Diptrace over other software or even make reviews of Diptrace?

I'm not interested in Diptrace (installed it at some point and after 20minutes ... uninstall) but I am in CircuitStudio and this is exactly what I expect to read about in this section. Be it good or bad.
Thank you all!
 
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Offline Simon

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #151 on: February 22, 2018, 06:50:27 pm »
@JamesH-AltiumOfficial

The silence is deafening. Any change you could weigh-in?

Much obliged!

James called me the day before yesterday. I'm not entirely sure why he wished to call me rather than answer on here and I don't know if that means I'm expected to rely at least some of our conversation. Apparently circuit studio is alive and well but it is second in-line to Altium designer updates. He is disappointed that his promise has not been realised and I am assured that circuit studio will be worked on as soon as Altium designer 18 is out of the stocks.

We did discuss some of the differences between circuit studio and Altium designer I didn't fully understand the implications of all of them as I don't use the advanced features but there are things like dedicated flat flex design tools that allow 3D simulation of the flat flex which does sound quite handy for those of us that use 3D CAD. There is also the ability to have multiple circuit boards within one design which as he pointed out a is quite a challenge from a software point of view where you have nets spanning different circuit boards. All in all I  still don't understand why there are two separate products when one mirrors the other. If functionality in Altium designer could be turned off we wouldn't all be sitting here waiting for Altium designer 18 to be released before we could contemplate circuit studio been updated. We would receive the same updates and those on a lower tier licence would also be updated but obviously would not have access to the more expensive features. It would appear that Altium has chosen to develop three separate products simultaneously and by the looks of it put in at least twice the amount of effort necessary. I suspect somebody is dead scared in management of people hacking Altium designer and that if Altium designer is supplied with different licensing levels people will somehow manage to unlock the more advanced features. Although they have perhaps overlooked the fact that you can download a demo.

My next priority software wise is 3D CAD as this is quite essential and something I have access to at work and these days invaluable also in electrical design. I do indeed curse the fact that at work our subcontract designer cannot send me models as it would make my job of then creating drawings and mechanical bill of materials a lot easier. What I usually end up doing is knocking up a quick 3D CAD model to represent a circuit board and then just dump a component on it to represent the bill of materials so that it works in CAD.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #152 on: February 22, 2018, 06:51:53 pm »
Guys, Diptrace has it's own section, why don't you discuss there the benefits of Diptrace over other software or even make reviews of Diptrace?

I'm not interested in Diptrace (installed it at some point and after 20minutes ... uninstall) but I am in CircuitStudio and this is exactly what I expect to read about in this section. Be it good or bad.
Thank you all!

True but I will say that I have used DipTrace and I once paid for a licence and yes it is quite cheap but it is software developed by one person only and I was not impressed with the support or the "attitude" it was a bit like talking to Putin they were always right. You autoroute last time I used it was crap as it could not deal with copper pours so I have very little motivation to try again.
 

Offline onesixright

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #153 on: February 22, 2018, 07:09:07 pm »
@JamesH-AltiumOfficial

The silence is deafening. Any change you could weigh-in?

Much obliged!

James called me the day before yesterday. I'm not entirely sure why he wished to call me rather than answer on here and I don't know if that means I'm expected to rely at least some of our conversation. Apparently circuit studio is alive and well but it is second in-line to Altium designer updates. He is disappointed that his promise has not been realised and I am assured that circuit studio will be worked on as soon as Altium designer 18 is out of the stocks.

We did discuss some of the differences between circuit studio and Altium designer I didn't fully understand the implications of all of them as I don't use the advanced features but there are things like dedicated flat flex design tools that allow 3D simulation of the flat flex which does sound quite handy for those of us that use 3D CAD. There is also the ability to have multiple circuit boards within one design which as he pointed out a is quite a challenge from a software point of view where you have nets spanning different circuit boards. All in all I  still don't understand why there are two separate products when one mirrors the other. If functionality in Altium designer could be turned off we wouldn't all be sitting here waiting for Altium designer 18 to be released before we could contemplate circuit studio been updated. We would receive the same updates and those on a lower tier licence would also be updated but obviously would not have access to the more expensive features. It would appear that Altium has chosen to develop three separate products simultaneously and by the looks of it put in at least twice the amount of effort necessary. I suspect somebody is dead scared in management of people hacking Altium designer and that if Altium designer is supplied with different licensing levels people will somehow manage to unlock the more advanced features. Although they have perhaps overlooked the fact that you can download a demo.

