DEX eval by free_electron

[free_electron]

A word of warning before you delve into this extensive topic.

This is a one man's opinion. Please do go out and give the software a try for yourself. It is worth it and would be unfair to rely only on my review.

You will find in this topic a lot of clashing of idea's and minds. It is not always clear to see the information buried in the noise.

The software gets updates at an incredibly quick rate  and what you read two days ago may no longer be the case, be solved or the feature has been added.

That is the danger of the internet. Information is often outdated by the time you read it. This too is the case for reviews. If you were to read a review of an older version of a program you are using you might not want to use it at all.

DEX development happens at break-neck speed and by the time you reach the end of one page in this topic, that stuff may be fixed.

So do give it a try for yourself. It is free and impressive.

End of edit.

here we. just downloaded latest version and install.

further bulletins as events unravel

Installed on a quadcore 2.66GHz , 4G ram Win7 32 bit GTX6xx series graphics card, twin screens (1920x1200) . The machine is 'clean'. Nothing apart word and excel and dex and altium and rhino is on it. but nothing is running apart from DEX and Chrome ( which i use to type this review ). No background stuff.

[free_electron]

i said i was going to be brutally honest in this review. this is my perception. this is NOT 'being negative' or begine a 'hater'. this is a perception and a view of my expectations of a program.

download and install are painless 

don't know why the 'optimizing dex startup performance' takes so long and trashing the harddisk. Wonder what it is doing ... i don't like such messages. i like installers that tell you what the hell they are doing. i suspect this is the stage where net is deployed. if that is the case: say so. don't hide it behind cryptic messages. 

launch is speedy and snappy. 
multimonitor support works like a champ as well. 

but : mulitmonitor ( left screen schematic , right screne pcb ) : right screen has no menu or toolbars. everything is crammed on the left ... not good.
the schematic toolbars should stick to the schematic window, the pcb toolbars to the pcb window. i do not want to have to mouse over..

right click pcb toolbar and pick something like 'view colo picker. the picker appears on the left screen ... eh .. i called for it in the right screen   

minimize window , maximixe  doesnt work right. when minimizing right screen there is no way to call it back ( i would assume that there would be a tray or windows toolbar icon. there isn't. clicking the dex icon on the windows toolbar ( the bar with the start button ) minimizes all windows. clicking it again maximizes, but the maximizing on the right hand screne is wrong. it does not go back to full screen but to an arbitrary size and position. 

[PA0PBZ]

don't know why the 'optimizing dex startup performance' takes so long and trashing the harddisk. Wonder what it is doing ... i don't like such messages. i like installers that tell you what the hell they are doing. i suspect this is the stage where net is deployed. if that is the case: say so. don't hide it behind cryptic messages. 

Same here, optimizing spreadsheet performance? wtf...

[free_electron]

don't know why the 'optimizing dex startup performance' takes so long and trashing the harddisk. Wonder what it is doing ... i don't like such messages. i like installers that tell you what the hell they are doing. i suspect this is the stage where net is deployed. if that is the case: say so. don't hide it behind cryptic messages. 

Same here, optimizing spreadsheet performance? wtf...

adobe has that shit too. 'optimizing document for reading .. every time you open it. optimize it once, and save it optimized  dammit !

but please don;t pollute this thread. this is dex evaluation , not other software eval.

[free_electron]

scroll wheel zoom in and out. great.
panning ... eh doesn't work. most cad programs and windows programs allows shift scrollwheel to be up/down and ctrl scrollwheel to be left right , or right click and hold to become a hand to move the viewport.

ok. holding scrollwheel down and dragging moves viewport but that is awkward ...

