Altium Circuit Studio??

[DerekG]

oh so its 3k to buy into, then 500 per year 'renewal' ? ouch

Just under $3K to purchase an infinite licence with 12 months support.

You then pay ~$500 per year if you want ongoing support.

[Zad]

Jeez, they really aren't on this planet are they?

[Mechatrommer]

why this and that CM thread keep popping out? i cant keep it any longer... may i suggest to altium so they can make another offering? its called Studio Maker Altium callsign SM, its job is to make studio in the cloud.

[daedalus]

route a few parts on a pcb, then try and move the parts and traces on the board. Apparently "moving several tracks" is a feature professional board designers wont ever need

(the error "move several tracks not available" seems pretty deliberate)

[Spikee]

Farnell sent me a email regarding the evaluation. I have told them that the CS package is to stripped down from AD to even be better than Eagle.
I also sent him the url to this topic. I recommend everybody that uses the evaluation version of CS to give their honest opinion to Farnell/Altium.

Without feedback they will not have the ability to improve the product.

I was really hoping that CS would become a affordable tool that professionals can use. This is sadly not the case.

[BloodyCactus]

oh so its 3k to buy into, then 500 per year 'renewal' ? ouch

Just under $3K to purchase an infinite licence with 12 months support.

You then pay ~$500 per year if you want ongoing support.

aah ok, but that 'support' is updates, no support, no updates correct? thats how I read it.

[daedalus]

the $500 a year is also needed to use vault, the cloud based parts library. No idea what happens to designs using vault parts if you go off subscription.

Personally I think if we are adopting a beta quality tool, we should be able to buy it on subscription only (no perpetual seat). If Altium really believe in their product, then they will make their $3k over the next 6 years, and probably get AD sales should we upgrade. If the bugs don't get fixed, we are only out $500. There is no way right now I can gamble $3k on it getting fixed

On constructive criticism, it would cost Altium nothing to offer a trade in deal, where you can swap your CS seat for $3k off the purchase of AD. That would make CS much more of a stepping stone then it is at the moment, drive AD sales, and reduce the difficulty of buying CS for your current needs vs AD for your future needs.

[Rigby]

Personally I think if we are adopting a beta quality tool, we should be able to buy it on subscription only (no perpetual seat).  If Altium really believe in their product, then they will make their $3k over the next 6 years, and probably get AD sales should we upgrade.

This is exactly why it costs $3k per seat up front.  They do not believe in it, as it is not an established revenue model.  It is an expensive experiment and they aren't going to even CONSIDER serious improvement work on the application until it has proven its worth by paying for its own development a few dozen times over.

[EEVblog]

http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-73745

US$3368.42
+
US$557.65 / year subscription

Are they serious?

[IconicPCB]

Ohh come on.. US$3368.42 is for the product AND one year subscription.

Anyway US$3368.42 is barely worth anything anyway in real AUD.

[Batang]

Here in Malaysia Element14 has the prices as follows:

1) ALTIUM CIRCUITSTUDIO SUBSCRIPTION - STANDALONE - Price: RM1,752.60 (approx AUD620)

2) ALTIUM CIRCUITSTUDIO COMMERCIAL LICENSE+1YR SUB - Price: RM10,586.46 (approx AUD3,750)


Cheers

[DerekG]

According to this element 14 press release, Circuit Studio will support 3D:

"The benefits for the users will be based on straight-forward schematic capture and project management tools as well as a powerful PCB design engine that supports 3D PCB editing".

http://www.element14.com/community/message/131476/l/altium-and-element14-partner-to-distribute-new-pcb-design-tool-circuitstudio#131476

And according to the post in the element 14 forum "you can open/change/save the libs and the schematics of an Altium Designer Project but the PCB has an other format".

A later post in that forum states that "I was able to successfully export my Altium Designer 14.3 PcbDoc file to a P-CAD ASCII format, open it in Eagle and save it to brd format, then import it into CS".

http://www.element14.com/community/message/140846/l/re-can-circuitstudio-work-with-existing-altium-designer-projects#140846

And according to this post in the element 14 forum, the AD user will continue with his AD subscription as Circuit Studio does not offer all the shortcuts that speeds up his design time.

http://www.element14.com/community/message/140043/l/circuitstudio--first-impressions#140043

[Wilksey]

It does support 3D, it doesn't appear to be able to export though.