My next priority software wise is 3D CAD as this is quite essential and something I have access to at work and these days invaluable also in electrical design. I do indeed curse the fact that at work our subcontract designer cannot send me models as it would make my job of then creating drawings and mechanical bill of materials a lot easier. What I usually end up doing is knocking up a quick 3D CAD model to represent a circuit board and then just dump a component on it to represent the bill of materials so that it works in CAD.

Thanks for the update! Appreciate it!  :-+
« Last Edit: February 23, 2018, 07:44:03 am by onesixright »
 

Offline JamesH-AltiumOfficial

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #154 on: February 23, 2018, 01:22:54 am »
Hi All,

Thank you all for asking about the updates! The update schedule has indeed slipped by several months, however the slippage has almost passed and we're still fully committed to producing the updates to make CircuitStudio even better. As soon as we can announce, we will. I will also try and keep you updated as we go.

Best regards,

James Harriman
Altium
 
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Offline Joel_l

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #155 on: February 23, 2018, 02:26:56 pm »
Skeptically optimistic.  :popcorn:
 

Offline ahbushnell

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #156 on: February 23, 2018, 03:31:33 pm »
Guys, Diptrace has it's own section, why don't you discuss there the benefits of Diptrace over other software or even make reviews of Diptrace?

I'm not interested in Diptrace (installed it at some point and after 20minutes ... uninstall) but I am in CircuitStudio and this is exactly what I expect to read about in this section. Be it good or bad.
Thank you all!

True but I will say that I have used DipTrace and I once paid for a licence and yes it is quite cheap but it is software developed by one person only and I was not impressed with the support or the "attitude" it was a bit like talking to Putin they were always right. You autoroute last time I used it was crap as it could not deal with copper pours so I have very little motivation to try again.

I'm surprised your 3D CAD person can't export step files?  What 3D CAD product do you use? 
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #157 on: February 23, 2018, 04:15:32 pm »
I do my own 3D CAD and I use solid edge. Yes solid edge can export step files as can circuit studio and supposedly dip trace although it fell over when I used third-party models for connectors from the manufacturers which I was certainly not prepared to model from scratch myself.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2018, 03:23:34 pm by Simon »
 

Offline Relaxe

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #158 on: April 09, 2018, 07:14:01 pm »
Hey guys,

Thanks for the helpful thread.

I just purchased a couple of CircuitStudio Licenses, at half price trough the direct link, and felt bold enough to ask customer service to apply the "ACS10" for an additional 10% off.
It worked :)

I know it may not be a product for everyone, our startup is currently an Altium user, but with extra license priced at roughly 10k$, it makes much more sense to buy 20x licenses of CS.
As we do not do high-speed, RF or weird flex stuff, no need to stick with Designer.
No learning curves, keeping our library files, and almost fully compatible files between CS and CircuitStudio sealed the deal.

Also, a notable tidbit, the executable for Designer is "dxp.exe" since the first "Altium DXP" in 2003. Still today, Designer is invoked with "dxp.exe".
Well, CS' executable is... "dxp.exe". Just fuel for those feeling it's just a simple reskin of Designer... it sure feels like it!
 

Offline DerekG

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #159 on: April 09, 2018, 10:38:58 pm »
and almost fully compatible files between CS and CircuitStudio sealed the deal.

??

Quote
I know it may not be a product for everyone, our startup is currently an Altium user, but with extra license priced at roughly 10k$, it makes much more sense to buy 20x licenses of CS.

