Altium is killing off perpetual AD

[Analog]

Altium is killing the perpetual license and support for perpetual licenses. Altium has been putting new stuff into pro and 365 for a while so I guess this is to be expected.

[ataradov]

Is there a link?

There was this not too long ago https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/altium-offers-perpetual-licenses-again/

[Analog]

I learned about it from my Altium account rep. I don't feel right about posting his email. My subscription is about to expire so he was giving me information and options.

[thm_w]

You realize there is a Pro perpetual license right? The price difference is nothing: https://www.altium.com/altium-designer/licensing

I learned about it from my Altium account rep. I don't feel right about posting his email. My subscription is about to expire so he was giving me information and options.

So you don't think they will say whatever is necessary to get you to renew your subscription?
If you get value out of the cloud features then pay subscription, if you are not, there is no need to pay it.

[ajb]

There's been so much volatility in Altium's pricing and license models lately it's hard to keep track of.  I wouldn't be totally shocked if Renesas decided to go subscription-only, and that definitely fits with some of the language in their press release from a couple months ago.  But that acquisition was only just executed yesterday (5/30), apparently, and I wouldn't expect anything like that to happen quite so soon.  If you plan to keep using Altium for the next year or so, then keeping your subscription active is probably a good move in case they pull a VMware and suddenly decide to stop offering subscriptions for perpetual licenses.  Or if you're okay with whatever version you're on currently, you can just stop paying for support and keep your perpetual licenses as they are going forward.

[Bud]

Altium is killing the perpetual license and support for perpetual licenses.

Unless they mean no issuance of New perpetual licenses, Altium would invent a redefinition of the term "perpetual".

[nctnico]

  Or if you're okay with whatever version you're on currently, you can just stop paying for support and keep your perpetual licenses as they are going forward.

But what if they shut down the servers which deal with the perpetual roaming licenses which are out of subscription? If that gets shut down, a lot of companies can no longer transfer licenses from one PC to the other which makes it easy to share a license between workers and /or home and office PC. Worst, when the PC dies, the license may be gone with it.

[asmi]

I've just extended a support sub for my permanent license. Gave me a good discount too.

[thm_w]

  Or if you're okay with whatever version you're on currently, you can just stop paying for support and keep your perpetual licenses as they are going forward.

But what if they shut down the servers which deal with the perpetual roaming licenses which are out of subscription? If that gets shut down, a lot of companies can no longer transfer licenses from one PC to the other which makes it easy to share a license between workers and /or home and office PC. Worst, when the PC dies, the license may be gone with it.

If you can generate the offline .alf license file then you are good. But I don't know what the requirements are for that currently.
https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/standalone-licensing?version=22#working-offline

[jc101]

From the Altium forum, this is a mail someone received...

Starting July 1st, 2024, Altium will no longer offer new or renewal subscriptions for perpetual licenses.   Altium will honor previously purchased subscriptions through the end of their term but new or renewal subscriptions for perpetual licenses will no longer be available.   This decision aligns with industry trends and reflects the significant value our customers now realize from Altium 365. This change will reduce your upfront costs when adding Altium Designer capacity and enable Altium to invest more predictably in product development.   Prior to July 1st, 2024 you can still renew your subscription for one final 12-month contract.

Sadly, generating local licence files is mostly gone now, too. Licences are On-Demand rather than Standalone. I found this out when I tried to generate a standalone licence. I once could, but sometime in the past couple of years, I've become On-Demand. To get the standalone back was many, many pennies. 

The key is that perpetual licences can no longer have subscriptions to maintain currency. If you want updates beyond your current subscription term, it's SAAS or bust.

At the current prices, that is at least a 50% uplift annually per seat for all Altium users who wish to keep up to date and use any features above the standard level.

Impressive work that.

[Psi]

I've just extended a support sub for my permanent license. Gave me a good discount too.

Maybe because they knew it was ending and you would have to pay more for a new license too. 
Never underestimate the lengths companies will go to so they can bite the hands that feeds.
Eventually there's no fingers left on either hand and they starve, but it takes a while.

[jc101]

I haggled a 3 year deal, so in theory good to end of 2026. Though I suspect they could walk away from that if they want to.

What happens then? Well I suppose I have time to plan an exit strategy.

[Psi]

3 year deal for support or for the license though?

[jc101]

I have a perpetual licence, the deal was a 3 year subscription.

[nctnico]

Maybe Altium creates this uncertainty on purpose to make people feel they should pay to jump on the bandwagon... Meanwhile Reneses can show to their shareholders that buying Altium was a good idea.

[laseralex]

Maybe Altium creates this uncertainty on purpose to make people feel they should pay to jump on the bandwagon.

I will have the opposite effect for me - I'm going to stop giving them money.

If I switch to term-based licensing, my all my data becomes hostage.  If I ever stop paying, I will lose access to all the designs I make between now and the day I stop paying.  Imagine that I pay for the next 5 years and then stop.  Then 10 years from now a supplier drops the SOIC package for a part and I want to switch the  footprint to TSSOP.  I'm forced to buy a year-long license to do 15 minutes of work - and how much will they charge for that?  Current price is ~$4k but what if they decide to raise it to $10k?

On the other hand if I stop giving them money now I will always be able to create new designs, edit old designs, and have full control over my designs.  IN addition to not getting feature enhancements, I'll lose out on the database backend behind ActiveBOM which has been worth the cost for annual maintenance.  But I would much rather lose real-time component availability data than lose the ability to open and edit years worth of designs.

[laseralex]

I have a perpetual licence, the deal was a 3 year subscription.

Good to know.  Do you mind sharing what % discount you got relative to a single-year license?  I'm thinking I might try to do this with my seats, which are currently good through the end of October.

[jc101]

I have a perpetual licence, the deal was a 3 year subscription.

Good to know.  Do you mind sharing what % discount you got relative to a single-year license?  I'm thinking I might try to do this with my seats, which are currently good through the end of October.

It was over 40% off the standard price for the 3-year deal, which was invoiced annually, from memory.  I'd have to go back and look at the many quotes they sent me in December last year to be exact.

Compared to that, come 2026, I suspect it will be an unaffordable jump to continue.  Unless it all changes again by then, of course.

[laseralex]

It was over 40% off the standard price for the 3-year deal, which was invoiced annually, from memory.

Great deal!  I'll pay for a 3-year maintenance extension this month if they'll offer a similar deal.  But upon further reading, it sounds like they're only allowing a single 12-month extension at this point, with no further extensions allowed.  :-(

[jc101]

Not if they haven’t told you via e-mail about the new policy.
It is really a case asking them if they want some money or no money. They generally will go for the non zero option.

[asmi]

I told my sales rep that I didn't feel like I got enough out of last year's sub, and if this trend will continue, I will stop renewing it. I'm sure she would've mentioned if this was the last extension.

[ajawamnet]

I told my sales rep that I didn't feel like I got enough out of last year's sub, and if this trend will continue, I will stop renewing it. I'm sure she would've mentioned if this was the last extension.

It is from what the regional manager told me.  So if you have a perpetual or standalone you can no longer get support for it.  Going forward, if you get a perpetual for the new version it will cost you the full price - plus you get no upgrades.  Just whatever version is there the time you buy it.  It equated it to buying a car. 

If you want support, upgrades/patches you have to go term.   Which is over $4K per year.   I'm wondering if this is the way they got their valuation up for the acquisition. 

Honestly, I did over 1,500 designs with Ad 6.9 up unit 2015.  One won this award:
https://www.afsoc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/162816/benchmark-dragon-spear-program-earns-william-j-perry-award/
Where:
"According to the award citation, the Dragon Spear program delivered the capability ahead of schedule, under cost and with greater capability than first theorized. The team's innovative and unconventional approach enabled the fielding of next generation precision strike capabilities in months and at 20 percent unit cost. Eight MC-130W aircraft were delivered just 15 months after production funding was approved and several more will be fielded by the summer - completing the line-up."

So it's the engineer.  I seriously look at AD and what I've now gotten since ad6.9

- Squiggly wiggly push and shove which is kinda cool, but many times I have to revert back to the way I did stuff.

- A newfangled layer stack manager that does a bit of field solving so I don't have to go to Saturn so much.  But the rules... well, if I base them on an impedance layer stack - and then change the layer stack - I just get an error in the Design Rules.  It doesn't update the rules when I change the stack geometry.

- I did get selection filters which are cool.  But it's like the only thing I really got that woks correctly.

I did LOSE a bunch of feature that used to be in AD17.   
- The loss of Modal Dialogs during placement.  I got a Properties panel similar to what Cadence has.  Which sucks.

- When dragging a group of symbols, if erroneous connections occurred, AD17 would flag them.  Nope not no mo' - just a green check mark even if a bunch of connections short out.

- a Constraint Manager that appears - again -  to be an attempt by Altium to woo Cadence users. trying to get those big companies.  Well first problem is:
"Big companies also do ASIC's.  They use Cadence tools for that.  They get the Cadence PCB design tools for free.  I know.  The old regional manager of Altium - whom I worked with back in the late 1980's when he was at PADS - called me one day in 2015 shouting, "I CAN'T COMPETE WITH FREE!!!" and told me this.  I mentioned on the forum and indeed other users stated the same thing. 

Second problem - a Constraint Manager sucks.  Big time.  Why?  I use have to use Cadence. Was an ORCAD user before I switched to Protel.  ORCAD screwed up the Winblows port so bad I had no choice.

 My one mil client had to go with Cadence since back in the mid 2010's since Altium moved to China and during that time they started what would be come the cloud services.  Well, one of the mil installations firewalls caught Altium trying to connect to a server in mainland China. 

Stop Buy.  Immediately.  I had the group I work with set to buy 20 seats of Altium.  Nope. The guy at the base calls - "they moved to China!!"  I was like WTF?  Yep it was true.  Our fearless forum leader mentioned it was to get cheaper coders.  I also suspect they were trying to convince Chinese companies to use legit seats - since most consumer electronics at the time were being designed with cracked copies of Altium - even Protel 99 SE.

So I have to use a Constraint Manager in Cadence. 

Problems with that are shown in these two videos as to why schematic directives are superior to a CM:

https:\\www.ajawamnet.com\noconstraintmgrforme.mp4  where I show how a directive makes it easy to push rules - even for nets unnamed by the designer - to the PCB.  I don't want to have to name every little 2 pin net to make it a certain width.

which also leads to:

https:\\www.ajawamnet.com\reuse.mp4  - As shown in this vid, all the rules come across when copy-pasting circuts - even into new designs.

More stuff here:

ability to import newer KiCAD files - lot of people complaining about this on the forum:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258412/834949
It gets more critical since many mfg's are starting to send ref designs with it.  Might be due to them hiring fresh kids out of school and that's what they are using:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258233
I see less and less offers from Indeed and Linked In for PCB work using Altium.

Need to update that kicad thing...

