Altium Designer or Circuit studio

[hansibull]

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.

[tszaboo]

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.

[hansibull]

How is Altium designer a Car vs a bicycle? Is CircuitStudio really that stripped down/terrible?

[EEVblog]

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.

[EEVblog]

https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-76216/l/circuitstudio-by-altium-vs-altium-designer-feature-and-specification-comparison

[Wilksey]

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? 

[Alex Eisenhut]

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...

[EEVblog]

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.

[Wilksey]

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?

[vzoole]

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.

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/

[tszaboo]

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.

[Alex Eisenhut]

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.

[EEVblog]

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.

[ludzinc]

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.

[Ice-Tea]

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!

[EEVblog]

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.

[tszaboo]

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??? 

[Ice-Tea]

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...

[DerekG]

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.

[Ice-Tea]

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?

[Ice-Tea]

I'm completely up to date. And while it's nowhere near as bad as, say, 5 years ago, it still happens.

[hansibull]

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?

[EEVblog]

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.

[tszaboo]

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.

[Wilksey]

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! 

[Warhawk]

Dave - is there a chance that Altium is trying to get rid of that silly Delphi SDK ? Do you know if CS/CM is still written in that thing ?

Maybe CS & CM is the first step how they port (& test) Altium designer modules into a modern programming language. Next step would be a high-end tool which would eventually completely replace AD in future.

Altium (the company) has screwed up several times but I also believe that that Deplhi SDK limits their capabilities on moving forward in right direction.

[Wilksey]

I think it still uses the same language.

If you open the exe with a "resource hacker", you can see if there are any resources called something like "TForm", the "T" is a tell tell sign that Borland / Embacarado or whatever they call themselves these days have their mucky fingers in the pie hole.

[EEVblog]

Dave - is there a chance that Altium is trying to get rid of that silly Delphi SDK ? Do you know if CS/CM is still written in that thing ?
Maybe CS & CM is the first step how they port (& test) Altium designer modules into a modern programming language. Next step would be a high-end tool which would eventually completely replace AD in future.
Altium (the company) has screwed up several times but I also believe that that Deplhi SDK limits their capabilities on moving forward in right direction.

No idea, sorry. I've been out of the loop for far too long.

[kashmir]

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]

hi dave, i believe it is Altium's intention to offer Atina as a term-based upgrade to current Designer license holders at a lower price than those who do not have Designer, ie you can pay a bigger subscription to get all the Atina features if you already have AD

[kashmir]

hi dave, i believe it is Altium's intention to offer Atina as a term-based upgrade to current Designer license holders at a lower price than those who do not have Designer, ie you can pay a bigger subscription to get all the Atina features if you already have AD

Term-based model for team collaboration feature makes sense, but I need to pay $some-k per year just for multi-thread or 64-bit? Bugger it.
A piece of $10k software should come with built-in 64-bit and multi-thread support.

yeah i guess it might come down to what other features they use to differentiate Atina from AD. if there are enough other features to justify buying atina without making 64bit/multi thread exclusive to that product then i guess they will put 64/multi thread in AD too?

[julianhigginson]

if Atina had a lot more CST capability, I'd be really keen to pay more to subscribe to it. But not at the rate that just the PDN plugin added to base altium!  to be honest I'm not sure what features I'm missing in AD right now (vs the current super hi end options) as it's all I've ever known.

But if they leave AD in a half debugged 32 bit mess, and I'm expected to pay higher subscription to get properly written fundamental application there will be HELL to pay.. seeing as I've always pushed for subscription as long as subscription was a thing, now I'm paying it myself now that I own my own license, and I always pushed for updates when they became available before that...

