My experience with Altium

[larry42]

HW designer here (mainly RF). Used AD18 through AD20 for a few projects now.

It's the buggiest SW I've used (well, apart from LibreOffice). Half the time I don't know if something is user error or a bug...

I had a client (large SE listed company ask if one of their local depts. should go over to AD from CadStar.
Even though it would be convenient for me I had to say that, whilst I find AD great when it works (more intuitive than CadStar), but it's too unstable / unreliable for me to honestly recommend it.

As a FYI for people that may be considering it.

[ddavidebor]

Hello,

Yes Cadstar is a much more stable software.

If you have encountered any particular issue, feel free to share.
Altium lack of stability is unfortunate, they often take two steps forward (like rewriting buddy Delphi into c#) then one backward (like introducing features without testing).
Or one forward two backward, depending on your point of view.

David

[free_electron]

Altium may have some quirks but i would not call it unstable.
A lot of issues stem from the computer environment.
- 32gig of ram
- Pro grade graphics card like a Quadro. The graphics drivers need to be stable. AMD / radeon is problematic

I run latest version on a 5 year old HP Z-Book with a Quadro K5100 . Three 27 inch 2650x1440 monitors , 32 Gb ram and an i7-4910MQ processor. Win 10 enterprise. Until a couple of months i was still on Win7 enterprise.

I use it 10+ hours a day and support a large install (270+ licenses) and don't really experience instability or crashes. It has some quircks and every new version brings some new issues, but they do get patched in the service packs.
 Like i said : there are quirks and an occasional hang-up but most this is machine related. 17 is very stable. 18 was buggy due to compiler issues ( They had to abandon Embarcadero Delphi .. and migrate to c# to get 64 bit. 19 is stable , but slighty less than 17. 20 so far (february patch cycle) has been stable so far. i just got April patch cycle loaded and have not seen issues so far.

Some of the 'perceived' issues have to do with workflow.
for example : Altium does not like it when you modify files outside of the software, so don't try to outsmart it by copying schematics outisde of the program and then adding them to the project. you are corrupting the database with all kinds of trouble. Let the program manage the data.

What instability do you have ?

[larry42]

Running on a MS Surface Pro 8GB machine - integrated Intel graphics

For a 1000 component design (9 schematic pages) that should be enough.

I don't have too many problems with instability (though it does crash more than CadStar) main problem is bugs...
Unhandled exceptions are a few per week.
Font alignment wrong - making the SCH hard to read
Hangs due to the SVNDbLib cache management
High CPU usage whilst idle
Delays in routing, AWFUL routing performance in AD20 (fixed going to advanced settings - and selecting AD19 legacy gloss and route) - lots of ppl on the AD forum complain about that
Terrible SCH performance because it keeps hitting a server or something - fix: close Properties and /or Components Tab.
Smart Paste not working (fix will come in a few months)
In the parts editor - changing pin names is not reflected until you 'select' all the pins after the edit.
Unable to move items 'left' on Draftsman templates.

And that is for the 4th release of AD20! We're talking about released - expensive - production SW - not some beta version...

[ANTALIFE]

Running on a MS Surface Pro 8GB machine - integrated Intel graphics

For a 1000 component design (9 schematic pages) that should be enough.

I don't have too many problems with instability (though it does crash more than CadStar) main problem is bugs...
Unhandled exceptions are a few per week.
Font alignment wrong - making the SCH hard to read
Hangs due to the SVNDbLib cache management
High CPU usage whilst idle
Delays in routing, AWFUL routing performance in AD20 (fixed going to advanced settings - and selecting AD19 legacy gloss and route) - lots of ppl on the AD forum complain about that
Terrible SCH performance because it keeps hitting a server or something - fix: close Properties and /or Components Tab.
Smart Paste not working (fix will come in a few months)
In the parts editor - changing pin names is not reflected until you 'select' all the pins after the edit.
Unable to move items 'left' on Draftsman templates.

And that is for the 4th release of AD20! We're talking about released - expensive - production SW - not some beta version...

Hmm, I suspect half those problems are due to the hardware you are running it on...
Had a mate who was running Altium on his Surface Pro (not sure which model) and he always complained about performance. The thing you have to be aware with tablets/laptops is that majority are not designed to run CPU/GPU heavy tasks as both start to heavily throttle themselves any time there is a big load

[larry42]

Half those issues are actual bugs

If programmers cannot write code to shows a schematic that runs well on a 2.5GHz 8GB machine then they have done something wrong.
We're not talking about 3D live ray-traced graphics. We're talking about a 2D schematic with a few 100ms latency to move items etc... they have even admitted that a fix will be forthcoming - 5 months after release of AD20...