If you find that you need more power than Circuit Studio can offer you, then take a read of the post below (& some before & after it). Cadence's OrCAD offers a much more powerful product for not a lot more money than Circuit Studio.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/which-software-so-many-choices/msg1466515/#msg1466515
I also sat between Elvis & Bigfoot on the UFO.
 

Offline ahbushnell

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #160 on: April 10, 2018, 12:40:24 am »
and almost fully compatible files between CS and CircuitStudio sealed the deal.

??

Quote
I know it may not be a product for everyone, our startup is currently an Altium user, but with extra license priced at roughly 10k$, it makes much more sense to buy 20x licenses of CS.
I"m doing something similar with CS and Altium. We have two people I work with that use Altium and I use CS and it works great. 
If you find that you need more power than Circuit Studio can offer you, then take a read of the post below (& some before & after it). Cadence's OrCAD offers a much more powerful product for not a lot more money than Circuit Studio.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/which-software-so-many-choices/msg1466515/#msg1466515
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #161 on: April 10, 2018, 06:58:04 am »
I'm still struggling to understand altiums game and can only understand it by assuming that they are simply trying to gather up customers. As I have said before you get promised so much for so little only to find from what others say they have sold you an old version of altium and it's full of bugs that may have just existed in that version or are down to the slimming it down to CS and support is terrible to non existent, the one guy at Farnell does his best but there is only one of him which is why they can afford to give the software away.

For some reason they have set themselves up for twice the work instead of doing what everyone else does and have modular software with tiered licensing. So we have to wait for them to finish fannying around with AD18 before they will even bother to look at CS, my license is up soon and I'm still waiting on bug fixes that were known about when I bought into it. It's great being constantly reminded that you are third best - because lets not forget they are working on an even bigger product than AD so yea, good luck!
 

Offline Joel_l

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #162 on: April 11, 2018, 12:49:18 am »
My subscription was up yesterday. I decided to pocket my renewal fee.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #163 on: April 11, 2018, 07:05:01 am »
I'm wondering if I should do the same until updates come out, I have paid one of their highest prices and they insist on these offensive deals that just suck people in. It's not about the money, I am sick of moving from poorly supported or created software to another that is just as bad and having to create all of my libraries again. The concept of pre-installed libraries is silly as they never suit everyone. It's time all of these companies grew some balls and started to work with one standard international library format that supports: the schematic symbol, the PCB footprint, the 3D model, the spice model. Then we would see who the clowns are and who really thinks they have something to bring to the party because I am getting pissed off with having to waste so much time on these people!
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #164 on: April 11, 2018, 07:19:13 am »
And the biggest and stupidest cockup here is that CS is in no mans land with one company "making" it and another selling it, supporting it sort of and pricing it any old how based on how the wind blows today. Clearly with these stupid price deals the software itself costs not very much, if they can sell it for £400 or even less and 800 who is getting the difference? I should have just offered them my contact details for a tenner....... more than I would get from facebook.........
 

Offline VEGETA

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #165 on: April 11, 2018, 12:48:09 pm »
Altium now have a lot of PCB software, they even announced that higher end one which will be bigger than their flagship product (AD)!!

I used CM a bit and found it nice, but their decisions are bad such as cloud-based only which just doesn't work for most people. I see the same projects every time I log in, so there is no interest of making a community around one software.

I don't know about CS because I didn't use it, but as you said, having one company making it then another one for selling is not a good idea. Why not just doing it directly and you will have money river the simplest way!

IMHO, CS didn't find the target market yet and the catastrophe is if they themselves don't know it. CM targets makers and AD for high end stuff... so that leaves the new high end product and CS...??

They say CS is a professional tool...etc, but isn't AD for that? If it is up to me I would have CS be very cheap (like 200-400 USD only) and sell it directly without quoting and stuff. This way thousands will get it without even have to think of alternatives.

They have got to know that KiCAD exists, so they should offer significantly better product to get people to pay for it. Basic functionality (and even more) are in KiCAD.

As for libraries, I once made some components inside CM. So I guess KiCAD doesn't have a "vault" so someone must do everything manually.

