Author Topic: Altium Designer or Circuit studio  (Read 26608 times)

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Offline hansibullTopic starter

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Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« on: November 15, 2016, 01:24:52 pm »
Hi!
I just started working at a small company that designs DSP audio gear and HDMI splitters/repeaters for professional installation. The biggest boards we're goint to design MAY be as large as 4 rack units, but mostly never more than 15x20 cm. I've used Eagle a lot, and know it very well. This company have been using CadInt, but I want to use a modern and efficient CAD software when I'm going design these 4 and 6 layer PCBs. The company agrees that they want to replace CadInt. We've been looking at buying Altium Designer, but the price here is allmost 10000$ plus a yearly update of ~1500$. It's expensive, but we _can_ afford it if we have to.

I've also had a look at Circuit Studio. It much cheaper (almost an order of magnitude), but is a stripped down version of Altium Designer IIRC.

The question is: Do we actually need the additional features that Altium Designer has? Is it worth throwing 10 grand at? Why? Why not?

It's also worth mentioning that we might need a license for two users.
 

Offline tszaboo

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2016, 04:30:09 pm »
Eagle is a mono cycle, CS is a bicycle, Altium is a car. You go 100Km a day. Decide.
"here is allmost 10000$" seems to be a lot. I would ask for a special price. Also, you dont need subscription after the first year.
 

Offline hansibullTopic starter

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2016, 09:16:51 pm »
How is Altium designer a Car vs a bicycle? Is CircuitStudio really that stripped down/terrible?
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2016, 09:21:22 pm »
I've also had a look at Circuit Studio. It much cheaper (almost an order of magnitude), but is a stripped down version of Altium Designer IIRC.
The question is: Do we actually need the additional features that Altium Designer has? Is it worth throwing 10 grand at? Why? Why not?

Circuit Studio is basically Altium Designer but without the productivity features that a professional designer doing advanced boards would need.
You can still design any board in Circuit Studio, but it won't be as quick to do so on advanced boards.
 


Offline Wilksey

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #5 on: November 15, 2016, 09:43:47 pm »
Slightly OT,

I heard a few days ago someone describe AD as a "mid range package" and Cadence as a "top of the range package", i've seen Cadence in action, and I much prefer AD, what are your opinions on this statement?

I would call AD a relatively top end package, but maybe I don't know any different?  :-//
 

Online Alex Eisenhut

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #6 on: November 16, 2016, 01:33:12 am »
Allegro is top of the range. It might look like crap but that's because it's been around for ages. Can you even think of designing this in Altium (see attached), with no crashes, no slowdowns? 24 layers, mixed materials, blind and buried vias, Gbps design rules, differential pairs, modularized layout (parts of PCB that can be done by others/at night and just loaded back in and replicated), and tons of DRC checks?

Not to mention fiddly power shapes, HDI design, RF features, 3000 parts, etc...
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #7 on: November 16, 2016, 05:27:49 am »
Allegro is top of the range. It might look like crap but that's because it's been around for ages. Can you even think of designing this in Altium (see attached), with no crashes, no slowdowns? 24 layers, mixed materials, blind and buried vias, Gbps design rules, differential pairs, modularized layout (parts of PCB that can be done by others/at night and just loaded back in and replicated), and tons of DRC checks?
Not to mention fiddly power shapes, HDI design, RF features, 3000 parts, etc...

I've done boards that complex in Altium.
Buy yeah, stability has always been a major issue for AD.
 

Offline Wilksey

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #8 on: November 16, 2016, 10:27:35 am »
I've seen some quite in depth designs in AD, we mainly route with 2-6 layers, and I think the highest speed stuff is DDR3 for us!
Would you call AD a high or mid range package?
 

Offline vzoole

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #9 on: November 16, 2016, 11:54:28 am »
I've seen some quite in depth designs in AD, we mainly route with 2-6 layers, and I think the highest speed stuff is DDR3 for us!
Would you call AD a high or mid range package?

You shouldn't call for high-end tool as they didn't do.
Quote
We focus on ALL areas of the industry. We have CircuitMaker - Free and focused on open source HW. We have CircuitStudio - $1K - Which is a robust commercial level SW. Altium Designer in the mainstream, you know that, and we plan on introducing a high-end product early next year.

The name of the product is Atina and it's long term strategic focus is around agile engineering. It'll introduce things like 64 bit, multi-threaded services, multi-board design...We currently can't discuss much more, but we'll definitely be talking about it more soon...