[free_electron]

Running on a MS Surface Pro 8GB machine - integrated Intel graphics

Sorry to have to say this , but please ... that is the wrong hardware ... I see people attempting to run Altium on 13 inch laptops, macbooks with windows installed, costco bargain-priced machines. It just doesn't work that way. Get a workstation grade machine. Fully loaded (used) Zbook 17 G3 or G4 can be found on ebay for below 1000$. 32G ram , Quadro graphics with 4 to 8 Gb of video ram ,  beefy i7 8 cores with lots of cache and unthrottled memory. Lots of computers skimp on memory speed running heavy on cpu cache. There is a difference between 40$ for 16Gb and 130$ for 16Gb memory ... speed !

I use a 5 year old G2 Zbook 17 inch in a docking station. I typically have Altium , Catia and Solidworks open at the same time without issues. Those are not exactly lightweight applications ..

Font alignment wrong - making the SCH hard to read

That is being fixed. That started when they switched to c#. There is something with the way c# engine handles fonts.

Hangs due to the SVNDbLib cache management

That i don't know. I run a a vault installation. No experience with dblibs.

High CPU usage whilst idle

I see 18% on 1 core when idle. They have a resource leak somewhere. But i only notice that after a few days of uptime.

Delays in routing, AWFUL routing performance in AD20 (fixed going to advanced settings - and selecting AD19 legacy gloss and route) - lots of ppl on the AD forum complain about that

That's due to the new routing engine introduced in AD20 . Switch the glosser off if you are resource limited. Run it post-layout.

Terrible SCH performance because it keeps hitting a server or something - fix: close Properties and /or Components Tab.

Components tab pulls data from Octopart. If your network is slow you will have sluggish response. There is an option somewhere to disable that functionality. Schematic - data management - advanced button, bottom right in the panel.

In the parts editor - changing pin names is not reflected until you 'select' all the pins after the edit.

I noticed this happens in the pcb library editor too. Especially stuff driven through a script suffers from this. There is something with the call to :robots: for post-edit refresh.
The parts editor is a bolt-on that was originally made by a 3rd party. Probably suffers from the same quirck. I don't use the parts editor. it's faster using the SCHLIB list and massage data in excel.

[olkipukki]

20.0.13 (Build 296) give me so many unexpected and nasty bugs/crashes   
at some point, thought I will log these with Altium, but remember what they did (actually, nothing) with my previous logged issues,  I didn't bother at all, don't want to waste my time.

I'm about to install latest update 20.0.14 (Build 345), wish me a luck. 

[larry42]

I'm sorry, but there is no good excuse for the SCH running slow on a Core i5 - it runs fine doing real-time processing of my Tektronix RSA306B USB3 datastream which is actually what I originally bought the machine for.

I need a compact machine because I cycle to various places with a 15" Retina MBP and this 2017 Surface, and often some T&M equipment as well. Schematic and layout is not normally my day-job - as I'm usually more systems design and lab measurements.

Their octopart implementation is just stupid then, I have a good 300Mbps / 8ms ping connection - they could cache the data - because the designer does not need real-time (to the second) stock status. But even removing this look up makes no difference - still a 100ms - 200ms lag selecting the component unless I close the Properties panel. Altium have acknowledged the bug - but have to wait to 20.1 for a fix! Seeing as my subscription is coming round - I know where I will tell them to stick their sub fees.

So apart from our disagreement on what is a realistic machine to run the software on, it appears that we do agree on the fact that there are quite a few bugs with this software. And Until now I only see more bugs with each release - but in their forums the Altium reps are asking whether users want dumb library features - rather than "hey, we're gonna do a feature freeze and get out %¤# to work as advertised"

[Bud]

This is Altium's modus operandi.... Do not wait for a bug free version, it will never be. You either accept this and use it or do not use it.

[E-Design]

I've learned to only use 1 major release version back (and using the near final release for that). Generally, the new features and updates never justify staying current - at least for me. This method has given me good experiences. I might try the final version of 20 after "21" is released. Waiting for Altium to do anything about bugs is setting yourself up for disappointment.

That, and you've got to have a decent workstation as someone commented above. A decent workstation is a reasonable requirement for a tool like this.

[thm_w]

I've learned to only use 1 major release version back (and using the near final release for that). Generally, the new features and updates never justify staying current - at least for me. This method has given me good experiences. I might try the final version of 20 after "21" is released. Waiting for Altium to do anything about bugs is setting yourself up for disappointment.

Yep, this has been the case for many years. We would never use the latest Solidworks either, wait until SP3 is out then at that point maybe you can consider trying it. SW is a bit riskier as it is not backwards compatible though. At least with Altium you can have different versions installed and in use.

AD19 has some nice added features, but if it were laggy or crashed in the slightest I would go straight back to AD16 and not waste my time.

[Pseudobyte]

For everyone complaining about the "New Routing in AD20". Just remember you can always (for the time being) make it feel a little less new.