eevBLAB #24 - PCB Wars Altium Circuit Studio vs Autodesk Eagle

[EEVblog]

Let the PCB Wars begin!
Altium Circuit Studio vs Autodesk Eagle
Element 14 got bought by Daetwyler which lead to them selling Eagle to Autodesk, which then lead to Altium slashing the price of Circuit Studio to $995

[Barny]

That's an interesting topic.
I hope the free-hobby versions will still exist.

There is an work around for the eagle size limitation.
Many people are using special parts with are down scaled (1:2 to 1:10).
The output-data get upscaled with the same factor.

With this method its possible to produce much bigger PCB's

[Robaroni]

Dave,
Thanks for the heads up!
 Altium scares me, I remember when they bought the original CircuitMaker around 2000 or so. I was using CM then and it was a decent program in the Protel platform. Altium gave us this big story how they were going to develop and improve it but just trashed it completely. Then there was their major price cut of Designer which pissed off everyone who paid 10k or so for it. They offered it to me for $2500 several years ago.
I'm leery to invest time in CS even with the price drop. You learn these programs and then the manufacturer trashes them of doesn't give support. Look at the CS forum, people complaining about the lack of support and unfixed bugs.

AutoDesk might create a better Eagle, not that Eagle is a program that I like, I dumped it years ago but if they could make it a decent program with simulation and drop all the ULP programs for attachments Eagle should have supported themselves it might be something to look into. (Not a 160x100 board for 820 bucks. Rediculous!)
Rob

[Robaroni]

That's an interesting topic.
I hope the free-hobby versions will still exist.

There is an work around for the eagle size limitation.
Many people are using special parts with are down scaled (1:2 to 1:10).
The output-data get upscaled with the same factor.

With this method its possible to produce much bigger PCB's

I think a lot of people learned Eagle. Let's face it Eagle was smart, they got people hooked and once you learn a program you seem to put up with all these kinds of things that you would never tolerate otherwise. Do I want an 800 buck program that I have to scale down parts for?
Rob

[trevwhite]

Does Circuit Studio support Altium file formats and have gerber import?

[EEVblog]

I'm leery to invest time in CS even with the price drop. You learn these programs and then the manufacturer trashes them of doesn't give support. Look at the CS forum, people complaining about the lack of support and unfixed bugs.

I suspect that's because it simply didn't sell, and Altium probably knew it wouldn't sell, but they said "why not" to Element 14 and it looked good on their market share  "pyramid" in the yearly investor report. They wanted to be seen having a product in that mid space.
I'm pretty sure this will change now and Altium will put a lot more support behind it.

AutoDesk might create a better Eagle, not that Eagle is a program that I like, I dumped it years ago but if they could make it a decent program with simulation and drop all the ULP programs for attachments Eagle should have supported themselves it might be something to look into. (Not a 160x100 board for 820 bucks. Rediculous!)

Will be interesting to watch. Although I think it will take a year or two before we see their real direction.

[EEVblog]

I think a lot of people learned Eagle. Let's face it Eagle was smart

I think they were also lucky. Arduino used it, and that was all she wrote, almost every single newbie and OSHW company (Adafruit, Sparkfun et.al) from that point on also used it.

[EEVblog]

Does Circuit Studio support Altium file formats and have gerber import?

https://www.element14.com/community/community/manufacturers/altium/blog/2015/07/24/importing-altium-circuit-studio-files-to-altium-designer-and-vice-versa

[trevwhite]

Does Circuit Studio support Altium file formats and have gerber import?

https://www.element14.com/community/community/manufacturers/altium/blog/2015/07/24/importing-altium-circuit-studio-files-to-altium-designer-and-vice-versa

Thanks for the link, it suggests that you have both applications to start with so that you can make sure the file is saved in the correct format. That is not ideal if I find a reference design with Altium files offered and I only have a copy of Circuit Studio. The price point really is nice if it has full support so that I could load in Altium files such as TI reference designs.

[Robaroni]

I think a lot of people learned Eagle. Let's face it Eagle was smart

I think they were also lucky. Arduino used it, and that was all she wrote, almost every single newbie and OSHW company (Adafruit, Sparkfun et.al) from that point on also used it.