Offline Joel_l

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #166 on: April 11, 2018, 02:23:23 pm »
CS and DEX are the two programs I have a love hate relationship with. They are close to what I want but have big nags.

In the case of CS, it was a poor attempt to carve designer up into a lower cost package. Some of the decisions made seem pretty random. But still, it is usable and well integrated. Of all the different PCB programs I have used, it has the best auto router for the price. I'm not so sure why I'm hung up on auto routers when I don't tend to use them. I guess it's because if it's part of the package, I expect it to work at some level, many do not. My biggest issue continues to be lack of support and good documentation. Most of the task beyond very basic operations I have learned by trial and error, or Google search, not the documentation. As far as the subscription, I don't need any of the day to day perks of the subscription. The Vault is not a value add to me. I have local copies of much more than the basic parts libraries I need. If something new pops up, there is still the direct download path or just make the part from there. CS has the potential to be stellar, but I fear Altium is too myopic to get it there.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #167 on: April 11, 2018, 02:32:00 pm »
In the case of CS, it was a poor attempt to carve designer up into a lower cost package. Some of the decisions made seem pretty random. But still, it is usable and well integrated. Of all the different PCB programs I have used, it has the best auto router for the price. I'm not so sure why I'm hung up on auto routers when I don't tend to use them. I guess it's because if it's part of the package, I expect it to work at some level, many do not. My biggest issue continues to be lack of support and good documentation. Most of the task beyond very basic operations I have learned by trial and error, or Google search, not the documentation. As far as the subscription, I don't need any of the day to day perks of the subscription. The Vault is not a value add to me. I have local copies of much more than the basic parts libraries I need. If something new pops up, there is still the direct download path or just make the part from there. CS has the potential to be stellar, but I fear Altium is too myopic to get it there.

My feelings exactly, I don't mind the price if it is supported and bug fixed but it's not.
 

Offline Relaxe

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #168 on: April 13, 2018, 07:13:46 pm »
I'm with Simon:
-Moving from one software to another is a very bad thing.
-I vote for you on the UN Resolution for "One World, One Library" initiative
-Having Altium not fully take ownership of their product is kind of weird at best

To Derek:
In my region (Canada!), cost for EDAs, in USD (Seat/ Yearly Renewal):
-Altium Designer:
 - 10,900$ / 1,900$ for Permanent License
 - 0$ / 4,000$ for time based
-Orcad Standard:
 - 2,600$ / 430$
-CircuitStudio:
 - 500$ / 130$

I'm working at a company with a good Altium library, and we needed a new EDA seat.
Altium's pricing just did not made sense.
Buying a small lot of CS license did.
We still have the AD seat for converting things, or for full feature if needs be.
And, well, if we get really pissed at CS, it's still only worth 45 days of AD licensing!!!

For Orcad: I'm not going to pay 5x the price to redo my libraries.

Also, about CS being lagging from AD in terms of feature; totally agree. It's kind of sad, seing the 1.4 version being posted a year ago. I would not tend to pay for renewal.... But who knows, they may drop it altogether with a very sweet deal to convert to full AD licenses ;)
I'm personally living with AD since 2004... I've been trough many versions, and lived trough many bugs, seen new features....
Having a 500$ "Altium Designer 2016" still makes a good value proposition to me.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #169 on: April 13, 2018, 07:30:37 pm »
Well I was thinking more of an ISO standard for libraries so that they become agnostic to the software used. We all know what proprietary formats are about.....
 

Offline Relaxe

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #170 on: April 13, 2018, 08:13:42 pm »
Obligatory XKCD:
 

Offline VEGETA

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #171 on: April 13, 2018, 08:24:31 pm »
I'm with Simon:
-Moving from one software to another is a very bad thing.
-I vote for you on the UN Resolution for "One World, One Library" initiative
-Having Altium not fully take ownership of their product is kind of weird at best

To Derek:
In my region (Canada!), cost for EDAs, in USD (Seat/ Yearly Renewal):
-Altium Designer:
 - 10,900$ / 1,900$ for Permanent License
 - 0$ / 4,000$ for time based
-Orcad Standard:
 - 2,600$ / 430$
-CircuitStudio:
 - 500$ / 130$

I'm working at a company with a good Altium library, and we needed a new EDA seat.
Altium's pricing just did not made sense.
Buying a small lot of CS license did.
We still have the AD seat for converting things, or for full feature if needs be.
And, well, if we get really pissed at CS, it's still only worth 45 days of AD licensing!!!