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/59qyt3/my_name_is_lawrence_and_im_an/
 

Offline tszaboo

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #10 on: November 16, 2016, 12:04:30 pm »
How is Altium designer a Car vs a bicycle? Is CircuitStudio really that stripped down/terrible?
It is not terrible. But features are missing. It is deliberately stripped down, as said, and it will make your work slower. If your job is primarily electronics, and you spend some time on PCB design (say, at least 20% of your time) get Altium, because the productivity is soo much higher.
For example:
In CS, I need to do an online search and select, just to be able to place a resistor. It takes me 2-3 minutes. I need it to exist in their database, and know the part number, before I can place it. In Altium, I have an excel sheet with the standard series resistors, I have one footprint, it is liked together in Altium, so I can place one just by typing the resistance value into the search field. 4 seconds. Imagine that all these basic tasks are slowed down. Instead of hotkeys (burned into the brain) you need to fiddle with ribbon menu. For placing a track. You loose time, only a few seconds, but it all adds up.
It needs some setup, and knowledge how to use it, but it saves time so money. Overall, I dont think, that CS is wort it for electronics designers (with salary), even if they give it away for free. As I said, you can go with unicycle somewhere, but it will be slower than walking. I can probably design a PCB faster in MS Paint, than in Eagle. And CS is the bicycle. Fine for small boards, few dozen components, few boards per year. I would design ie an Arduino shield in it, to go to Kickstarter.
 

Online Alex Eisenhut

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #11 on: November 16, 2016, 12:27:20 pm »
Allegro is top of the range. It might look like crap but that's because it's been around for ages. Can you even think of designing this in Altium (see attached), with no crashes, no slowdowns? 24 layers, mixed materials, blind and buried vias, Gbps design rules, differential pairs, modularized layout (parts of PCB that can be done by others/at night and just loaded back in and replicated), and tons of DRC checks?
Not to mention fiddly power shapes, HDI design, RF features, 3000 parts, etc...

I've done boards that complex in Altium.
Buy yeah, stability has always been a major issue for AD.

Allegro can go wonky too but it always saves an autosave file and it has a database doctor that catches weird corruptions before they get unfixable... if you remember to run it a few times a day.

On the other hand, the schematic capture for Cadence is not so hot IMO. I liked Altium's schematic entry more.
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #12 on: November 16, 2016, 12:44:33 pm »
The name of the product is Atina and it's long term strategic focus is around agile engineering. It'll introduce things like 64 bit, multi-threaded services, multi-board design...We currently can't discuss much more, but we'll definitely be talking about it more soon...
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/59qyt3/my_name_is_lawrence_and_im_an/
[/quote]

Foolish move IMO.
They are trying to create their 4 tiered product pyramid - Free, low cost, mid level, and now high level without asking whether or not they should. It pryramid graphic looks great on the company annual report to shareholders.
What value is there to develop a new high end package and market it at presumably a much higher price than AD, and then support it?
Just make them add-ons to AD, or include in AD and own the whole damn market.
 

Offline ludzinc

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #13 on: November 16, 2016, 12:56:38 pm »
How is Altium designer a Car vs a bicycle? Is CircuitStudio really that stripped down/terrible?
It is not terrible. But features are missing. It is deliberately stripped down, as said, and it will make your work slower. If your job is primarily electronics, and you spend some time on PCB design (say, at least 20% of your time) get Altium, because the productivity is soo much higher.
For example:
In CS, I need to do an online search and select, just to be able to place a resistor. It takes me 2-3 minutes. I need it to exist in their database, and know the part number, before I can place it. In Altium, I have an excel sheet with the standard series resistors, I have one footprint, it is liked together in Altium, so I can place one just by typing the resistance value into the search field. 4 seconds. Imagine that all these basic tasks are slowed down. Instead of hotkeys (burned into the brain) you need to fiddle with ribbon menu. For placing a track. You loose time, only a few seconds, but it all adds up.
It needs some setup, and knowledge how to use it, but it saves time so money. Overall, I dont think, that CS is wort it for electronics designers (with salary), even if they give it away for free. As I said, you can go with unicycle somewhere, but it will be slower than walking. I can probably design a PCB faster in MS Paint, than in Eagle. And CS is the bicycle. Fine for small boards, few dozen components, few boards per year. I would design ie an Arduino shield in it, to go to Kickstarter.

Methinks you've confused Circuit Studio with a rich it Maker.
 

Offline Ice-Tea

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #14 on: November 16, 2016, 01:07:40 pm »
The name of the product is Atina and it's long term strategic focus is around agile engineering. It'll introduce things like 64 bit, multi-threaded services, multi-board design...We currently can't discuss much more, but we'll definitely be talking about it more soon...
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/59qyt3/my_name_is_lawrence_and_im_an/

Foolish move IMO.
They are trying to create their 4 tiered product pyramid - Free, low cost, mid level, and now high level without asking whether or not they should. It pryramid graphic looks great on the company annual report to shareholders.
What value is there to develop a new high end package and market it at presumably a much higher price than AD, and then support it?
Just make them add-ons to AD, or include in AD and own the whole damn market.
[/quote]

Whu? So, instead of making their product 64-bit and decently multi-threaded roughly 10 years late they decide to stick it to their existing customer base and spin another product? Booh!