another note : DX main toolbar you have the DX logo , right of that are two bars. the top bar holds icons , the bar below holds a menu style bar and one below that is the ribbon bar. the top icon bar is rendered using aero glass , meaning is has that shine through of the windows background.
my word of advice : turn that off ! use a solid background. Reason : there are color blind people in this world, of which i am one , i do not see green as i am missing the detector in my eyes ( forgot if it is the rods or cones. green only exists as 'luminosity' for mee. so if you show me something that has the same luminosity and shade side by side i cannot tell the difference. they both look red to me.  . the same problem exists for things like battery chargers or modems or routers that use red/grene led to indicate status. i only see that there is light. not what color it is !  Companies are willing to listen. i once complained to olympus (the camera maker) about that. i explained i had gone trough the trouble to desolder open their chargers and desolder the green led and replace with a blue one. big was my surprise when a year later all their chargers now use red/blue leds. They listened!  there is no such thing as red/blue color blindness ( there is a case where people have a short and see shades of purple, but even those people can tell the difference between something that is pure red and pure blue. )

the net result is : the little icons with the red ball and 1 2 3 4 are hard to read, the one right of that (that say mm , i know it says mm because i hovered over it ) i only see the ruler ! the 'mm' is invisible for me ...

GUI design is very important. don't clutter it up and keep it neat and tight. i am also not a fan of these huge ribbon bars. they eat up too many pixels

  another thing i do not see : keyboard shortcuts. if i open a menu i like to see what the keyboard shortcuts are for the commands. now i have to delve in the damn documentation. windows has had this keyboard shortcut showing since windows 2.0 ... please ?

  Another word of advice : please support a space navigator ! it ain't that hard. i am lost without the use that thing... but will bear it for the sake of this review... normally i refuse to use software that cannot interact with a space navigator. it makes life so much more easy. they only cost the price of a decent mouse (70$) .

[free_electron]

And we are going into schematic. i am just looking at the default loaded schematic and messing with it a bit trying to see if i can figure this thing out without having to watch 5 days of video's and read 1000 pages of manuals. software needs to be intuitive. i will only delve into video's and manuals if i can't figure something out after 30 seconds.

ok found the shortcuts. simply hit <alt> and they appear.

lemme see what i can do with schematic. lets try to drag some parts around shall we. right now ( just after install ) DEX seems to be running in a mode where the traces rubberband. if you grab a trace you can shift it up and down. great. except it does't clean up after itself. the connection dot stays where it was.      (top right red circle in the attached image ) that is NOT good !

when dragging a component the traces go in freestyl mode and rearrange themselves when you drop the part. this gives VERY weird results ( bottom right circle ) the damn thing leaves the dots where they are and creates hop-overs on itself ) 

the rewiring is also wonky (bottom left red circle. why does that wire need to go right down and back left.

in short : auto wiring algorithms SUCK. this has been proven over and over again. please don;t do that. it is a sure fire way to make a total mess out of a schematic in a few seconds.

lemme see if i can get this algorithm to create shorts ... that would be a total disaster !

[free_electron]

sure enough ...    ( we need an infinity symbol ) that is INTOLERABLE !
and there are cases where the algorithm simply conks out... and then you end up with schematic spaghetti ...

this algorithm has to go. many schematic cad packages have attempted such a thing and i have NEVER seen one that works right. Even altiums doesnt work right at least now they pull a netlist before the drag and a netlist after the auto rewire. if the autowire did a change in the netlist they show a red X on the screen telling you that, if you drop it now it will be fucked up. if they show a green checkmark you can let go and there will be no net changes ( nothing disconnected, nothing connected )

if you are going to have an autowire algorithm : put something like that in there. that is the only acceptable solution

i selected a block of parts, moved them to the right a bit. let go. moved them up a bit, let go , moved them left a bit and let go. and there it is : total spaghetti. ( third picture ) Case proven : autowiring algorithms SUCK

Off to the manual to see if we can turn this spaghetti generator off. ( turn auto rewire off. i hate it )

[free_electron]

ok. trouble. i can;t find a way to turn this damn autowiring off. i went into the help files.
first of all the help files are outdated. the menus shown do not correspond with the menus in the program    that is not good.

i found a checkbox labeled 'autowire' but it doesn't do anything. 
 also when restarting DEX it turns itself back on ... 

so i am stuck. the autowiring has to go. it simply doesn't work and i can't find a way to turn it off.

i'm going to do something else until someone can tell me how to disable it. i am stuck. the helpfiles are outdated and there is not a peep about turning autowire off to be found anywhere . the help has chapter on schematics -> wiring parts together -> automatic wiring. with the following text :
"Also, as you move part symbols, DEX will automatically re-route all the connect wires. Adding wire to your schematics has never been easier."
-cough- .. gimme back pencil and paper. it works better ...