I don't know Dave, Eagle was around before the hobbyists started using duinos. I remember 15 years ago when things were a lot more 'lean' in the mid to low priced EDA community and Eagle was giving these, around 10cm square programs, out for free (with their standard yearly award from the same magazine!) and a lot of people started using it. I even remember the guys in Circuit Cellar posting circuits in Eagle. I tried it but it was one of the most cumbersome programs I've ever used, especially coming from Protel. I plugged away, finally threw in the towel.
Again, don't underestimate not giving up a program you invested time learning. That's why I tell people, time is money, sure if you're a hobbyist and can play around then free programs will probably work for you. 1600 bucks for Eagle is way over priced in my view.
I'll watch CS as I'm interested in how it will pan out. I'll bet at 1K it sells like hot cakes and that might be enough to get a strong community of users keeping it afloat.

 

[trevwhite]

Does Circuit Studio support Altium file formats and have gerber import?

https://www.element14.com/community/community/manufacturers/altium/blog/2015/07/24/importing-altium-circuit-studio-files-to-altium-designer-and-vice-versa

Thanks for the link, it suggests that you have both applications to start with so that you can make sure the file is saved in the correct format. That is not ideal if I find a reference design with Altium files offered and I only have a copy of Circuit Studio. The price point really is nice if it has full support so that I could load in Altium files such as TI reference designs.

Just to follow up on this. I downloaded the trial and it seems to support some import of Altium but the TI files are maybe from an older version of Altium and the PCB layout are not saved in the version 5.0 binary requirement. Such a shame!

[djos]

Sooo, what are ppl's thoughts now?

I've just started learning Eagle and have found its UI seems to have been designed by Masochists - it's highly capable but entirely lacks any intuitiveness at all, in fact it's highly counter intuitive!

I was going to try out Altium Circuit Maker but it does not support macOS - I'm not sure what's worse, a horrid UI on an User friendly Industrial strength OS or a nicer looking UI running on a bloated mess of an OS. Hmmmm.

[djos]

I was going to try out Altium Circuit Maker but it does not support macOS - I'm not sure what's worse, a horrid UI on an User friendly Industrial strength OS or a nicer looking UI running on a bloated mess of an OS. Hmmmm.

It's funny to see people bashing Windows. I use Linux on servers, VMs and I work on embedded systems, but I still prefer Windows as a daily driver and I use Windows 10 Pro everyday.
Altium Designer is the only barrier between me and *nix, and all other tools and games I use run on Linux or OSX. Altium alone is enough to convince me to ditch *nix.
If you don't trust Windows, how about running it in a VM? Spending $80 on Parallels and $200 on Win10 Pro seems justified if you are running a $995 software on it.

I think I'm well qualified to bash windows, I'm a former Windows Admin who used to be MCSE certified and still runs a Windows Server at home plus a Linux server too. I'm prolly a bit more Jaded than most as our company SOE is Windows 8.1 *shudders*.

Windows 10 is better but the constant forced upgrade BS just a bad joke. I have a Windows 7 VM on my i7 Mac Mini which I use when working from home - 7 is ok but since switching to macOS in 2013 for our home machines, my technical support life has become sooo much easier. I also love the fact that I can leave my Mini running for months at a time without it crashing and it resumes from sleep instantly. If I leave my Lenovo X1 Yoga running for more than 2 weeks Win8.1 will start misbehaving.

Back on topic, from the videos I've watched, Altium does seem to have a much more intuitive and commonsense UI than Eagle - not that it would be hard to pull that off considering editing board view graphics would would easier to do on my '87 Amiga 500 using Deluxe Paint!

[djos]

Linux is just as stable as macOS is on commodity hardware, e.g. my Plex server runs on mint 17.3 on an old Dell Optiplex 755 SFF pc from the Vista era and it's just a stable as my Mac mini.

Re Altium, is there a free student version that gives you full product access like eagle does?

[FrankBuss]

Have you tried KiCad? The latest stable version 4.0.6, which I compiled from source, looks pretty good. Some concepts are odd for Eagle or Altium users, like that you have to associate symbols to footprints per board and not in the part data, but this can be a very flexible concept. The 3D view is improved in the latest version as well.

[djos]

Have you tried KiCad? The latest stable version 4.0.6, which I compiled from source, looks pretty good. Some concepts are odd for Eagle or Altium users, like that you have to associate symbols to footprints per board and not in the part data, but this can be a very flexible concept. The 3D view is improved in the latest version as well.

Hi Frank, I'll have a look as I wasn't aware of this product till you mentioned it. I'm a PCB design n00b so I don't mind trying a few different packages to find one I'm happy with.

[djos]

Linux is just as stable as macOS is on commodity hardware, e.g. my Plex server runs on mint 17.3 on an old Dell Optiplex 755 SFF pc from the Vista era and it's just a stable as my Mac mini.