My client wrote a partial converter:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258412/834949

---------------------------------------------

The regression from AD17 of the layer drawing order not being respected when moving a component
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258342/834186
video here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/834186/layerdrawingorderAGAIN.mp4

-------------------------------------------------


And the lost feature of connection lines jumping to vias/tracks when moving components/net elements - Even your previous long term employee is asking about this:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/252264
Video here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/801406/connectionlinenotjumpingtoclosestnetelement.mp4


------------------------------------------------

All the issues with Constraint Manager and the issue where even your Chief Ecosystem Officer & Head of Cloud (Nexar) Business Unit - Ted Pawela - Couldn't understand what was wrong with that business model and how it breaks the ability of Standard users from collaborating with those using a Pro License.

See this link:
Renesas to Acquire PCB Design Software Leader Altium to Make Electronics Design Accessible to Broader Market and Accelerate Innovation https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258287/833967


Some reasons here why it's not worth using anyway:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/833347/reuse.mp4
https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/833347/noconstraintmgrforme.mp4


-------------------------------------------------

And now they broke the forward compatibility with Camtastic:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258321/834110

-------------------------------------------------

And development on the  the new split plane pour seems to have stagnated and has some funky errors:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258207/835278
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/257670/830500
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/253291/806905
Video here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/833355/betasplitplanepour.mp4


NOTE - in the latest 24, they removed this totally instead of fixing it.  Sad, 'casue it was really nice.  I don't like using signal layers with copper pours; most boards I do have dozens of split planes.  I hate working on something that looks like the Partridge Family bus - https://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/ny/NYASHpartridge_arehart3_640x310.jpg


-------------------------------------------------

And the fact that when you waive a violation it doesn't stay waived after you close the PCB file:
this one has been around for years... https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/249810/835252
video here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/835252/waivesNOTwaiving.mp4

-------------------------------------------------

And the regression that when you have slots and holes with the same routing/drill size, the thermals get all confused:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258426/
sample there as well as this vid:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/834705/holesizethermalsilly.mp4


-------------------------------------------------

That holes respect the layer drawing order. 
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258680/836271
video here:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/holes.mp4

-------------------------------------------------

After editing for a while, PCB Library editing - even with a small library - it just gets really slow to respond. Closing Altium and reopening will fix it.
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258677
video here:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/slowlibraryediting-memoryleak.mp4


-------------------------------------------------

So many issues with vector based files.  Sad, since most Windows programs - even free seem to have no problem with it. And old versions of Altium had a lot less issues.
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258655  vid: https://www.ajawamnet.com/goodlord-IdontknowifIcantakethisanymore.mp4
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258656/836120 vid: https://www.ajawamnet.com/cantplacevectorgraphic.mp4

Another user points out:
"https://bugcrunch.live.altium.com/#/bug/14016

There's your answer, Altium doesn't care and won't fix it.

I was under the impression that they fixed it one point  https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/238465/729972

-------------------------------------------------

We need a Preference > PCB Editor > Defaults for the Layer Stack Table
You have to reset it every time... that gets annoying... There's one for the Drill Table.


-------------------------------------------------

Layer Drawing Order is not respected when moving an object. See vid. Also, after moving something like a pad, pad holes do not respect the layer drawing order. I don't know how many times I've posted about this, but it really makes using Altium 17 much nicer than what a version that a user pays maintenance for. That just doesn't seem right.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/834186/layerdrawingorderAGAIN.mp4


-------------------------------------------------

There's also a critical Split Planes error, where non-connected regions are not caught by the DRC. https://bugcrunch.live.altium.com/#/bug/22977  Almost lead to a user junking USD50k worth of assembled boards.


---------------------------

Unions in libraries, can't break them in PCBlib editor

https://bugcrunch.live.altium.com/#/bug/8538

https://bugcrunch.live.altium.com/#/bug/11983


 So I've been "Shadow Banned" by Altium's official forum.  It turns out that if I'm having to stay with 24 it doesn't really matter.

My regional did say he's getting a lot of push back on the no updates/renewals for perpetual licensees.   I guess we'll see. 




 

[Eternauta]

Just received an email from Altium. Permanent licenses will no longer be sold starting July 1, 2024.

I quote from the message, “This decision is part of an overall strategy to align our offering with industry best practices and our customers' expectations. Moving to a subscription-based model allows us to continuously improve our products, offering more frequent updates, enhanced functionality, and more effective technical support in line with evolving market needs."   

[8086]

Just received an email from Altium. Permanent licenses will no longer be sold starting July 1, 2024.

I quote from the message, “This decision is part of an overall strategy to align our offering with industry best practices and our customers' expectations. Moving to a subscription-based model allows us to continuously improve our products, offering more frequent updates, enhanced functionality, and more effective technical support in line with evolving market needs."   

I received the same email. Very disappointing.

In light of this development, I'm curious to know the forum's opinion/suggestions on alternative tools for mid to advanced schematic/PCB. Any thoughts?

[jc101]

Not had the mail yet. 

I guess that means the entire current perpetual customer base, who have an active subscription, is looking at a 50% uplift annually compared to the maintenance subscription costs per year.

For those in the UK, could this be the Gerald Ratner moment for Altium, in terms of how to impress your user base?

[tszaboo]

Not had the mail yet. 

I guess that means the entire current perpetual customer base, who have an active subscription, is looking at a 50% uplift annually compared to the maintenance subscription costs per year.

For those in the UK, could this be the Gerald Ratner moment for Altium, in terms of how to impress your user base?

I wonder if I still get emails for an elapsed license that I have to "buy the perpetual again" if I don't keep paying for the subscription now.
But yeah, it's ridiculous that they want for a software every year the same amount as it was for a perpetual license a decade ago.

[ajawamnet]

Term licenses limit the licensee's/user's ( in the case of something like Autodesk's rental policy) access to their intellectual property and forces one into a partnership of sorts that seems unconscionable.  It's so one sided. 

An interesting paper on this - "The Evolving Doctrine of Unconscionability in Modern Electronic Contracting"
 https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1675&context=student_scholarship

It's like the shiny shoes business guys are forcibly wedging themselves between users and their data.  That's not cool. 

As stated in this document: https://www.fenwick.com/FenwickDocuments/Patent_Licensing.pdf

by the law firm that did the first shrinkwrap software license for Jobs and Wozniak in 1975, on page 9:
"
“Quiet Enjoyment”
Licensees, having paid for the right to use licensed technology, generally seek to ensure that
nothing interferes with the benefits they have received. For example, licensees are concerned
with their ability to obtain assistance from the licensor in fixing defects that are discovered in
the technology, to have the right to fix the defects themselves if the licensor is unable to do
so, to obtain periodic upgrades and other maintenance services from the licensor, to transfer
their rights if they sell their business and to continue enjoying the technology even if the
licensor becomes bankrupt.
"


Note that under various sections of the USC, a licensor basically loses a lot of the rights to the licensed product.  For instance, in the sale of a record - which is interesting since the USC uses this analogy for computer software - Led Zeppelin can not prevent the sale of the original copies that is in the collection of an estate.  The law limits the licensor to protection fro pirating and that's about it. 

Licenses seemingly should fall under First Sale Doctrine.  https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine

John Deere tried pulling that shit with limiting owners of their products the right to repair their equipment.  The "Right to Repair" -  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_repair

Note the mention of DRM...

Now, here's the difference that has yet to be tested in law.  That citing of DRM usually involves a passive activity.  Listening to Led Zeppelin.  Using a John Deere tractor.  OK...

But with software AS A TOOL - something that a licensee uses to create THEIR OWN Intellectual Property - this falls under seemingly different consideration.  The aforementioned having to maintain a relationship - in perpetuity - with a licensor so that a licensee can enjoy the fruits of their work... their IP. 

Recently, there are stories of the legality of Non-competes and certain rights a skilled employee has to practice their craft without being encumbered to a single entity that they currently work for.  You cannot enslave some one; ie. prevent them  - without compensation - from earning a living with their skills.  That's a violation of the 14th amendment. 

Of course there are limitations to prevent things like IP theft from the previous employer. 

OK...

So far we've covered what a license is and how it's typically limits the licensor.

But now think about this - as previously stated, all of this is a blatant attempt to build a business with a passive activity that denies the rights of access to a licensee's IP with a forced, construed partnership...

So what does that mean?

Now I'm sure all of you that have actually read a EULA - which is questionable in the first place since it's agreed to under duress, another issue that makes the agreement very one-sided.   In those EULA's the software licensor usually has a liability clause that states if you use their software to make a product that eventually - due to the licensee's ignorance/fault - cause harm or death, they are only liable for a paltry amount ($200 or similar).

This limitation of liability is usually reserved for things under the first sale doctrine.  A car company is not responsible for you getting drunk and killing a mother and her child.

So in a very one-sided way, they themselves are trying to invoke a first sale. 

But now - since you as a user have to maintain a relationship with them to access your IP - they kinda nullify that since they are acting as an implied partner.  Partners are typically liable for the actions of the partnership, including debts. Debts, such as lawsuits.

And as brought up to me during a conversation, if I do discover a safety issue and no longer maintain a relationship with the licensor, I can be prevented from rectifying that issue due to the lack of participation of the licensor.

So it comes down to a simple contractual obligation from both sides - You have your limited liability, I have my right to access my data in perpetuity.  Simple, two sided, fair solution.


Again, I'm guessing that post Vernor v. Autodesk, this was a consideration to restructure Autodesk into a "rental" scheme.

Now the problem of a rental scheme for the user of that rented software.  That user is now investing a lot of time and money utilizing that rental property - a very unique rental property unlike some retail lease where a company may invest a large sum of money to build out a leased property.  The uniqueness is due to the fact that the investment is now tied to a proprietary binary format - so a user can't easily take their IP/business model to any other "storefront" - it's stuck in that renter's format.   

It would be like investing $30,000 in some house you rent.  All that effort would be gone once the rental agreement ends - whether due to business reasons or the renter no longer offering the rented property.

Now one can argue that a renter can just export their IP/data in some third party format.  But again that would most probably entail a significant duplication of effort to get back to where they were.   

I for one, want "Quiet Enjoyment"  -  I want a guarantee that I can access my IP in perpetuity. I worked long and hard to develop that, spent considerable sums of money to obtain it, and I want to limit the risk of not being able to access it. 

[ajb]

I see that their US site no longer offers perpetual subscriptions on the store page, only 1-3 year term license.  There's a measly $25 discount for paying annually vs monthly ($5495 vs $5520), and no discount at all for 3ys vs 1.  But if I go to the license management page, it looks like I can still add perpetual seats+sub for $9775+$3150.  Sure would be nice if they sent out some sort of email to EVERYONE with more than a few weeks notice if they really are killing off subs for existing perpetual licenses.  I would be tempted to renew one last time if that were the case, but I'm even less inclined to give them any more money if they can't give their customers that bare minimum of respect. 

  Or if you're okay with whatever version you're on currently, you can just stop paying for support and keep your perpetual licenses as they are going forward.

But what if they shut down the servers which deal with the perpetual roaming licenses which are out of subscription? If that gets shut down, a lot of companies can no longer transfer licenses from one PC to the other which makes it easy to share a license between workers and /or home and office PC. Worst, when the PC dies, the license may be gone with it.

