Autodesk make sense to acquire Altium, they already have low cost all inclusive Fusion 360 package, but missed Inventor-style product.
What else they can do and when last time they build anything from scratch? The cash is cheap these days, time - very expensive. I bet they will buy Altium sooner or later 
Wait for the share market cash and then that offer will sound like a real good deal
Altium is at a massively high P/E ratio.
So it seems to me that what makes Altium's subscription model unattractive isn't that the software is currently good enough, but that the updates aren't making it tangibly better to a degree that justifies the price. I would be much less unhappy to pay $2k/yr if it consistently got me better software. Instead I'm being asked to pay $2k/yr to hope that maybe they'll actually fix a couple of bugs that I care about or add a legitimately useful feature and that nothing serious will break. Now they're offering their 365 cloud thing into the bargain, which I'm sure is legitimately attractive to a lot of people, and I guess expecting that to drive subscription sales, which is fine and might even be successful for them (they seem to think it will be, since they think they were undervalued at +40%), but it does make one even less hopeful about how concerned they are with improving the fundamentals of the design software.
Altium spent over a decade trying to get users to upgrade from Protel 99SE, especially in China where they didn't give a rats arse about any latest features, they just stuck with the same tool that worked. It was still a major sales hurdle when I left in 2011.
It didn't help that the mid to late 2000's ushered in the destined to fail focus on FPGA's at the expense of the PCB tool.
Well, this is just the usual story.
1. Company wants a PCB design software
2. Company buys the cheapest possible, Eagle
3. Eagle is trash, impossible to make good designs in it
4. Spend years and countless engineers quitting and failed designs, sunken cost fallacy, cognitive dissonance
5. They finally ask the engineers what they want
6. Company buys Altium designer
7. PCBs are made, they are nice and they work
We all seen this happen. Its 100% the same story.
I remember those halcyon days of doing PCB layouts using BISHOP GRAPHICS materials.
Must be getting old.
Imagine autodesk acquires and kills another industry leading product. I bet industry would not be too happy.
At the same time, I see a lot of schematics come from Japan prepared in something that is clearly not Altium. Does anybody knows what do they typically use. It looks like a very common piece of software, since all schematics look the same.
Zuken
//okay, somebody was faster than me.
//I use Zuken almost daily at work now, but I wouldn't say it is anywhere close to being a user friendly tool. No way in hell.
Given you can get perfectly usable software for free I am surprised anyone buys it.
Really? You know a free package that's efficient to use for large scale board development?
Imagine autodesk acquires and kills another industry leading product. I bet industry would not be too happy.
At the same time, I see a lot of schematics come from Japan prepared in something that is clearly not Altium. Does anybody knows what do they typically use. It looks like a very common piece of software, since all schematics look the same.
Zuken
//okay, somebody was faster than me.
//I use Zuken almost daily at work now, but I wouldn't say it is anywhere close to being a user friendly tool. No way in hell.
Zuken has a long history, but it used to be pretty much a Japan only product. Now I see their web site claims a lot of major western users. I wonder just how widely used it is outside Japan?
Well, this is just the usual story.
1. Company wants a PCB design software
2. Company buys the cheapest possible, Eagle
3. Eagle is trash, impossible to make good designs in it
4. Spend years and countless engineers quitting and failed designs, sunken cost fallacy, cognitive dissonance
5. They finally ask the engineers what they want
6. Company buys Altium designer
7. PCBs are made, they are nice and they work
We all seen this happen. Its 100% the same story.
I can't imagine why anyone buys Eagle. We used to find it extremely useful for designing evaluation and other similar small boards, with Eagle as a free package. You can pass your CAD files around, and anyone can immediatly work with them without needing to buy anything. However, as soon as it costs even $1 it has lost that benefit, and it has little to offer as a commercial package.
Given you can get perfectly usable software for free I am surprised anyone buys it.
Really? You know a free package that's efficient to use for large scale board development?
Agreed. It is totally different story when you get to work at Enterprise level.
Given you can get perfectly usable software for free I am surprised anyone buys it.
Really? You know a free package that's efficient to use for large scale board development?
He doesn't know what large scale development is.
im just watching a random video about zuken, dont know anything about them. it looks good.
As a person having to review schematics from that tool, the only thing I observe about it is how annoying its PDF outputs are. They are just vector graphics, even for fonts, so i makes then unsearchable. They could have at least put hidden the under text.
I don't know if this is a setting or just a missing feature, but all the schematics I've seen were like this.
a couple of weeks ago i was diggin aroudn to see what our far east collegues use for design tools ..
Zuken is one of them but there are much more other tools out there ...
Quadcept
Cadvance Alpha -> this was bought last year by zuken and killed.