[dluberger]

In case anyone else comes across this thread in a google search as I did, I'm going to list the specific reasons why CircuitStudio isn't a viable option for me at work (though I'm considering getting it for use at home on freelance jobs).  Obviously Altium has everything I need because that's what I'm using at work now, so I'll just focus on what's missing in CS.  Keep in mind that, unlike what others have mentioned, I don't really do anything "advanced" in Altium at all.  I don't do signal integrity or anything fancy like that, my boards are typically at most 4-6 layers, I don't do chip-on-board or embedded passives.  My work is pretty lackluster! That said, here are the key things missing from CS that would make it unusable for me:

• Specific No-ERC: I use this all the time as there are always a few things that require me to violate my own rules
• Push while dragging: how can they not have this?? I always add single traces after-the-fact, and pushing other traces out of the way saves me the time of manually rerouting other traces
• Rigid Flex Support: this is a definite no-go for me; I don't do fancy flex designs, usually just single layer, but I generally don't put things like through-hole metric circular connectors on-board, and will attach them with a fpc ribbon to my rigid board; the lack of rigid flex support tells me you likely can't have multiple stacks but I'm not sure; it's just scary to me that they list this as a lacking feature
• Polygone and Plane Management: I'm not sure if this means you can't do polygons at all, but it seems CS is very light on polygon and plane support all around, so this at least concerns me.
• Holes and vias: again, very lacking; you can't even do non-round holes, for example plated slots; I have LCDs and other devices that have rectangular tabs; pretty much any non-circular mechanicals won't be supported. Also you only can do simple vias, so you get no control over the stackup; you can, however, do blind and buried vias (which I rarely use because they're so expensive in fabrication).
• Object classes: this is a big one; no net classes, no component classes.  This kills pretty much any moderately complex design where you need to highlight or select nets or components based on function, etc.  Also, no rooms, which is at best an inconvenience.
• Manufacturing rules: this is another big one; no checks for hole clearance, net antennae, silk clearance, mask slivers, etc. I rely heavily on these rules.
• True type text only: I'm pretty amazed by this.  This means no stroked fonts, which I use almost exclusively
• Scripting: can't do it in CS. For me this is at best an inconvenience. I use one script to check for unrouted nets, but I'm sure more advanced designers use scripting a lot.
• Component Libraries: no DB or vault access, which is another big one for me since all of my component infos are in a local SQL db for quick adding and editing; everything ties back to intlibs, but none of my schlib components have any parameters, so this would be a huge undertaking to go back to standard and intlibs only.
• STEP files: while you can import component STEP models, you can't export STEP files, which is another killer for me because all of my boards get exported to STEP (along with components) to my mechanical engineer for solid modelling of cases, etc.
• Output: No IPC2581; I've never quite understood the purpose of this, but my fab houses all require this, so the lack of this is another no-go for CS; also no output jobs which is at best an inconvenience because you have to manually export each thing you need for the fab house (gerbers, etc.)

So those are the big things; bottom line, CS is no good for using at work, but I would certainly consider using it at home for freelance stuff just to save money.

[ebclr]

Diptrace can be a viable option, it's very simple, fast and cheap

www.diptrace.com

[DerekG]

Diptrace can be a viable option, it's very simple, fast and cheap

Yes, I migrated from Altium to DipTrace some 3 years ago when DipTrace 2.4 was about. DipTrace 2.9/3.0/3.2 made all the difference & I have never looked back. Ver 3.2 now has an Altium Schematic & PCB import filter ... so now I only open Altium to check the Gerbers before sending the files to the board shop.

[asmi]

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.

You know what's especially funny? It is the fact that Cadence has recently done exact opposite - they killed off old Orcad PCB layout engine, and now use exact same engine for all editions of their tools - from entry level Orcad PCB Standard all the way up to Allegro Designer! So now they only have a single codebase to maintain, and fixes become available to all users regardless of level of license they've got.
Case in point is their recent push to upgrade 3D visualization engine. It's now even supports bending of flexies to see if it will hit anything as it bends! As well as full collision checks (you can import a model of your case/housing into designer so that it can check if anything is going to interfere with it). And these changes are available to everyone (yes, even to lowest-tier Standard license)!