That would be a big problem!  I suspect a lot of their customers would be calling up their lawyers if Altium effectively terminates a 'perpetual' license without providing a way to migrate to an offline license. 

[nctnico]

  Or if you're okay with whatever version you're on currently, you can just stop paying for support and keep your perpetual licenses as they are going forward.

But what if they shut down the servers which deal with the perpetual roaming licenses which are out of subscription? If that gets shut down, a lot of companies can no longer transfer licenses from one PC to the other which makes it easy to share a license between workers and /or home and office PC. Worst, when the PC dies, the license may be gone with it.

That would be a big problem!  I suspect a lot of their customers would be calling up their lawyers if Altium effectively terminates a 'perpetual' license without providing a way to migrate to an offline license.

Somebody posted a link which explains how to switch Altium to use an offsite license. So this should be a way out in case you want to continue using your current Altium version with a perpetual license.

[jc101]

I have moved (well, I was moved; I didn't ask for it) from a standalone license to an on-demand one a few years ago.  I asked about getting a standalone licence ability back again, and they said sure, give us £4,000, and we can make that happen for you.

[laseralex]

I guess that means the entire current perpetual customer base, who have an active subscription, is looking at a 50% uplift annually compared to the maintenance subscription costs per year.

Here in the states it's a 93% increase: from $2,195 to $4,235 per year.

I'm opting for a 100% decrease, from $2,195 per year to $0 per year.  My current version works fine.  If I ever really NEED something in the newer versions (unlikely) I can start a new TLL at that time.  But I doubt they'll release any features I can't live without in the next 5 years, and that means $22,000 of savings for me over that period.

[jc101]

You're right; my maths is pants.

In the UK, it is almost double the price, too.

That's quite a chunk of the customer base who are going to be rabbits of negative euphoria.

I wonder if my current 3-year subscription renewal will be honoured, as they are shafting the entire customer base pretty effectively at the moment.

[laseralex]

I wonder if my current 3-year subscription renewal will be honoured, as they are shafting the entire customer base pretty effectively at the moment.

They have no legal option to NOT honour it.  They can't take away something you've already paid for.

[jc101]

I wonder if my current 3-year subscription renewal will be honoured, as they are shafting the entire customer base pretty effectively at the moment.

They have no legal option to NOT honour it.  They can't take away something you've already paid for.

Well, I'm invoiced annually, I didn't pay up front.  So I guess there may be a clause in there somewhere...

[Spark-Doctor]

I got my email this morning and this is what they are offering me,

For the remainder of June we have 4 exclusive offers which I’m pleased to share with you today:
•   Perpetual Altium Designer license with 1 year subscription included (up to 35% off license, 10% off subscription)
•   Perpetual Altium Designer license with 3 years subscription included (up to 35% discount on license, 35% discount on subscription)
•   Time-based licenses for 12 months (up to 15% discount)
•   Time-based licenses for 36 months (up to 35% discount)

So i can buy a 3 year extension for my current Perpetual licence and they will offer support for those 3 years but only if i purchase in the next month. I am assuming they will want the full 3 year fee upfront.

It just seems a clever way to inflate their cash balance sheet.

[jc101]

My 3-year subscription is invoiced annually; I'd not have bothered if I had to pay upfront.

With the current change, I will no longer be an Altium customer in 2026. I may as well keep going until then, but after that, it will be time to walk elsewhere.

I was going to start using the A365 for some stuff, but I may not bother now, as it's dead for me when the current maintenance sub expires at the end of 2026.

[laseralex]

I got my email this morning and this is what they are offering me,

For the remainder of June we have 4 exclusive offers which I’m pleased to share with you today:
•   Perpetual Altium Designer license with 1 year subscription included (up to 35% off license, 10% off subscription)
•   Perpetual Altium Designer license with 3 years subscription included (up to 35% discount on license, 35% discount on subscription)
•   Time-based licenses for 12 months (up to 15% discount)
•   Time-based licenses for 36 months (up to 35% discount)

So i can buy a 3 year extension for my current Perpetual licence and they will offer support for those 3 years but only if i purchase in the next month. I am assuming they will want the full 3 year fee upfront.

It just seems a clever way to inflate their cash balance sheet.

How odd that they are offering you a perpetual license with 3-year subscription when existing license holders aren't able to buy a 3-year subscription.

[laseralex]

With the current change, I will no longer be an Altium customer in 2026. I may as well keep going until then, but after that, it will be time to walk elsewhere.

I see no reason to stop using Altium.  I have 10+ years of designs in their format, and it does what I need it to.  I'd continue paying subscription if that was an option, because they do come out with neat stuff now and again.  But there is zero chance I'll switch to TLL - I can't risk losing access to my designs if Altium decides to quadruple the annual price.

I was going to start using the A365 for some stuff, but I may not bother now, as it's dead for me when the current maintenance sub expires at the end of 2026.

I'm SO glad I never did anything in A365.  I kept almost trying it, but I never saw a real advantage.  It's great that I don't have to now try to extract my files back to local.

[laseralex]

I just noticed something insidious in Altium's letter regarding the end of subscriptions for perpetual licenses.

My letter includes the following offer:

We are offering a special conversion package for you:
1. Cost-Effective Conversion: Convert to a Term-Based License at the cost of your current subscription, approximately 50% less than the current published annual price for Term-Based Licenses.
2. 3-Year Price Lock: Have the option to renew the Term-Based Licenses at the same price for two additional years. After this period ends, renewals will be at the current published price.

Switching to a term-based license for a few years already sounded like a bad deal to me: my fear was that they would change the file format to break backward compatibility, so if I switched over for the next few years (as long as pricing remained stable), I would then be unable to open any of my designs made in that period with my existing perpetual license. I could lose access to my next few years of designs!

Then I realized that it is likely much worse than that. The language in the letter says convert, which makes me believe that your perpetual license goes away and you have only the time-limited license which it has been converted into. So if you want to continue to have access to your designs, even ones made 10 years ago, you are forced into $4,500 annual payments (or whatever they decide to charge, since you can't say no.)

Big yikes!

[jc101]

I could use some of the A365 stuff, just to make life a bit easier.  The bidirectional Mcad link to Fusion360 would save me a bit of time.

Indeed, I could keep at the level of my perpetual licence come 2026, but I'd have to go back to v22 or something as mine isn't a Pro perpetual licence—they would switch off things like MultiBoard on any newer version. I couldn't even open an old project, so I'm told.

The whole standrard/Pro introduction, licence changes, cost hikes, leave a real bitter taste.  At a recent event the Altium reps were keen to make the point they want to broaden the Altium user base.  It seems higher ups in the company are hell bent on a different strategy.

[ajawamnet]

Evil Software Companies.  Since I've been shadow banned on their forum, I made this.

Interesting comments from some of the users there about me being shadow banned...

 Any oldtimer will recognize it.

[tszaboo]

I wonder if my current 3-year subscription renewal will be honoured, as they are shafting the entire customer base pretty effectively at the moment.

They have no legal option to NOT honour it.  They can't take away something you've already paid for.

Coming to think of it, in the EU any court would rip a new one if they change the licensing like this.

[PlainName]

I wonder if my current 3-year subscription renewal will be honoured, as they are shafting the entire customer base pretty effectively at the moment.

They have no legal option to NOT honour it.  They can't take away something you've already paid for.

Coming to think of it, in the EU any court would rip a new one if they change the licensing like this.

Not necessarily. It would take an incentivised user to waste time and LOTS of money taking them to court to get anywhere. Much like patents, where it is entirely up to the patent holder alone to stump up and take on a multi-national that has megabucks to throw at minnows in order to discourage them. It would take at least another large company to do that, rather than you or me, and they would likely be happily on subscription anyway.

EU is only going to think about looking at this if they get lots of complaints, and then it will be years before anything happens, and then a one-off 'fine' of a few thousand Euros makes it all go away.

[ajb]

I emailed our account manager to ask what was going on, and received the attached.  Per this, new perpetual licenses will continue to be available, but subscriptions for perpetual licenses will not be sold after July 1.  So if you want updates, you have to convert to a term license (or buy a new term license) at twice the price of the old subscription or pay the full price for a new perpetual license every time you want to update. Existing perpetual licenses can have their subscriptions renewed for one more year before July 1.

Without a term license, you no longer have access to Altium 365, so if you've bought into that at all, get ready to pay up I guess.

Converting a perpetual license to TLL gets you up to three years at the current subscription price (so ~$2k/yr savings?), but without a perpetual license you're REALLY locked in for the long haul.  Seems a much better idea to add a new term license and keep the perpetual in reserve. 

[jc101]

Thanks for that.

So, in summary, the cost of Altium is going up.  Substantially.  Nearly doubling.

So, what was a subscription of ~£2,600 a year becomes £4,930 a year, assuming the capital cost of the perpetual licence is not taken into account.  The bulk of Altium costs move to revenue budgets rather than capital.

Given only time-limited licences will have access to A365, you can see where the development is headed.  Not a roadmap that looks appealing I have to admit.

WOW, 

Some interesting discussions ahead in many companies when someone has to go and ask the boss to double the budget.

[trevwhite]

I am hoping I have the correct understanding that this is the last month they will offer subs for perpetual licenses. Thanks to jc101 I have negotiated a deal. I am just not actually sure if I want it or not. I definitely am not interested in turning my perpetual license into a TLT. 

[jc101]

If you can extend your subscription for a 3-year deal with a great discount, you're golden until 2027. After that, you still have the perpetual, so you can just carry on using it. Without anything A365, which is fair enough, it will cost you nothing to continue, and Altium will lose revenue.

Things may have changed again by then.

None of the new converting licences start until July 1, so grab what you can and squeeze in the best discount available. In the longer term, it's Altium's loss.

For me, it's the decision to embrace A365 and get stuck with needing it, or dip in as and when, and see what the picture is before my 3-year sub deal expires.

[trevwhite]

I got 3 year subs offered at 50% discount. So it's £1060+VAT per year.


Several months back I decided to check how useful Altium is when used with Git outside of Altium. The software obviously prefers you use 365 but Using Github Desktop I was able to use version control no issue with all my projects. I can commit from within Altium okay but it moaned about logging in to Github to push the commits so I would just open Github desktop and push from there but normal commits worked just fine.


Using this along with 3rd party library utils like Calestial and Altium Library loader I also found I could manage my library just fine. I think Altium is more geared towards bigger companies and likely those companies see a lot of value in the library structure. For single users it's maybe just overkill. When 365 merged libraries it completely confused me where footprints were and where the actual library was. Suddenly there were all these different methods of managing libraries.


So that brings me to wondering what features I am getting for the subs if I am not too fussed about their cloud services. It has been relatively stable for me in use.

[ajb]

If you can extend your subscription for a 3-year deal with a great discount, you're golden until 2027. After that, you still have the perpetual, so you can just carry on using it. Without anything A365, which is fair enough, it will cost you nothing to continue, and Altium will lose revenue.

According to the PDF I shared above, they are only allowing one final year of subscription for existing perpetual licenses. Presumably if you already have a contract for subscription through 2026 they will have to honor that.