The best option I can see is to take a screen grab of the 3D window, but that will just give you image data rather than any useful CAD data.

The new ribbon menu is quite refreshing, certainly when going back to AD15 and seeing the myriad of menu items, but I guess they are there for a good reason, took a while to navigate through it all when I first started using AD!

I would rather pay for the platinum version of Labcenters' Proteus suite rather than some obscure version of AD, the only thing I can see going for it is the ribbon, but it's more of a visual and navigation nicety than necessity really.

[DerekG]

I would rather pay for the platinum version of Labcenters' Proteus suite rather than ...... AD

I fully agree. Proteus is my favourite design suite. It is logical, powerful, mature & pretty much bug free. I actually consider it much better value for the majority of users over Altium Designer.

I'm surprised that so many people complain about the cost of Altium when there are two other excellent packages available for a fraction of the cost - Proteus & DipTrace (which leaped ahead last year with the release of 2.4).

I use all 3 packages for work. You rarely find a bug in Proteus & if you do, it is normally fixed within a month.

I remember the full screen scrolling problem in Protel in 1996. It was still NOT fixed by Altium in 2007. That's 11 years. Unfortunately that's par-for-the-course with Altium.

ST MicroElectronics (STM) also think that Proteus is a pretty good design platform.

Their chief engineer (Gael Salles) even had this to say about Proteus:

"We use the Proteus suite regularly and we really appreciate both the simple user interface and the number of features. When we have faced a limit or a problem, the support response has always been fast and focused. Proteus is a good solution for reasonably complex design."

http://www.labcenter.com/other/feedback.cfm

[Lukas]

Just for refrence: I've been to the 'embedded world' trade show this week and asked a guy from altium about circuitmaker/circuitstudio. His answer: sorry, can't tell you anything, please go to farnell. They've had no clue either...

[Spikee]

I have a CM beta invite. They wanted me to sign nda etc
To much work tbh...

[DerekG]

I have a CM beta invite. They wanted me to sign nda etc
To much work tbh...

Sounds like CircuitMaker has not been well received & Altium want to mitigate any further public criticism of their new product.

More & more looking like Altium will not stick with CircuitMaker into the medium/longer term.

Especially since they have now entered the Circuit Studio agreement with Farnell (that costs real dollars).

Inside info is that CadSoft Computer GmbH has been advised by Newark Corporation that they must financially stand on their own two feet. Story is that staff cuts at EAGLE are now on the cards. I wonder where this will leave future EAGLE development?

[miguelvp]

Too much conjecture about CM, they are soon to be in beta 2

I have not seen any indication that "Altium will not stick with CircuitMaker into the medium/longer term"

[Bud]

http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-73745

US$3368.42

And for this price they did not include a Gerber viewer ??
 

Their assumption is one can enjoy viewing the generated Gerbers in text mode I guess.

[skipjackrc4]

I wonder where this will leave future EAGLE development?

I wouldn't be too concerned with future EAGLE development, since it's been stuck in the mid-90's for the past twenty years.

[DerekG]

I wouldn't be too concerned with future EAGLE development, since it's been stuck in the mid-90's for the past twenty years.

I suspect this is why Farnell approached Altium to develop & supply them exclusively the new Circuit Studio software.

[Bud]

Someone please convince me this is a feature and not a bug. I am trying to connect points A and B with a wire, and it removes the junction at  the A point and changes to unconnected crossover to point B !
 
Tried holding Shift/Alt/Ctrl when placing the A->B wire, seems there  is no way in damn thing to make an X- junction

Cant believe this sh!t...


EDIT: ...unless you do it as R1/R2/R3 common connection shows, i.e. two T-junctions, but this is ridiculous

[Rigby]

I believe that 'X' junctions are bad form, and are to be avoided in schematics.  This is why Altium doesn't like them.

[RF-Tech]

Bud, I know that in Altium there is an option under: dxp\preferences\schematic\general - in the options area it has: 'break wires at autojunction', you can check or uncheck this to see if fixes your problem - but not having used circuit studio I don't know if they are using the same features.
-S

[free_electron]

Cant believe this sh!t...

basic drafting rules

- crossing lines NEVER connect
- T junctions ALWAYS connect

simple.. no ?

altium can convert cross junctions to  t junctions but only does so when opening a file in an older format.

i'm hoping they will remove the free floating 'dot' altogether form the program. that will force people to draw clean schematics.