-edit- i tried watching the video.. 240 pixels .. really ? i cant even read the text on the menus being pointed to. it's all fuzzy.  that needs work too.

[Mechatrommer]

good! i'm looking forward for review:

1) performance in high density/large pin count board. as i see it starts to struggle even in the default simple demo "Arduino artist" board. this is crucial as i wont pay a cent or spent a second on a poorly performing software, regardless paid or free.
2) simulation. the last time i tried i got empty spaces, nothing!
3) as i said in another thread, pcb routing practicality. freestyle trace routing is not good.

review for 3d preview is not crucial as i know its good! thats where this sw excel and effort much concentrated on. but for viewing only, expect it to do as altium? including casing and cutout? you'll be despaired.

[elgonzo]

i selected a block of parts, moved them to the right a bit. let go. moved them up a bit, let go , moved them left a bit and let go. and there it is : total spaghetti. ( third picture ) Case proven : autowiring algorithms SUCK

FYI:

Issues with the autowiring algorithm are even visible in one of the tutorial videos at the 1:41 timemark:



Pay attention to the connections between H1 and U1 while a wire between H2 and U2 is modified.
Although the wires between H1 and U1 are not even spatially close to the modified wire, the autowiring algorithm fumbles around with them. 

[free_electron]

i know. that is the first thing i noticed in the video as well ( apart form the extremely bad video quality )

Almost every schematic cad company has tried autowiring and NONE get it right. they all dropped it because the unanimous feedback from user is : it messed up my schematic beyond repair . Altium held off on it for a long time They way they do cluster drag with rewiring is by comparing netlist before drag and after drag. they notify you when the drag will be successful by showing a red cross or green checkmark. if you let go when there is a red cross you know that wiring is compromised. there may be opens or shorts.  That is at least acceptable as you have a confidence level nothing got messed up. the wiring may be spaghetti but no connectivity is broken.

but anyway. i do not like autowiring at all.

now, i was reading some stuff in the documentation and i need to set a couple of things right :

hop overs are no-no  ( that funny little arc to cross a wire )

the drafting standard are pretty clear about it ( yes there are drafting standard for schematics both ISO and ANSI and even IEEE ) :

- wires always cross using straight lines , no arcs or hop overs.
- crossing wires NEVER connect. it is not allowed to have a dot at a 4 wire intersection.
- connecting wires always do so at T junctions.

those three rules make it so that there is no ambiguity possible due to a missing dot.  a T with a missing dot is still a connection. a cross is always a cross and never a connection.

Altium now understands that. when loading older file formats it will convert dotted crosses to angled connections so you can clean them up.

angled signal traces are also a no-no and should ONLY be used to indicate a star connection (also called a kelvin point or ground split ) or for special cases to make a schematic clear ( like a channel where there happens a deliberate crossing of two , otherwise paired, signals.

other things that are a no-no : drawing opamps with - above the + input. there is only one representation of an opamp. from top of the page to bottom of the page :
positive power , + input , - input , negative power.

flipping that upside down is no-no and frowned upon.

the reason is historical : reproduction of paper copies. stuff tends to disappear when being scaled. dots disappear . small + and - signs become illegible. and so on.

same with symbols for integrated circuits. positive top , negative bottom. never draw them upside down

[Iliya]

here we. just downloaded latest version and install.

further bulletins as events unravel

Installed on a quadcore 2.66GHz , 4G ram Win7 32 bit GTX6xx series graphics card, twin screens (1920x1200) . The machine is 'clean'. Nothing apart word and excel and dex and altium and rhino is on it. but nothing is running apart from DEX and Chrome ( which i use to type this review ). No background stuff.

It would be good before you give your review if you could give your qualifications, work experience, what your full time position is and your current PCB design software and bias.
We wouldn’t want you to look like an anonymous biased reviewer.
Your profile give just says you are 44 and live in San Jose – CA. 
I suspect this topic is going to be a troll fest looking at the posting.

[c4757p]

His qualifications are quite impressive.