If they’re offering anything that looks like a 3yr subscription renewal, I would make sure it’s VERY clear that your existing perpetual license isn’t getting converted before agreeing!

For me, it's the decision to embrace A365 and get stuck with needing it, or dip in as and when, and see what the picture is before my 3-year sub deal expires.

I sure wouldn’t want to become any more reliant on altium than we already are after all this. Major increases in cost for no additional to capabilities in the foreseeable future, and we’re only finding out three weeks ahead of these changes because we specifically asked? That’s not how a company that really cares about their customers acts. Given how hard they’re pushing to lock people into their ecosystem, I fully expect them to continue squeezing their customers for more money over the next few years.   Even if I wanted to stay on subscription, there's no way I'd want to give up a perpetual license, because eventually they'll squeeze too hard and I want to retain access to the years and years of work we've done without them extorting me for it.

[ajb]

Several months back I decided to check how useful Altium is when used with Git outside of Altium. The software obviously prefers you use 365 but Using Github Desktop I was able to use version control no issue with all my projects. I can commit from within Altium okay but it moaned about logging in to Github to push the commits so I would just open Github desktop and push from there but normal commits worked just fine.

Yeah, things work just fine with external version control, and even the built-in comparison tool works (as well as it ever seemed to, anyway) with an external git client. 

So that brings me to wondering what features I am getting for the subs if I am not too fussed about their cloud services.

That's been the big question for a while now!  There are so many longstanding bugs and shiny new features that are half-finished (like draftsman and wire harnesses) that make the price hike and license changes extra insulting. 

[jc101]

I got 3 year subs offered at 50% discount. So it's £1060+VAT per year.


Several months back I decided to check how useful Altium is when used with Git outside of Altium. The software obviously prefers you use 365 but Using Github Desktop I was able to use version control no issue with all my projects. I can commit from within Altium okay but it moaned about logging in to Github to push the commits so I would just open Github desktop and push from there but normal commits worked just fine.


Using this along with 3rd party library utils like Calestial and Altium Library loader I also found I could manage my library just fine. I think Altium is more geared towards bigger companies and likely those companies see a lot of value in the library structure. For single users it's maybe just overkill. When 365 merged libraries it completely confused me where footprints were and where the actual library was. Suddenly there were all these different methods of managing libraries.


So that brings me to wondering what features I am getting for the subs if I am not too fussed about their cloud services. It has been relatively stable for me in use.

Nice discount!

I currently have all my projects in Git, hosted via a local GitTea server. That is backed up externally, but I can work offline completely if needed. I don't commit or push anything inside Altium; I just use a Git client to handle that. It's great for trying something out, then realising it's dead end and just backing out and starting again.  Firmware development is the same.

I also have my database library in Git, including the Access Database and all the footprint and symbol files. When I make changes, I push them back up to the Git server. This is more to ensure that if my main PC dies, I can quickly clone it all back down elsewhere.

The MCad integration would be very handy for me, as I often do the PCB and some of the enclosures or fit things into machined COTS enclosures.  That only works if the project is in A365.  The active BOM would be handy, also taking data from my accounts system.  The accounts package knows how many of what parts I have available, and if they are with me or my assembler.   Being able to pull that into an ActiveBOM would save a bit of time sourcing parts, I think that relies to some extent on A365 and ideally if my library were also in A365.  I've not yet delved into the rabbit hole of sorting that out.

These changes will hit the smallest users the hardest, those with the slimmest margins who plan carefully what to spend their hard earnt money on.  It's strange, only a few weeks ago at an Altium event the reps were very keen to expand the user base from the smallest to the largest.  These changes are going to mean a rethink on the reps at public facing side of Altium - I wonder if they knew what was heading their way?

[trevwhite]

This is what the quote states.

[jc101]

Looks much the same as mine was.

14-004-1-WC Altium Designer Commercial Subscription Renewal : Altium Designer Standard On-Demand Commercial Single Site SN-xxxxxxxx Standard From 2023-12-17 To 2024-12-16

I will be invoiced annually, so I don't have to pay the 3 years up front.  There was some waffle on the quote about needing to give them a credit card number, but they ignored that.  I raised a PO for the 3 years and they will just invoice when it's due each year.

Seems like a bargain to get you to 2027 given the changes.

[trevwhite]

I think it's a good deal but what intention do they have for the standard version? Will they introduce e everything in the pro subs and pretty much leave us for dead? They never even offered me the pro subscription.


 

[jc101]

If you ask for a Pro Subscription, they should give you a quote. After all, the salespeople will have slim pickings for the rest of the year!

I paid a one-off update to migrate my subscription from Standard to Pro for the remainder of the term. I was planning on embracing A365 a bit more, plus I use MultiBoard quite a bit. It was my year-end, and I took on a new project. I'd been to an Altium event and had a good look at some of the features, so it seemed a good plan at the time. Now I hear this news and wonder why I did it. 

Many features are available in Standard, but when you dig deeper, you find that when you try to do something, a box pops up saying you need Pro.

[trevwhite]

What was the pro upgrade cost?

[jc101]

It was prorated for the balance of the term as a lump sum, ~£1500 from memory.  This wasn't part of the renewal, so the renewal team discount flexibility didn't come into it.  I'd just ask and see what they offer; it can't hurt.

I could probably recover that cost with decent bi-directional Mcad integration over the next couple of years.  If it works as well as the demos did, anyway.

[trevwhite]

I was trying to find the price on the website. Every other time it’s all plastered over the front of the site.


I think they finish early on a Friday. My renewal is tomorrow so I really might have run out do time

[jc101]

They haven’t minded the odd day before specially if it’s a weekend

[trevwhite]

Okay thanks. They did ensure the quote they sent today runs out tomorrow. Lol

[nctnico]

I currently have all my projects in Git, hosted via a local GitTea server. That is backed up externally, but I can work offline completely if needed. I don't commit or push anything inside Altium; I just use a Git client to handle that. It's great for trying something out, then realising it's dead end and just backing out and starting again.  Firmware development is the same.

I also use an external Git client with/for designs and libraries made with Altium and Orcad. Besides having a backup and versioning, it also makes it easy to bring designs along as well. Just commit & push and fetch & pull and you are sure to have to exact same files on both computer systems.

[KaneTW]

I use A365 a little bit for libraries and stuff but this just means I'll move away from that completely.

This is incredibly stupid lol

[EEVblog]

Someone on Twitter got the tap on the shoulder:
https://x.com/ATaylorFPGA/status/1800102243380965657

[TrickyNekro]

I´ve considered saving up a bit for a license for personal use at home, but no, I pay for no subscription.

It´s a shame, especially with the new 3D features, like sliced view ( which ultimately is nothing new in a
 CAD sense, but I guess that´s how they roll ), it made it quite enjoyable working with enclosures.

KiCad it is then, free and probably have to bust my back to see how I´ll integrate my workflow with
FreeCad to get similar results. But from what I see, doable.

[Doctorandus_P]

KiCad it is then, free and probably have to bust my back to see how I´ll integrate my workflow with
FreeCad to get similar results. But from what I see, doable.

FreeCAD has the "KiCad Step Up" workbench to exchange data with KiCad. I have not used it seriously myself, but I have followed some walk troughs and it has quite nice capabilities. (For example, load a 3d STEP file of a box, extract a 2D plane into a sketch, apply an offset, and then export directly to KiCad as a PCB outline. And it works both ways. You can import a PCB (with 3D models) from KiCad into FreeCAD.)

And both KiCad and FreeCAD are improving each year. Improvements in KiCad happen at a steeper rate though.
If you want to know more, then start a new topic.

[VK3DRB]

I just got an email from Altium:

Hi,
We have listened to your feedback and you can now purchase an Altium Designer Perpeptual license without a subscription.
Call me today and get an additional 35% discount off a perpetual Altium Designer license.
Looking forward to speaking with you soon.

So does that include Altium 365? I cannot image Altium giving anything away for free, but I have been getting a good discount for subscriptions over the past few years thanks to a good long term relationship I have Altium.

By the way, it is never a good idea to buy the latest Altium at year end, because that is when the next big release happens. Best time to buy is mid year because by then all the worse bugs would have (hopefully) been ironed out.

Some bugs are never really fixed, like updating a footprint with a different 3D model and the old 3D model lingers for a while, and there are plenty of bugs when using databases for components. I hate databases for components using Altium, but Orcad got it right - very easy to use. Altium Draftsman still has a few bugs, but it is a lot better that is used to be. Overall, Draftsman is an awesome time saver when impemented well.

Remember the old saying... "If it hasn't got bugs, it isn't Altium"

[jc101]

Access to A365 requires an active subscription, so unless that perpetual licence includes one year in the price, it is just that.  Any included subscription would also give software updates too.

[VK3DRB]

Currently, you can sell your Altium license and they will allow the license transfer it ONLY if it is under subscription. With the new perpetual license without subscription, can you transfer the license to someone else? I suspect not.

[ajawamnet]

The law firm Fenwick and West (now Fenwick) did the first shrink/clickwrap EULA for Jobs and Wozniak in 1975.  Their document

- https://www.fenwick.com/FenwickDocuments/Patent_Licensing.pdf

specifically states on page 9:

“Quiet Enjoyment”
Licensees, having paid for the right to use licensed technology, generally seek to ensure that
nothing interferes with the benefits they have received. For example, licensees are concerned
with their ability to obtain assistance from the licensor in fixing defects that are discovered in
the technology, to have the right to fix the defects themselves if the licensor is unable to do
so, to obtain periodic upgrades and other maintenance services from the licensor, to transfer
their rights if they sell their business and to continue enjoying the technology even if the
licensor becomes bankrupt.


From what I've seen, only the Microsoft EULA's discount “Quiet Enjoyment”

A licensor usually loses most of the rights to the license technology once they sell the license.  For instance, in a passive activity like a recording, a record label cannot prevent you from selling the original copies of a recording as part of your estate.  That fall under First Sale.

This is what Autodesk learned in the Vernor case.  This is why they now "rent" software - SaaS.

For shiny shoes guys that don't care and just want to build then sell off a business and hang out with Sports Illustrated models in their Maserati after cashing in big time, cool. They don't care. 

A contracting firm on a time limited contract - a body shop filling warm seats - again has no long term interest in accessing their IP generated with the tool.

But for smaller firms and companies that see access to their IP as a valuation of their company, then something needs to change - a legal precedent needs to happen to determine if theirs undue influence by these software companies, forcing  a construed partnership in an unconscionable contract agreed to under duress. 

That would start getting into anti trust laws. 
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws
"These laws promote vigorous competition and protect consumers from anticompetitive mergers and business practices. The FTC's Bureau of Competition, working in tandem with the Bureau of Economics, enforces the antitrust laws for the benefit of consumers."

We need legal precedent to begin sorting out these issues. 

[jusaca]

This actually is the exact reason why Open Source is so great. No one can take away the software you have, you will always be able to open old projects.
While we still do use Altium and pay the subscription, our tiny company also gives 5% of the annual Altium cost as donation to the KiCad project.
Maybe this investment will pay off double and more the coming months... We will see for how long Altium is still interesting for us.