For Orcad: I'm not going to pay 5x the price to redo my libraries.

Also, about CS being lagging from AD in terms of feature; totally agree. It's kind of sad, seing the 1.4 version being posted a year ago. I would not tend to pay for renewal.... But who knows, they may drop it altogether with a very sweet deal to convert to full AD licenses ;)
I'm personally living with AD since 2004... I've been trough many versions, and lived trough many bugs, seen new features....
Having a 500$ "Altium Designer 2016" still makes a good value proposition to me.

WOW! These are some crazy numbers for AD!

I have a question which is kinda stupid: Why not use KiCAD and stay with it?

It is 0$ and unlimited... I don't know about libraries though, so I asked.

Your 500$ CS makes sense too, not expensive even for individuals

Offline Simon

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #172 on: April 13, 2018, 08:35:47 pm »
Obligatory XKCD:


STEP files are pretty much universal for 3D CAD interchange
open document or MS "x" files are universally used for office documents
PDF is the universal written document format
DXF is universally used in 2D CAD and the prefered format for interchanging patterns etc.
 

Offline bson

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #173 on: April 14, 2018, 12:34:53 am »
They don't expect you to stick with circuit studio it is merely a sales tool for which the customer pays.
That's exactly what it is.  The marketing term is funnel, and the goal of the product lineup is to get you to the most lucrative (for them) possible point.  They don't worry about what's useful to you (they're not engineers so are clueless), or what's a good value, or even practical - they look at what sells and drives the funnel.  So you get bizarre products where you can't add library parts or other preposterous stupidity.  The other big problem with the marketing funnel is it's constantly changing, so sure you can buy upgrades for $150 perhaps, today, but what about 5 years from now?  The product is terminated and replaced with another piece of funnel collateral, and you're given 50% off the first year of AD and told to go buy that if you want it to work properly with Window 15.

It's MUCH better to buy the top end product from an entry level player than an entry level product from a player way up the value ladder.  With something like Diptrace you're guaranteed that unless the company is acquired they will be focusing their energies on their main product, not some crippled-down bastard version that won't stand the remotest possibility of cannibalizing their cash cow.  You want the product that puts their reputation on the line, not some marketing toy.

« Last Edit: April 14, 2018, 12:36:59 am by bson »
 

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Re: Half price Circuit Studio
« Reply #174 on: April 14, 2018, 12:55:51 am »
They don't expect you to stick with circuit studio it is merely a sales tool for which the customer pays.
That's exactly what it is. 
Agreed.  There is no real support for this tool.  When I first purchased CS last year (1/2 off price), It would not display correctly on a Virtual Machine (Parallels) on my mac.  Sent email inquiry to Element14 and received no response.  I did however receive a marketing email asking how I liked my downloaded trial copy (I think this came from Altium proper).  I replied that I had purchased the product and had received no reply to my inquiry.  I finally got acknowledgement that my problem was already in their database and they had no fix.  The problem eventually was resolved when I updated my Parallels installation. 

Some months back I received the following offer from Altium in an email:

I understand that you have been using CircuitStudio for some time now. As you know, CircuitStudio is an incredibly intuitive ECAD tool that was designed to be stepping stone to the full-featured suite, Altium Designer.
 
Having said that, I have an exciting opportunity for you to upgrade your CircuitStudio license to Altium Designer 18, including one year of subscription for just $4,995, which is roughly a 50% discount! This opportunity is valid from now until February 23rd.


Which seems to confirm Simon's assessment.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2018, 12:58:22 am by steverino »
 


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