[miguelvp]

It would be good before you give your review if you could give your qualifications, work experience, what your full time position is and your current PCB design software and bias.
We wouldn’t want you to look like an anonymous biased reviewer.
Your profile give just says you are 44 and live in San Jose – CA. 
I suspect this topic is going to be a troll fest looking at the posting.

ahem,
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-306-jim-williams-pulse-generator/msg553852/#msg553852

But you will have to ask him if he wants the review to show what his current actual job is.

[Iliya]

don't know why the 'optimizing dex startup performance' takes so long and trashing the harddisk. Wonder what it is doing ... i don't like such messages. i like installers that tell you what the hell they are doing. i suspect this is the stage where net is deployed. if that is the case: say so. don't hide it behind cryptic messages. 

Same here, optimizing spreadsheet performance? wtf...

The installer is compiling DEX and its support DLLs, exes to run optimized for the processor on your machine. If you are 64 bit you get 64 bit compiled code. If you are 32 bit you get 32 bit compiled code.  The code is optimized for the processor type, AMD, Intel, Generation. Can't do that with C++ code!  This happens just once per installation.
The disk is not being trashed.    It is just being used. Looks like some biased reviewing coming…

[elgonzo]

It would be good before you give your review if you could give your qualifications, work experience, what your full time position is and your current PCB design software and bias.
We wouldn’t want you to look like an anonymous biased reviewer.
Your profile give just says you are 44 and live in San Jose – CA. 

His name is Vincent Himpe. Check his website and google what he did and what he does now. Do not forget to breathe.

I suspect this topic is going to be a troll fest looking at the posting.

I think you are in the process of burning your hands here, severely...

[c4757p]

The installer is compiling DEX and its support DLLs, exes to run optimized for the processor on your machine. If you are 64 bit you get 64 bit compiled code. If you are 32 bit you get 32 bit compiled code.  The code is optimized for the processor type, AMD, Intel, Generation. Can't do that with C++ code!  This happens just once per installation.

Have you tested to see whether this gives a significant advantage? It shouldn't.

[Iliya]

The installer is compiling DEX and its support DLLs, exes to run optimized for the processor on your machine. If you are 64 bit you get 64 bit compiled code. If you are 32 bit you get 32 bit compiled code.  The code is optimized for the processor type, AMD, Intel, Generation. Can't do that with C++ code!  This happens just once per installation.

Have you tested to see whether this gives a significant advantage? It shouldn't.

Yes.

[c4757p]

Nobody else does this...

[Monkeh]

don't know why the 'optimizing dex startup performance' takes so long and trashing the harddisk. Wonder what it is doing ... i don't like such messages. i like installers that tell you what the hell they are doing. i suspect this is the stage where net is deployed. if that is the case: say so. don't hide it behind cryptic messages. 

Same here, optimizing spreadsheet performance? wtf...

The installer is compiling DEX and its support DLLs, exes to run optimized for the processor on your machine. If you are 64 bit you get 64 bit compiled code. If you are 32 bit you get 32 bit compiled code.  The code is optimized for the processor type, AMD, Intel, Generation. Can't do that with C++ code!  This happens just once per installation.
The disk is not being trashed.    It is just being used. Looks like some biased reviewing coming…

Can't do what with C++?

[Iliya]

Nobody else does this...

You are wrong.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6t9t5wcf%28v=vs.110%29.aspx

[Iliya]

It would be good before you give your review if you could give your qualifications, work experience, what your full time position is and your current PCB design software and bias.
We wouldn’t want you to look like an anonymous biased reviewer.
Your profile give just says you are 44 and live in San Jose – CA. 

His name is Vincent Himpe. Check his website and google what he did and what he does now. Do not forget to breathe.

I suspect this topic is going to be a troll fest looking at the posting.

I think you are in the process of burning your hands here, severely...

His site says...
PCB design and layout. Altium Designer / DXP / Protel. Certified Master Designer. 20 Years+ experience with Altium (since it was a DOS program).

[free_electron]

oh .wow now you are opening a can of worms ... 