[voltsandjolts]

Currently, you can sell your Altium license and they will allow the license transfer it ONLY if it is under subscription. With the new perpetual license without subscription, can you transfer the license to someone else? I suspect not.

You always needed Altium's approval to transfer (sell) a license anyway, and given the trouble I had getting them to just transfer a license to a colleagues name, I wouldn't ever have expected a helpful response for a sale.

[ianm42]

Just joined to express my extreme displeasure with Altium.

I first used Protel 1 in 1991 in my startup company. We bought it instead on Ye Olde DOS based ORCAD which didn't work too well with Windows for Workgroups (3.0 and 3.1) as only supported DOS drives and had issues with "modern graphics cards". It was also cheaper than Orcad and obvious plus point.

This moved onto Protel 3 (with the annoying printer port dongle that obviously was no good when PC's started getting USB rather than parallel ports), I still have these somewhere including floppy disk installation media, including the printer port switch so we could switch the dongle between multiple machines.

Then move to Protel 98 and Protel 99 (and SE) under Windows 95 & Windows 2000. I still have 99 SE installed on my current Windows 10 machine (with the hacked DLL to allow it to open files correctly) just so I can quickly open old .DBB to quickly look at old designs.

Moved to DXP V17 (eventually) with local license server as online licensing stuff via 8Mb ADSL was a complete no go.

Finally running 3 seats of V24 as of today, with perpetual renewal in 5 days.... which is being offered at £7500 for another year if ordered before 1st July !!!!

Well subscription @ £330 per user per month, that's a goodbye from me and hello KiCad, hello Proteus, hello anything not on subscription. 

We design & make PCB's as part of our design business and don't run DXP everyday, only when a PCB is required in a project or an old design needs to be updated. Licensing DXP @ £330 for say one month to just update a PCB is a complete no go from a cost point of view.

So that's it is a sad goodbye, it feels like loosing a friend (OK still got perpetual license). I won't cry as I am a big boy.

[voltsandjolts]

Is it time to download the offline installers for the latest version our perpetual licenses allow? I'm losing trust here.

There used to be Amazon S3 download links that were predictable for the AD version name....need to look back at that.

[PlainName]

I downloaded the offline files for every version I had, and additionally created the standalone license file every time I resubscribed. And used the offline license file to install in a separate installation.

Not that I don't trust 'em but decades of falling foul of various snotty vendors and DRM schemes has taught me a few things 

Edit: Dunno about S3 links but if you've had an account, even if it's expired, you can log in and just download from the website.

[cadguy68]

Well, it was a good run. 

Started using Altium back in 2008.  Used the software across 5 employers. 
After about just as many years using OrCad, P-CAD & Mentor Graphics Board Architect/Station.
It was a love-hate relationship with Altium.  With all of them, actually.

I'm ready for the next chapter - KiCad ?

BTW - Rhino3D (McNeel & Associates) has a great business model for their tool, and their customers.  Since 1996.  No extortion, low cost upgrades, student pricing, network licensing, etc. etc.  Proof that it IS POSSIBLE for a software tool to exist from a company that doesn't constantly squeeze their customers for every last penny.  Oh, and customers get support, PERIOD.  No EXTRA charges.  No tiers crap.  Amazing.

[ajawamnet]

The Kicad KiPro business model is like Red Hat is to Linux.  https://www.kipro-pcb.com/faq/


With that model the software is free and they actually have people willing to pay them to help manage and develop the code - which is always open and free. 

And Red Hat did $6.6 billion last year.   

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/21/red-hat-ibm-earnings/

When my sales guy told me how all the other companies are going SaaS and comparing Microsoft to Linux I had to mention that all the 365 stuff hosted on AWS is Linux.  Not Microsoft. 

So it's possible that in the future most software business models will go that direction.  The user maintains control of access to their data, and the Red Hat model will prevail.  Sounds like a win-win to me. 

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
~~R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

[Someone]

Is it time to download the offline installers for the latest version our perpetual licenses allow? I'm losing trust here.

Until you download the "offline" installer and discover it requires an internet connection to install. 

The Kicad KiPro business model is like Red Hat is to Linux.  https://www.kipro-pcb.com/faq/

With that model the software is free and they actually have people willing to pay them to help manage and develop the code - which is always open and free.

In theory, for most users (who aren't software devs) the perpetual licence for Altium should have been comparable. Pay money to get support or don't pay money and get no support (after the initial buy-in). Except for all the money people have thrown at Altium their reported bugs and workflows never seemed to be prioritised.

[nctnico]

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
~~R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

That is an interesting quote. It reminds of a documentary (released last week) called 'How music got free'. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31189881/

[bookaboo]

They certainly seem to want to see how far they can push the user base on pricing. We have two perpetual licences here, and to switch one of them to a different geographical location we has to go back on subscription and pay a £400 fee (yes , that's correct, to move a licence we bought and paid for to another office).

The rep did put the other subscription on for no extra charge and I planned to use the subscription to see if 365 could get our component libraries into a better state. However given this latest gouge, I'll probably just solve the libraries some other way, and just sit on AD25 with no subscription for as long as practicable when the subscription lapses.

They know the crazy prices are no problem to people using it all day every day, or inefficient corporations / public bodies. But for the small development team, it just feels like a shakedown. If I could go back I'd have stuck with Diptrace.

[PlainName]

When my sales guy told me how all the other companies are going SaaS and comparing Microsoft to Linux I had to mention that all the 365 stuff hosted on AWS is Linux.  Not Microsoft. 

So it's possible that in the future most software business models will go that direction.  The user maintains control of access to their data, and the Red Hat model will prevail.  Sounds like a win-win to me.

I think you are conflating two different things, or I've misunderstood your point. There is nothing to stop some company using Linux to host their SaaS cloud and  lock in user data as tight as a puckered arse. In fact, I'm sure we could spot plenty of such instances. The user is sure of access and control of their data on Linux only if they own the Linux instance it's stored on.

[Gerhard_dk4xp]

Pay money to get support or don't pay money and get no support (after the initial buy-in). Except for all the money people have thrown at Altium their reported bugs and workflows never seemed to be prioritised.

I also had the case of paying the subscription for my eternal license and
getting no support nevertheless. AD crashed within 10 seconds after start,
and that could be repeated. The excuse was that my WIN ran in a virtual
machine, and they said that VMware could not handle networks.
Eeeh, what is the core of THEIR business?
And network traffic on a stand-alone machine, usually without internet access?

I found it out myself: Renaming an old but immaculate Protel library from
.lib to  .schlib crashes AD when loading. Probably NOBODY checks what's
really inside. (2016) I did not tell them their bug, but cancelled support
for 6 years.

Virtual machines make you free. If my windows machine dies, I throw it
away and fetch a new incarnation of it from an external 10T drive.
I have a second one in the basement that will survive if the house burns
down and one with my brother's 250 Km away. Libs and designs are on
d: which maps to /d under Linux. The generous virtual machine is just a
200G folder. There can be many variations on a 10T drive.
And moving to a new, fatter workstation is a 2 minute copy.
Everything like it used to be.
Why should I give Microsoft control over a full hardware machine?

cheers, Gerhard

ps: VMware16 performs much better than 17

[ianm42]

In fact there has possibly has been a change in licensing (in UK) at least since the original announcement.

I got an email today offering to "migrate" my perpetual license to "Term Based Commercial License" 12 Month Pro Subscription for bargain price of £1522.50 per seat !!!

However also attached was an FAQ:

Can I still buy perpetual licenses after the transition?

● Yes, but after 1 July, 2024, you will no longer be able to purchase a subscription contract
for a perpetual license.

So you will be able to get perpetual license but there will be no upgrades or support or way forward. Great.

[PlainName]

I am not sure the lack of subscription is that important. Sure, you won't get fixes straight away but if you're happy to wait a year for non-critical stuff (which, let's be fair, probably won't have arrived by then anyway) then the upgrade cost to a new no-support perpetual may be in the same ballpark.

[ianm42]

I have been allocated a week, shortly, to evaluate alternative more cost effective schematic and PCB tools to replace our Altium. KiCad and Proteus are looking possible.

[PlainName]

I switched from Proteus to Altium (via CircuitStudio). Proteus is OK but the interface shows its DOS heritage (don't they all!) and it is quite a bit behind Altium in several respects. Good if you want to simulate your circuit, though, particularly if you use a microprocessor that they support.

One of the things that turned me off it was the move to an integrated design file. That is, instead of having separate schematic, PCB, simulation files, they are all stuff into a single file. In some ways that might be nice, but for source control it's a right pain in the arse: you cannot make a minor change (say fix a typo) to the schematic without the PCB 'file' also changing, so the temptation not to fix things, because other things will show a change for no reason, is there.

OTOH, it's a fair bit cheaper than Altium

[Smokey]

I switched from Proteus to Altium (via CircuitStudio). Proteus is OK but the interface shows its DOS heritage (don't they all!) and it is quite a bit behind Altium in several respects. Good if you want to simulate your circuit, though, particularly if you use a microprocessor that they support.

One of the things that turned me off it was the move to an integrated design file. That is, instead of having separate schematic, PCB, simulation files, they are all stuff into a single file. In some ways that might be nice, but for source control it's a right pain in the arse: you cannot make a minor change (say fix a typo) to the schematic without the PCB 'file' also changing, so the temptation not to fix things, because other things will show a change for no reason, is there.

OTOH, it's a fair bit cheaper than Altium

So for me the big question is:
.....What is the industry acceptable lateral move away from Altium for a pro business user?  Some of you guys can say KiCad all you want, but you probably don't need to justify that to a manager.  You probably also aren't a consultant who needs to justify that to their clients.
Is there a clear right answer to this?

[PlainName]

I imagine it depends on your (present and likely future) requirements. If you need the things that only big boy's toys provide then it's going to be expensive either way. For that, Cadence seems to be the alternative (but note that I don't have an opinion, having spent perhaps half an hour playing with it).

Kicad may not be an option for you now, but it is progressing at a rapid rate and the user base is well above critical mass. I think if I had to give up Altium I would probably try to suffer the Kicad user interface for at least an extended test. I have no object to paying for a good product, but at that level Kicad would look more future-proof in the way of fixes and features. I'd really be pissed to base my workflow around a product going nowhere slowly, and have paid for the pleasure to boot.

As a consultant, wouldn't you need to have feet in most baskets? You'd surely be more likely to go with whatever your client du jour is using unless the job is to get them started in design.

[trevwhite]

I would talk to cadence guys and see if they can offer you a few days training to see if it’s worth the switch. They will likely want to take a client from Altium and may well give you a good deal

[nctnico]

I switched from Proteus to Altium (via CircuitStudio). Proteus is OK but the interface shows its DOS heritage (don't they all!) and it is quite a bit behind Altium in several respects. Good if you want to simulate your circuit, though, particularly if you use a microprocessor that they support.