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #15 on: November 16, 2016, 01:16:54 pm »
Whu? So, instead of making their product 64-bit and decently multi-threaded roughly 10 years late they decide to stick it to their existing customer base and spin another product? Booh!

Altium shooting themselves in the foot again and pissing off their entire customer base if it goes down like that.
But that's what Altium specialise in. Seriously, they are famous for doing this.
I thought that stuff had mostly stopped once Nick Martin got the royal boot.
 

Offline tszaboo

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #16 on: November 16, 2016, 01:24:50 pm »
Whu? So, instead of making their product 64-bit and decently multi-threaded roughly 10 years late they decide to stick it to their existing customer base and spin another product? Booh!

Altium shooting themselves in the foot again and pissing off their entire customer base if it goes down like that.
But that's what Altium specialise in. Seriously, they are famous for doing this.
I thought that stuff had mostly stopped once Nick Martin got the royal boot.
Wait, what? Instead of fixing Altium (memory usage is seriously messed up, single core usage is just bad) they release yet another product???  :palm:
 

Offline Ice-Tea

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #17 on: November 16, 2016, 01:25:58 pm »
That's perhaps half of the reason to keep my subscription: if they ever design decently multi-threaded pours and stuff, I want it. Kinda changes things...

Offline DerekG

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #18 on: November 17, 2016, 02:21:00 am »
I just started working at a small company that designs DSP audio gear and HDMI splitters/repeaters for professional installation.

The question is: Do we actually need the additional features that Altium Designer has? Is it worth throwing 10 grand at? Why? Why not?

Sometimes it is worth looking at it from your perspective as well.

If you become proficient with Altium it will open up many doors with other electronics companies as it has pretty much become the "defacto standard" around the world.

Doing it this way may very well change your future in a positive way.
I also sat between Elvis & Bigfoot on the UFO.
 

Offline Ice-Tea

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #19 on: November 17, 2016, 06:33:46 am »
Buy yeah, stability has always been a major issue for AD.

At least it handles SEH events well. I've never had Altium crashed to a point that it can't even save its work-in-progress.
It's always a popup telling you it is screwed, and at that point I know I should save and restart Altium.

No?? You never had that infinite parade of pop-ups that are replaced by a new one before you can save?

Offline Ice-Tea

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #20 on: November 17, 2016, 06:54:02 am »
I'm completely up to date. And while it's nowhere near as bad as, say, 5 years ago, it still happens.

Offline hansibullTopic starter

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #21 on: November 17, 2016, 07:31:18 am »
Thanks for all the answer! It's an interesting topic  :)

As far as I've understood it; Altium Designer is more expensive, but much more productive. Since time is money, it will pay itself back in the long term.
My next project will be a 4K video distribution system with speeds upto 16 Gbps. We're talking matched length on differential pairs and multiple ground and power planes.
Is there any difference to the ERC and DRC check in Circuit Studio comapred to Altium Designer?

Another question; Can one start a project in AD, and continue in CS or vice versa? We have another employee here that atleast want to view the files and maybe do some small changes. Is that an OK job for Circuit Studio?
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #22 on: November 17, 2016, 09:18:36 am »
Another question; Can one start a project in AD, and continue in CS or vice versa? We have another employee here that atleast want to view the files and maybe do some small changes. Is that an OK job for Circuit Studio?

Nope, deliberately different file format with no direct exchange capability both directions. Another stupid decision.
 

Offline tszaboo

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #23 on: November 17, 2016, 09:20:46 am »
Buy yeah, stability has always been a major issue for AD.

At least it handles SEH events well. I've never had Altium crashed to a point that it can't even save its work-in-progress.
It's always a popup telling you it is screwed, and at that point I know I should save and restart Altium.

No?? You never had that infinite parade of pop-ups that are replaced by a new one before you can save?
Please wait a moment...
Chatastrophic failure...
Error while accessing 0x1234Y0UAREFUCKED

Once  I had soo many error message, it filled my screen. Windows 95 was the last time I see something like this.
 

Offline Wilksey

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Re: Altium Designer or Circuit studio
« Reply #24 on: November 17, 2016, 10:33:47 am »
Buy yeah, stability has always been a major issue for AD.

At least it handles SEH events well. I've never had Altium crashed to a point that it can't even save its work-in-progress.
It's always a popup telling you it is screwed, and at that point I know I should save and restart Altium.

No?? You never had that infinite parade of pop-ups that are replaced by a new one before you can save?
Please wait a moment...
Chatastrophic failure...
Error while accessing 0x1234Y0UAREFUCKED

Once  I had soo many error message, it filled my screen. Windows 95 was the last time I see something like this.

Wait a minute....
That's not valid hex!  :popcorn:
 


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