24 years professional experience in electronics. 23+ years in semiconductors where i started doing maintenance in the waferfab ( about a year) and then 22 years in the research lab making the reference circuit boards , hardware software fpga code , you name it.

For 15 of those 23 years i have been working on DSL technology. I've done 24 layer boards with 5000+ components that are deployed worldwide in mass quantities ( 48 line ADSL DSLAM concentrator boards. if you have a ADSL of VDSL connection at home there is a 50% chance that the other side of the twisted pair is hooked up to either silicon or boards i have designed and laid out. and a 90% chance it is running because it was booted by a bootloader i wrote. I have done chip layout using tools from Cadence, Mentor, Magma, Computervision Calma and Daisy systems. i am familiar with VeriBest tools , Valor , Frontier and some other stuff.
Schematic / PCb cad i  have used Smartwork , Hiwire, Orcad , DxDesigner, Expedition , Pcad , Pads , and the whole shebang from Autotrax dos to Altium 15 since a few weeks ago ( protel for windows, protel 95 99 99se dxp dxp2004 summer winter you name it. haven't missed a single version )

The last 8 of those 23 years i was active in the hardddisk world . if you have a harddisk at home made by Western digital or Seagate there is a chip on there i helped design , write code for, tested, tortured and made the reference layout , development system and test systems for.

i have made well over 1000 PCB's in that 23 years ranging from single sided cheap-as-dirt stamped phenolic resin to 24 layer board that are half a meter by 30 centimeter and have 5000+ components. i've done flex, sequential lamination, backdrilling , blind and buried, metalcore , exotic materials, controlled impedance, differential pair length tuning busses , very high speed stuff ( like Pecl transceiver cells that run in the picosecond domain) . flip chip board, boards for naked silicon  BGA substrated and ic layout as well. ( take a design , lay out the IO cells on the silicon , figure out a pinout, make the BGA substrate so the end PCB is easily routed towards the memory it needs interconnecting with. 

You name it: most likely i've done it. ( the only thing i never did in was those eyelet wirings they used in old vacuum tube radio's. In my world vacuum tubes meet my box of hammers )

About 4 months ago i bid the semiconductor world farewell as the ever decreasing budgets made my life hell. No money to buy hi-end equipment, not even money to keep Altium subscription up to date ... so i decided to look elsewhere where such idiocy does not exist.  So i am now doing schematic/board design full time for some 'serious shit'.

As hobby i have my own hobby lab, i repair Agilent test equipment and i write books ( got 6 published and working on number 7 which is on PCB design )
www.siliconvalleygarage.com

Most guys here know me well. i've been interviewed on the amp hour and set Dave a huge box of Waferfab porn  that make your eyes water ...    )

I hold 7 US and 2 european patents and have 5 or 6 still running ...

satisfied ? (i'm not trying to be snarky here, but you are apparently not a frequent forum visitor. so i gave you an overview in a nutshell )

now go tell me how to turn autowire off ...

[free_electron]

don't know why the 'optimizing dex startup performance' takes so long and trashing the harddisk. Wonder what it is doing ... i don't like such messages. i like installers that tell you what the hell they are doing. i suspect this is the stage where net is deployed. if that is the case: say so. don't hide it behind cryptic messages. 

Same here, optimizing spreadsheet performance? wtf...

The installer is compiling DEX and its support DLLs, exes to run optimized for the processor on your machine. If you are 64 bit you get 64 bit compiled code. If you are 32 bit you get 32 bit compiled code.  The code is optimized for the processor type, AMD, Intel, Generation. Can't do that with C++ code!  This happens just once per installation.
The disk is not being trashed.    It is just being used. Looks like some biased reviewing coming…

Thank you for that bit of clarification. now i know what it does. i was always wondering about such things... it looks they scan the entire disk. So this is in essence the JIT compiler of .NET doing some post processing.  i am always a bit suspicious about messages that mean nothing 'optimizing' is kind of vague. if you were to write 'adjusting the performance of DEX for your processor and Operating system'  that would clarify things a bit.

[c4757p]

Nobody else does this...

You are wrong.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6t9t5wcf%28v=vs.110%29.aspx

Ah, it's a .NET thing. I stand corrected. (Well, sit on my ass corrected, actually.)