One of the things that turned me off it was the move to an integrated design file. That is, instead of having separate schematic, PCB, simulation files, they are all stuff into a single file. In some ways that might be nice, but for source control it's a right pain in the arse: you cannot make a minor change (say fix a typo) to the schematic without the PCB 'file' also changing, so the temptation not to fix things, because other things will show a change for no reason, is there.

OTOH, it's a fair bit cheaper than Altium

So for me the big question is:
.....What is the industry acceptable lateral move away from Altium for a pro business user?  Some of you guys can say KiCad all you want, but you probably don't need to justify that to a manager.  You probably also aren't a consultant who needs to justify that to their clients.
Is there a clear right answer to this?

I'd say Orcad. I have been a long time Orcad Capture CIS user (25 years) together with various PCB design packages and switched to Allegro (Orcad PCB Designer Professional) a couple of years ago. I have to use Altium every now and then just to look into designs or to make small changes or check things but it is a mess. Part properties are lost between versions. Component database doesn't seem to work right (Orcad got this sorted 25 years ago) and Altium is slow and prone to crashes. Sure Allegro has an old school extremely not sexy X-windows style user interface, but it is very productive and fast to use once you go through the learning curve.

[chris_ee]

I asked my sales rep a few questions since the language in the email was kind of vague on specifics.  Here's their response:

1. You will continue to have ownership of the perpetual license.  That will not change.  You own the license outright and it will be available for basic design functionality.  All of the subscription features will now live with the term based license + subscription.  Your perpetual license will live in the account alongside the term based license.
2. If you decide to make the conversion now and do not renew next year, you'll lose the term based license and the price guarantee.  The perpetual license will still be on the account, just frozen with the last available update released for AD24.
3. You are not obligated to renew.  If you choose not to renew and then need to access the latest and greatest available with Altium, you'll then be subject to current list prices of a term based license.
4. Yes, the perpetual license is yours.  It just won't have the subscription features : updates to AD24+, Altium 365, library component management, library parts updates, support, and bug fixes.
5. Yes, you can use both licenses alongside each other.  Since the perpetual license will be frozen with previous updates, it might not be as fast as the term based license but you will still be able to use both at the same time.

I was concerned about being locked into paying all 3 years in order to keep the perpetual license, but that's not the case.

[Someone]

4. Yes, the perpetual license is yours.  It just won't have the subscription features : updates to AD24+, Altium 365, library component management, library parts updates, support, and bug fixes.

What's the bet it will have greyed out dialogues/panes and continue to push the features in your face even though you cant access them?
(there is already a bit of that going on when you opt out of/disable the cloud features)

[voltsandjolts]

2. If you decide to make the conversion now and do not renew next year, you'll lose the term based license and the price guarantee.  The perpetual license will still be on the account, just frozen with the last available update released for AD24.

So, you have AD24, then pay for 'n' years of updates, but you don't get to keep those updates if you quit subscription at some point in the future. Back to AD24 you go. IIUC.

[bookaboo]

When we let our subscriptions lapse we got to stay on the latest update version before the licence ran out, the rep confirmed this will be the same in 12 months time.

I also asked for clarification around whether subscriptions will be available at that point, the rep reply came:

"I think it's unlikely that in 12 months time you'll be able to renew again, as the plan is to phase out subscriptions. Although we haven't been provided with a definitive answer to that question yet, so there is a chance. "

[JohnG]

I have been allocated a week, shortly, to evaluate alternative more cost effective schematic and PCB tools to replace our Altium. KiCad and Proteus are looking possible.

One week, eh... Your management probably thinks this is a generous offer.

My company has spent a lot more than that, but probably because we have a significant investment in workflow. We have a lot of similar designs made in relatively small quantity (100s to 1000s). However, we have evaluated KiCad and any new seats are going to KiCad, though we are keeping our existing Altium licenses. We have a common parts database that works for both KiCad and Altium, and that part was relatively straightforward. The bigger challenge was duplicating the board manufacture workflow, where we had a significant investment of time in Altium's outjob files. We have a fair number of scripts and use plugins to make this work, but it does work mostly.

We have an additional use case, which is that our company has a number of field application engineers scattered about the world, and one of their jobs is reviewing and evaluating designs of our customers. Getting an Altium seat for everyone who needs it gets really expensive, very quickly. Doubly so for us, because a lot of these FAEs are not in the US and the cost goes up a lot. We tried shared licensed and the licensing was some expensive and complex we gave up on paid software. We couldn't justify the cost.

What do we miss in KiCad?
Output file management (outjobs) - really miss this
Full padstacks - we work around it, and we still have some permanent licenses for Altium if we really need
Full IPC-2581 for 3D FEM software - KiCad only has partial support ATM
A fair number of bugs get introduced with each major update (roughly annually)

What do we like in KiCad?
Free and bugs get fixed relatively quickly
No onerous licensing and no pushy salespeople who play obnoxious and time-consuming games
Can read and view Altium designs
Starts up fast (Altium takes forever to start up, and this sucks when you are working directly with a customer)
HTML BOM!
Better community support

Your use case may be different, but I hope that this is at least useful information to consider.

John

[PlainName]

We have a common parts database that works for both KiCad and Altium

Can you share how that's set up?

[JohnG]

We have a common parts database that works for both KiCad and Altium

Can you share how that's set up?

We use a git repository that contains the database file (SQLite), along with the footprints, symbols, and step files. There are two directories for Altium (symbols and footprints) and three for KiCad (symbols, footprints, 3D bodies). The database was originally done for Altium, but we simply added some columns to handle the KiCad libraries and it worked. Only a few people can update the database, and the remaining team simply updates the their local repository from Github, and their local Altium and/or KiCad installation points to their local repository.

We started by converting the original footprints and symbols to KiCad. This was done by a contractor, and I don't know the fine details. We already had an Altium project that contained each symbol and footprint in our library that we used for review and training, so we imported these into KiCad and generated the KiCad symbols from there. For new symbols, we do roughly the same.

In hindsight, we could probably be more efficient about the whole process. It's got a couple quirks, but it actually works fine.

Hope this helps.

John

[ajb]

2. If you decide to make the conversion now and do not renew next year, you'll lose the term based license and the price guarantee.  The perpetual license will still be on the account, just frozen with the last available update released for AD24.
[...]
5. Yes, you can use both licenses alongside each other.  Since the perpetual license will be frozen with previous updates, it might not be as fast as the term based license but you will still be able to use both at the same time.

So they're saying that the offer to "convert" a perpetual license to a term license is really converting the *subscription* on the perpetual license to a new term license?  So you end up with your now-subscritption-less perpetual license PLUS a new term license.  If so, they sure as shit should've communicated that better, because it's a MUCH better proposition than what it sounded like.  But then this whole saga has been a case study in how NOT to communicate big changes to your customers, starting with the fact that so many of us only heard about this with ~2 weeks to the cutoff, and are only getting as much info as we are by specifically asking wtf is going on.

[55pilot]

2. If you decide to make the conversion now and do not renew next year, you'll lose the term based license and the price guarantee.  The perpetual license will still be on the account, just frozen with the last available update released for AD24.

Apparently you are new to Altium. Their salespeople lie more than the most dishonest politician. Everyone who has dealt with Altium for the long run has experienced that.

Pretty much every year I have renewed, they have made promises, in writing, that the company has refused to honor. Altium's position has been either that the salesperson was misinformed or that they did not have the authority to promise what they promised.

The key word in this offer is "convert." When you do not renew in a year, or two or five, and discover that your perpetual license does not work, you will be reminded that you converted your license. When you send them this e-mail, you will be told that (1) the salesperson no longer works there, (2) they did not have the authority to make that promise, (3) you should have known better than to believe that because it was clearly stated that you were converting your license and (4) you should pick up a dictionary and learn the meaning of "convert"

Been there done that. Sad to see people falling for it.

[jusaca]

Yes Altium is playing really stupid games with their customers.
Whenever I have a pretty direct question to our salesguy about a new license or something, I ALWAYS get some convoluted BS as answer. They always push and try make you pay more money, wether it is good value for you or not. It always is such a hassle to get a real answer that they will commit to... I don't buy a single word an Altium Rep tells/writes me 

[cadguy68]

Can a software company be Fascist ?

[CadenceAE]

In response to Smokey's question "What is the industry acceptable lateral move away from Altium for a pro business user?

OrCADX is a reasonable alternative.  Even prior to the Renesas acquisition OrCAD was one of Altium's biggest competitors in small, medium, and even enterprise accounts.   

If you haven't looked at OrCADX please do so(look on youtube).  The OrCADX layout editor has an entirely new UX that is very easy to learn and use while offering a robust set of capability and stability.    OrCADX Capture is an industry standard, numerous reference designs,  direct integrations with online library providers like SnapMagic, and also very stable.   

You can import your Altium designs into OrCADX.

Disclaimer. I work for Cadence. I typically avoid directly promoting on this blog because I try to respect the fact that this blog is not the place for advertising.  I hope this response, in this case, is acceptable because the topic is talking about alternatives to Altium for businesses and OrCAD is a very realistic answer and may help the designers and companies that need it. 

[pointhi]

What do we miss in KiCad?
Output file management (outjobs) - really miss this
Full padstacks - we work around it, and we still have some permanent licenses for Altium if we really need
Full IPC-2581 for 3D FEM software - KiCad only has partial support ATM
A fair number of bugs get introduced with each major update (roughly annually)

@JohnG If you want "Full IPC-2581 for 3D FEM software" I would suggest you to get in touch with https://www.kipro-pcb.com/ and ask for a quote. I doubt it will be that expensive to implement as most of the stuff is already there. Also see: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/16665

[tszaboo]

I asked my sales rep a few questions since the language in the email was kind of vague on specifics.  Here's their response:

1. You will continue to have ownership of the perpetual license.  That will not change.  You own the license outright and it will be available for basic design functionality.  All of the subscription features will now live with the term based license + subscription.  Your perpetual license will live in the account alongside the term based license.
2. If you decide to make the conversion now and do not renew next year, you'll lose the term based license and the price guarantee.  The perpetual license will still be on the account, just frozen with the last available update released for AD24.
3. You are not obligated to renew.  If you choose not to renew and then need to access the latest and greatest available with Altium, you'll then be subject to current list prices of a term based license.
4. Yes, the perpetual license is yours.  It just won't have the subscription features : updates to AD24+, Altium 365, library component management, library parts updates, support, and bug fixes.
5. Yes, you can use both licenses alongside each other.  Since the perpetual license will be frozen with previous updates, it might not be as fast as the term based license but you will still be able to use both at the same time.

I was concerned about being locked into paying all 3 years in order to keep the perpetual license, but that's not the case.

I just confirmed most of this on the phone. I don't know if a lapsed perpetual doesn't have access to the online library, didn't ask.
When the subscription elapses, we will get a new quote to extend it. We cannot buy new licenses. So this would be an issue when onboarding new engineers or extending the team. Honestly right now I feel like this is going to be an issue for someone in the future. Most likely me  .

Having term based license is good for consultants, where you bill your client for it. For companies employing engineers long term... They also totally price themselves out of a lot of markets.