Depending on RAM usage. My i5 NUC runs Ubuntu 16.04LTS as a home media+NAS+compiler server for weeks between reboots, and the only reason to reboot is power outage. Power company here sucks.
With a robust ECC RAM, Windows is also stable. I run simulations or compiling tasks on my Windows or Windows+Linux VM, and the tasks usually use 20GB+ of RAM for hours and hours. I never tried to run for weeks, but for a few days with occasional very high CPU+RAM+GPU stress, it is rock solid.
It had some problems with BIOS, but nothing a BIOS update can't fix and now it's in very good condition. So far after BIOS update, I've never seen a single BSOD on this computer.

Re Altium, is there a free student version that gives you full product access like eagle does?

Yes, that's what I was using, until I decided to plan for entrepreneurship, and fearing subscription licensing model will take over just like Audodesk products.
It was $149 per year in the US for academic users, and $229 per year in China, for both academic and personal users.

I'm not sure what ram usage has to do with stability, my Plex server has 8 GB of normal ram coupled with a core 2 quad 2.8 ghz and spends its days transcoding BD & DVD video and streaming around the house - hardly a light weight job. I originally ran Windows 7 and then 10 on the same box but replaced it with Linux as it was becoming high maintenance and I was sick of frequent calls from a cross wife wanting to know why our young kids couldn't watch Peppa Pig and Dora the explorer on our Roku's.

We also have rubbish power quality with at least one brief outage per month, as a result my servers both run on a ups, as does my Mac Mini.

[Robaroni]

like that you have to associate symbols to footprints per board and not in the part data

That's crazy, a footprint (package) or a group of footprints should always be assigned to a symbol on the schematic side and you should be able to pick the footprint, let's say SMD or thru hole from the schematic.

[Karel]

It's funny to see people bashing Windows. I use Linux on servers, VMs and I work on embedded systems, but I still prefer Windows as a daily driver and I use Windows 10 Pro everyday.

It's funny to see people bashing Linux. Because windows works for you, it doesn't mean it works for others.

I have been using windows for many years but now we are using Linux, at work and at home, and I couldn't be happier.

[ebclr]

Same people that are happy with this car

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Cinquecento

Are happy with Linux as a desktop, same level of satisfaction

Linux is nice, but for Desktop years behind

[Robaroni]

I'd like to see what some of the program boards look like that you guys do in some of these programs. I get very nice schematics and decent boards that my publishers like. Here's an example of a schematic I was playing around with. It's a nixie clock ( I love clocks!) that I made from Burroughs tubes from an old HP counter. To keep the board as small as possible I turned it sideways on the PCB side. When the board came back I just broke off the top half and built a simple case to hold everything.Nixie Clock
Not a perfect program but it does do presentations well enough. (Labcenter)

[Karel]

Linux is nice, but for Desktop years behind

Lol, so according to you, me and my colleague engineers are dumb/crazy/stupid/whatever and our company is wasting time/money?
You really think we never tried windows and we didn't select the best tool for the job?

Enough said about it, I go back to work (on my Linux system).
I wish you all the best with your windows pc.

[Robaroni]

Linux is nice, but for Desktop years behind

Lol, so according to you, me and my colleague engineers are dumb/crazy/stupid/whatever and our company is wasting time/money?
You really think we never tried windows and we didn't select the best tool for the job?

Enough said about it, I go back to work (on my Linux system).
I wish you all the best with your windows pc.

I think it's what you're used to just like EDA or CAD/CAM. You start using another program and you're all screwed up, it happens to us all. That's why kids learn so fast, they have no preconceived notions about how something should work. 

I use Windows 7, I know Windows, it's good enough and my programs work with it. Trying to convince someone to switch if futile. If one of these OS's was head and shoulders above rest it would be a different story but that's not the case as I see it.
Used to be Apple was better for graphics but there's no clear winner today. EDA's on the other hand are a different story, there are some real dogs out there.

[Fred27]

Yawn. Another thread descends into Windows v Linux, with a bit of recommending KiCad thrown in for good measure.

[djos]

Sorry chaps, I really didn't mean to start a holy war over operating systems, we all have our personal preferences, just like we do with our other tools, my bad. 

Anyway as much as I dislike the Eagle UI, I've finally got it to do what I want, so I think I'll stick with it for now. It's crazy that chopping a 16 bit ISA slot part back down to 8 bit is so hard, but all good now. 

If Altium ever release a macOS version of circuit studio and my eagle licence is about to expire I'll certainly give it another look, the tutorials I've watched impressed me, it's so much more logical and intuitive from what I've seen.