[ajawamnet]

OrcadX does indeed have a new GUI, but it still operates like Allegro.   

But Looks alone aren't enough.

They got closer to a much easier interface but there's a lot of things missing that Altium has.  One is dimming when highlighting nets.  Another is Padstacks... good lord.  I've hated them since the first Allegro version years ago.  A zillion individual files with cryptic names for pads and vias. 

They still lack a lot of things that Altium has that makes designing much easier. More comprehensive - esp. List panels.

They still lack a very customizable interface as has Altium. Custom tool bars, etc...  The scripting is better, everything about it blows ORCAD out of the water. 

Another thing is directives.  Constraint managers suck.  And Altium - in a move to try and woo Cadence users to Altium - now has a Constraint manager.

I'll tell you.  All my clients that use Cadence are so jealous of directives?  Why you ask?

See these vids I made:

two pin nets


reuse


even KiCAD went the directive method - tho primitive as compared to Altium, where you can have a directive drill down into individual rules and push those to the PCB.

Another thing about Altium?  The official forum. People like Dennis, Brett, Rhys, Thomas, Tim, Olivier, Mark,  Walter, Eric, Michael, Shawn, James, Ryan...   so many I can't even recall.

These are guys that will respond instantly, 24/7, and actually test your issues, write some amazing scripts, and hold Altium's feet to the fire when it does prove to be a bug. 

Cadence forum pales in comparison.

I have to say EMA and Cadence still provide good direct support to the end user  - -  BUT when I mentioned to EMA about the fact that the Padstack Preview was broken in 16.6/17.2 this is what I got:

"The new status is set to Inactive, which means that no action is planned. Each CCR is carefully considered, evaluated, and prioritized along with other fixes, planned feature additions, and enhancement requests, for possible inclusion in upcoming product updates and releases."

then after we all complained:

"Thanks for the update. Have a nice week and happy Christmas.

With this, I shall be closing this case.
You might receive a customer survey form for this Case. If you do, please share your feedback. Your feedback will help us improve our support effectiveness and product quality."

Then even later after EMA-EDA's tech complained:  " R&D will review this and accept these issues and also they will discuss with marketing team consider an priority basis."

At least Altium will tell you there's a ticket on it ... even if it is a "Check's in the mail" or some other crude version of that saying....


I was an ORCAD DOS user (SDT-386) back in the day.  When the port to Windows came about, it had some serious issue with corrupted design cache's  causing total lockout of a design.  That was around 1994, and when I switched to Protel. Funny thing was, the key strokes in Protel were very similar to those in the DOS SDT suite.  So it was much easier to migrate to than ORCAD for Windows.

Oh god - and then the Masstech rebranding. Layout Plus.  What a nightmare.  That was just awful.  I sent a board out in 1995 and the fab sent a note saying that all the via drills were off as compared to the gerbers. 

When I called ORCAD support, the Masstech guy complained about it more than I did. 

I still maintain my Orcad pro seat since I have clients that use it.  One uses it because they are mil, were gonna buy Altium and had a stop buy when Altium tried phoning home to China during that whole fiasco in 2015 or there abouts. So they had to go to Cadence. 

When they saw the aforementioned directives system, they were floored. 

The thing that ORCAD has going for it is that in the large companies, they get the PCB tools for free, since they buy the multimillion dollar IC design tools.  I've had users verify this on the Altium forum that worked for major companies.

I found out about this when Dave - the ex- regional sales manager of Altium and a guy I worked with back in 1988 doing libraries for who worked for then - PADS - told me the same thing. He soon after jumped ship to Cadence.

I've been doing this a long time - over 3,000 designs with Altium.

If Cadence - who admitted in this vid : 
  
of stealing Altiums GUI, then they should really look at what makes Altium a much more productive tool as compared to Allegro/OrcadX. 

Again... looks alone aren't enough.

If any Cadence employee/manager/developer wants to do a Zoom, Teams, or Google meet I can show them what I mean.

[tszaboo]

They got closer to a much easier interface but there's a lot of things missing that Altium has.  One is dimming when highlighting nets.  Another is Padstacks... good lord.  I've hated them since the first Allegro version years ago.  A zillion individual files with cryptic names for pads and vias. 

How do you change a thermal via in Orcad/X?

- Choose Edit -> Properties.
- Select the Pins/Vias you want to modify
- In the Edit Property window, select the Dyn_Fixed_Therm_Width_Array property and click on the Assign button.
You can choose the value per layer.

How do you do that in Altium?
You have a prosperities window/panel for that.


Dyn_Fixed_Therm_Width_Array is something that a programmer who wears clown shoes for work does. This is not how a professional program looks like. This is a program where a variable name accidentally made it into the UI. And it's not alone. Cryptic stuff everywhere. I'm not kidding when I tried OrCAD it took me half an hour to place the first via and I had to look up Youtube video how to do it.

[nctnico]

They got closer to a much easier interface but there's a lot of things missing that Altium has.  One is dimming when highlighting nets.  Another is Padstacks... good lord.  I've hated them since the first Allegro version years ago.  A zillion individual files with cryptic names for pads and vias. 

That is only if you choose to use cryptic names. I've named my padstacks after the footprint they are used for.

How do you change a thermal via in Orcad/X?

- Choose Edit -> Properties.
- Select the Pins/Vias you want to modify
- In the Edit Property window, select the Dyn_Fixed_Therm_Width_Array property and click on the Assign button.
You can choose the value per layer.

How do you do that in Altium?
You have a prosperities window/panel for that.

Dyn_Fixed_Therm_Width_Array is something that a programmer who wears clown shoes for work does. This is not how a professional program looks like. This is a program where a variable name accidentally made it into the UI. And it's not alone. Cryptic stuff everywhere. I'm not kidding when I tried OrCAD it took me half an hour to place the first via and I had to look up Youtube video how to do it.

That is the wrong way to do it. What you don't want are inconsistencies in a design. Modifying a single pad is something which will be overlooked. For example when a footprint is updated. The right way to set thermal reliefs is through the settings of the polygon (shape) the pads are in when using Allegro. This way you can change a footprint or whatever and the thermal relief settings will still be how you speficied them (in addition to how the thermal relief spacing is defined in the padstack). Altium allows way too much freedom leading to stupid mistakes like having 3 different mounting hole styles on a board (a real life example).

[PlainName]

Altium allows way too much freedom leading to stupid mistakes

Eh? Surely having the freedom to do things the designer didn't envision is good, with the alternative being having to wait, and pay for, and wait some more, updates to use new techniques or whatever. Hey, maybe the new style of boards have three different fixing types!

The way that freedom is implemented, though, is important.

[nctnico]

Altium allows way too much freedom leading to stupid mistakes

Eh? Surely having the freedom to do things the designer didn't envision is good, with the alternative being having to wait, and pay for, and wait some more, updates to use new techniques or whatever. Hey, maybe the new style of boards have three different fixing types!

You are not understanding the problem. The key is to have things defined either in the schematic, padstacks, templates or in the libraries. Having design specific features (customisations) in the PCB layout iself is asking for trouble as a PCB layout doesn't provide a good overview about what is where and what has been customised. IOW: for consistent, maintainable layouts, you will want your PCB layout package not to allow random customisations. Random customisations are like using MS-Paint on the Gerbers.

[tszaboo]

Altium allows way too much freedom leading to stupid mistakes

Eh? Surely having the freedom to do things the designer didn't envision is good, with the alternative being having to wait, and pay for, and wait some more, updates to use new techniques or whatever. Hey, maybe the new style of boards have three different fixing types!

You are not understanding the problem. The key is to have things defined either in the schematic, padstacks, templates or in the libraries. Having design specific features (customisations) in the PCB layout iself is asking for trouble as a PCB layout doesn't provide a good overview about what is where and what has been customised. IOW: for consistent, maintainable layouts, you will want your PCB layout package not to allow random customisations. Random customisations are like using MS-Paint on the Gerbers.

Let's just agree to disagree. For this exact example, you might have:
- Pads that are empty, and they don't care about thermal connections
- Parts like busbars that need to be without thermal relief
- parts that are soldered by a pre heated wave soldering machine and doesn't care too much about the relief
- parts that are hand soldered and thermal relief is necessary
- reliefs coming out 90 degrees or 45 degrees alternating so it doesnt make a Swiss cheese from the ground plane.
And this can be all within the same design. Having flexibility isn't inherently bad, but the PCB designer needs to understand what he is doing.
The Orcad way is suitable if you have a large org. with CIDs making the PCBs, engineers the schematic, and they don't talk to each other, just mock each other behind the back. Even then abbreviated underscores in the UI is just laughable.

[PlainName]

You are not understanding the problem. The key is to have things defined either in the schematic, padstacks, templates or in the libraries. Having design specific features (customisations) in the PCB layout iself is asking for trouble as a PCB layout doesn't provide a good overview about what is where and what has been customised.

While I agree that stuff needs to be defined, the schematic, for instance, is the electrical specification and doesn't necessarily reflect the PCB physicality. Templates... sure. For a one-off it seems no different, but you at least get an ID you can look up somewhere.

However, you or I may be fixed on having some design document that details everything, but other people may not. They may be doing a quick hack, or perhaps that's just the way they like to work. Agile vs waterfall, if you like. The same thing occurs in something simple like Word: you can define styles and apply them appropriately and your document will be easy to maintain, but the choice is there if you just want to make up as you go along. Sometimes, that's exactly what you want to be able to do, and why should the developer define how you can and cannot use his tool?

The solution would be to educate the user not make the PCB equivalent of spaghetti code; it isn't to force them to use the Arduino IDE.

Having said that, I thought the original issue was cryptic variables vs a nice friendly GUI. 

[temperance]

That is the wrong way to do it. What you don't want are inconsistencies in a design. Modifying a single pad is something which will be overlooked. For example when a footprint is updated. The right way to set thermal reliefs is through the settings of the polygon (shape) the pads are in when using Allegro. This way you can change a footprint or whatever and the thermal relief settings will still be how you speficied them (in addition to how the thermal relief spacing is defined in the padstack). Altium allows way too much freedom leading to stupid mistakes like having 3 different mounting hole styles on a board (a real life example).

Wrong, depends on what you're doing. I don't want all my SMD component without thermal reliefs because one component requires a direct connections. As such you have to set those on an individual level.

It seems that for some the Orcad user interface can be a very traumatic experience perhaps a near dead experience. Still beating the same drum 7 years later... Get over it.

[nctnico]

That is the wrong way to do it. What you don't want are inconsistencies in a design. Modifying a single pad is something which will be overlooked. For example when a footprint is updated. The right way to set thermal reliefs is through the settings of the polygon (shape) the pads are in when using Allegro. This way you can change a footprint or whatever and the thermal relief settings will still be how you speficied them (in addition to how the thermal relief spacing is defined in the padstack). Altium allows way too much freedom leading to stupid mistakes like having 3 different mounting hole styles on a board (a real life example).

Wrong, depends on what you're doing. I don't want all my SMD component without thermal reliefs because one component requires a direct connections. As such you have to set those on an individual level.

You can solve this very easely by either using a solid pour or a fat trace. If you (or a coworker) changes the footprint later on (and thus revert any pad modifications back to original), the direct connection will still be there. Any PCB package will have the same problem if/when you update the footprint BTW. Customising anything which is sourced from a library isn't a good idea to begin with.

It seems that for some the Orcad user interface can be a very traumatic experience perhaps a near dead experience. Still beating the same drum 7 years later... Get over it.

I wrote before that Allegro's UI isn't sexy but it is massively productive. Putting an item on a specific coordinate by just typing x followed by the x/y coordinates is way easier compared to Altium's way where you need to enter coordinates into a dialog.

[thm_w]

Altium allows way too much freedom leading to stupid mistakes like having 3 different mounting hole styles on a board (a real life example).

If you want to standardize mounting holes, which is not a bad idea, then you'd have them defined in a library and place them via the schematic.
You can run a comparison check vs. PCB libraries to see if anyone has gone in and modified them, or any other footprints on the board.

I see the value and your point in rigidly defining everything though.

[CadenceAE]

Setting thermals in OrCADX at a pin level. 
Note that if you do change a thermal at the design level, which was defined as something different in the library, you can then get a report indicating all the discrepancies between the design and the library

[Bzzz]

IN addition to not getting feature enhancements, I'll lose out on the database backend behind ActiveBOM which has been worth the cost for annual maintenance.  But I would much rather lose real-time component availability data than lose the ability to open and edit years worth of designs.

BOM checks never yield dependable, valid data for me, so no real loss here. If availability is really critical, I check components individually, or just export a list of items that gets fed into Farnell, Mouser and whoever is listed as primary parts supplier. Sure, takes more time, but shows real-time availability data and no outdated BS.

https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/254047
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/254769
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/254305
and probably more.

[mengfei]

How are database Libs in other platforms?

in AD it's still big problem, it's bugging slow!

[tszaboo]

How are database Libs in other platforms?

in AD it's still big problem, it's bugging slow!

You should add the files to exception to your virus scanner, I found that was slowing down the software.

[Ysjoelfir]

To go back on topic:
Altium is fast as ever. Yesterday, on august 28th, I got the mail from some unknown "renewal sales rep" guy I have never heard off, who told me that from july first 2024 on there won't be any subscriptions for perpetual licenses anymore. Sounds totally fair, telling your customer 2 monts after you changed the terms and conditions, that you will change them.
I also got the same "nice" offers as already discussed, which are borderline stupid.
Also, in the mail I got there was definitely written about _converting_ the license as an offer, not keeping it and getting a second one for cheaper, as some wrote. so....
Yeah, I told that unknown guy who does'nt even feel the need to introduce himself, that we are not interested, and asked him if he happens to know the contacts of a sales rep from cadence. no response so far.

[tszaboo]

To go back on topic:
Altium is fast as ever. Yesterday, on august 28th, I got the mail from some unknown "renewal sales rep" guy I have never heard off, who told me that from july first 2024 on there won't be any subscriptions for perpetual licenses anymore. Sounds totally fair, telling your customer 2 monts after you changed the terms and conditions, that you will change them.
I also got the same "nice" offers as already discussed, which are borderline stupid.
Also, in the mail I got there was definitely written about _converting_ the license as an offer, not keeping it and getting a second one for cheaper, as some wrote. so....
Yeah, I told that unknown guy who does'nt even feel the need to introduce himself, that we are not interested, and asked him if he happens to know the contacts of a sales rep from cadence. no response so far.

Ask for a written statement. I think Altium uses some wild west salesman, that try anything to upsell you on the product. I guess commissions are big, so ethic go out the window.

[KaneTW]

Yeah, I got a message with completely ridiculous terms like that as well (conversion with far less value than the perpetual). I have my perpetual license and I will keep it forever.

Of course it's not an option if I ever need to expand the seat count, and I'm not giving Altium another penny unless they bring back perpetual support.
Once that problem happens, I'll evaluate the other CAD packages again.

[ianm42]

I have heard rumors that one of our military customers has bought a perpetual Altium license for £8000 to support the designs we are supplying them

They got 25% off perpetual license but had to take a years subscription, so back to total £8000. They are not interested in subscription, as Altium is needed to be able to support/modify the supplied designs for the next 10 years at least.

They have already been burnt with their old designs, using DxDesigner. Went to update a design (from 2010) and found software subscription had expired and would have cost £20k+ to get access to their old design data.

We had to work on their designs using just printed out poor quality PDF's.

[Someone]

I have heard rumors that one of our military customers has bought a perpetual Altium license for £8000 to support the designs we are supplying them

No rumours, Altium are openly selling perpetual licences. What they won't do is let you subscribe to the online services/features periodically with that perpetual license, and no updates.

[jc101]

You will also notice there is absolutely no notice that your subscription for the first year cannot be renewed. But of a shocker there. I couldn’t see anywhere on the website mention that there would be no ongoing support for perpetual licenses, old or new.

[thm_w]

Yeah the thread title as written is incorrect. They are not killing them off but heavily discouraging them.
Autodesk and Adobe on the other hand, completely killed their perpetual licenses.

You will also notice there is absolutely no notice that your subscription for the first year cannot be renewed. But of a shocker there. I couldn’t see anywhere on the website mention that there would be no ongoing support for perpetual licenses, old or new.

The communication continues to be terrible.
It can be on purpose so they can just back peddle if it doesn't work out financially. "Oh we never announced that officially".

[Someone]

You will also notice there is absolutely no notice that your subscription for the first year cannot be renewed.

Or in the case of our perpetual license, there was zero subscription period included. Delivered the license as already "expired".

[55pilot]

I was contacted by a new (to me) Altium sales rep this week. He pushed hard to have me "convert" to a SAS (Software As Service = pay or lose access) license. The support on my perpetual license expires in a couple of months.

I told him that SAS is not going to happen, so not to waste his and my time. I asked him, what he had to offer without SAS and he said absolutely nothing. Everything moving forward is SAS.

Then he continued trying to sell me on how great the online services are and how I will miss out on great things. He stopped only when I asked him to call me back after he gets some hearing aids because he is not listening to what I am saying.

P.S. I am in the USA

[exmadscientist]

Ask for a written statement. I think Altium uses some wild west salesman, that try anything to upsell you on the product. I guess commissions are big, so ethic go out the window.

Altium salesmen are some of the most psychotic nutjobs I have ever encountered. Years ago I remember trying to tell one that we don't need more seats, we're happy at the current number, and even if we did need more seats, I don't have any purchasing authority, so please never call me again. We'll call you. Or you can call [manager] or [IT guy], both of whom actually have job descriptions that include dealing with your ass.

Of course he kept on calling me for weeks, at least once a week, even after I'd told him that I couldn't give him any money.

He somehow stopped just before I went to talk to the IT guy about getting his number blocked at the PBX. I don't know how he managed to cut it that close!

And, yeah... get it in writing from these nutters.

[55pilot]

And, yeah... get it in writing from these nutters.

That will not help you one bit. The company will tell you that the salesperson was not authorized to promise you what they promised in writing.

Been there, done that and not just with Altium.

[JohnG]

And, yeah... get it in writing from these nutters.

That will not help you one bit. The company will tell you that the salesperson was not authorized to promise you what they promised in writing.

Been there, done that and not just with Altium.

It is still important to do so in any correspondence, but especially with companies that you do not trust. If they are behaving unethically, you might be glad to have a document trail. Sure, 90+% of the time it has little value, but it can have a lot of value if you need it.

John

[Doctorandus_P]

If they are behaving unethically, you might be glad to have a document trail. Sure, 90+% of the time it has little value, but it can have a lot of value if you need it.

I'd say vote with your money. Give it to a company that cares for it's customers instead of it's shareholders.

Edit: Found some .pdf.pdf presentation for their investors on their website:

https://cdn-static.altium.com/sites/default/files/2024-02/ALU%20First%20Half%20Investor%20Presentation%20FINAL.pdf.pdf

[JohnG]

I'd say vote with your money. Give it to a company that cares for it's customers instead of it's shareholders.

Some people here may actually be in a position to vote with their money. The rest of us can only try to influence those with the money to vote. Definitely worth the effort, IMO.

Edit: Found some .pdf.pdf presentation for their investors on their website:

https://cdn-static.altium.com/sites/default/files/2024-02/ALU%20First%20Half%20Investor%20Presentation%20FINAL.pdf.pdf

Slide 26 says it all. But I can't believe they forgot to say something about "Industry 5.0"!

John

[tooki]

I also wonder what doofus wrote slide 25:



Google and Apple both own and sell apps. They might have been able to piece this together by, I dunno,... opening their phone?

And Netflix is planning to open physical locations: https://www.forbes.com/sites/claraludmir/2023/10/16/netflix-to-open-brick-and-mortar-location-in-2025-adding-retail-to-its-roster/

And I'd be quite surprised if Skype didn't own some infrastructure of its own, even if it just means servers and whatnot. (And since Skype is a Microsoft product, even if it runs on Azure, then it's still on company-owned infrastructure...)

[tooki]

Oh, and slide 28: "Altium has the Opportunity to Disrupt the Electronics Industry in the Same Way that Amazon Disrupted the E-Commerce Industry"

Umm... did it escape their attention that Amazon does not exactly have a good reputation anymore?

[tooki]

Oh this is rich, especially the highlighted tile.

[Doctorandus_P]

And there is more, page 32 confirms once more they're set on killing the perpetual licenses:



Also, I don't know how long they are going to keep that pdf available, so grab a copy while you can.

[floobydust]

I also wonder what doofus wrote slide 25:

(Attachment Link)

Google and Apple both own and sell apps. They might have been able to piece this together by, I dunno,... opening their phone?

And Netflix is planning to open physical locations: https://www.forbes.com/sites/claraludmir/2023/10/16/netflix-to-open-brick-and-mortar-location-in-2025-adding-retail-to-its-roster/

And I'd be quite surprised if Skype didn't own some infrastructure of its own, even if it just means servers and whatnot. (And since Skype is a Microsoft product, even if it runs on Azure, then it's still on company-owned infrastructure...)

You clipped off the top of that slide - All Hail the Cloud. Stock - to the moon!

[Smokey]

Oh, and slide 28: "Altium has the Opportunity to Disrupt the Electronics Industry in the Same Way that Amazon Disrupted the E-Commerce Industry"

Umm... did it escape their attention that Amazon does not exactly have a good reputation anymore?

... among a certain class who's news media spends a significant amount of time dedicated to bashing Amazon (along with any other large and therefore inherently "Evil" company). 

[tooki]

Oh, and slide 28: "Altium has the Opportunity to Disrupt the Electronics Industry in the Same Way that Amazon Disrupted the E-Commerce Industry"

Umm... did it escape their attention that Amazon does not exactly have a good reputation anymore?

... among a certain class who's news media spends a significant amount of time dedicated to bashing Amazon (along with any other large and therefore inherently "Evil" company).

Uhhh… no? Like… Amazon’s shitty behavior is well documented by a wide variety of news outlets. Not everything is a partisan issue.