Cadlus
OPuser
FIRST
www.cadlus.comwww.first-cad.comJapanese schematics and boards have a very distinct layout and drawing style. just look at service manuals from onkyo , denon , sony , clarion. very different drawing and layout style.
please not Autopest. Makers of such fine software like AutoCrap... and inventors of the drawing format from hell : DXF: Deficient exchange format. What drunken idiot came up with a drawing description format that does not have a scale embedded ?
Here is a drawing , but we can't be bothered to tell you if it is in inches, meters , furlongs or smoots.
Come on Dassault Systems, buy Altium. then we'll have real ecad/mcad synergy. Catia, Solidworks, Altium
With such acquisitions so close to each other, I can't help but wonder that Autodesk hired bad consultants that gave them the wrong idea about Eagle, believing they would get an immediate share in the enterprise EDA market - instead, they got a foot on the mass market that is being shrunk by Kicad.
That or they may well go ahead, up the ante anyways and release a new subscription-based Altium. As for Eagle, either they kill it altogether (based on their financials) or it becomes an Altium-Lite package.
Oh well... Time will tell.
With such acquisitions so close to each other, I can't help but wonder that Autodesk hired bad consultants that gave them the wrong idea about Eagle, believing they would get an immediate share in the enterprise EDA market - instead, they got a foot on the mass market that is being shrunk by Kicad.
That or they may well go ahead, up the ante anyways and release a new subscription-based Altium. As for Eagle, either they kill it altogether (based on their financials) or it becomes an Altium-Lite package.
Oh well... Time will tell.
They paid pennies for Cadsoft,
maybe $25 million. The fact that they can add it in as a marketing bullet point in their yearly subscription package seems easily worth it to me.
I don't believe anyone would think that a company that cheap gives them significant market share.
They paid pennies for Cadsoft, maybe $25 million. The fact that they can add it in as a marketing bullet point in their yearly subscription package seems easily worth it to me.
I don't believe anyone would think that a company that cheap gives them significant market share.
Yes, it's all about adding an infographic segment in their anual report.
If they bought Altium then they would have two mid and free hobby level PCB tools (Circuit Studio + CircuitMaker), surely they would have to discontinue one, or at least stop development on it.
But then again, it doesn't take many programmers to keep a product alive, even a mainstream one. You'd be shocked at the (small) number of programmers Altium had working on the PCB tool.
I can't imagine why anyone buys Eagle. We used to find it extremely useful for designing evaluation and other similar small boards, with Eagle as a free package. You can pass your CAD files around, and anyone can immediatly work with them without needing to buy anything. However, as soon as it costs even $1 it has lost that benefit, and it has little to offer as a commercial package.
Eagle had the traction it did because the maker scene started using it. Adafruit, Sparkfun et.al because there was that free version that allowed you to do small boards which is what the entire maker arduino scene was all about.
Harly anyone in industry used it for serious high end work.
https://pcdandf.com/pcdesign/index.php/editorial/menu-news/design-news/15777-autodesk-makes-4b-bid-for-altium
"Autodesk said it would finance the transaction using cash on hand and debt financing."
Isn't that - debt financing - where your target takes on the loan you got to buy it, so the target basically pays you to take it over? And then either has to raise it's prices to pay it off, or goes bankrupt and you pay a pittance for the assets from the liquidator. Either way, you get the company at very little real cost.
[Quick google later]
Seems I'm thinking of 'debt loading' which is unethical.
A Dassault deal would make sense. Or Siemens could buy to gain market share. Pads could use an update and Altium could use something like Hyperlynx.
You'd be shocked at the (small) number of programmers Altium had working on the PCB tool.
No I wouldn't, I've seen the dismal pace of improvements and--even worse--number of regressions over several years of using it. They clearly aren't putting enough resources into it, whether that's just a lack of developers or lack of testing.
I can't imagine why anyone buys Eagle. We used to find it extremely useful for designing evaluation and other similar small boards, with Eagle as a free package. You can pass your CAD files around, and anyone can immediatly work with them without needing to buy anything. However, as soon as it costs even $1 it has lost that benefit, and it has little to offer as a commercial package.
Eagle had the traction it did because the maker scene started using it. Adafruit, Sparkfun et.al because there was that free version that allowed you to do small boards which is what the entire maker arduino scene was all about.
Harly anyone in industry used it for serious high end work.
The latter goes for Altium as well. Every SoC design example which has some high speed interfaces and / or memory on it is made using Cadence Allegro. My guess is that KiCad is starting to eat into Altium's revenues as well and Altium can't climb up the ladder fast enough. If Autodesk transforms Altium into a subscribtion only model then it is probably the last nail in the coffin. The only thing currently missing from KiCad is a real, database driven part management system but that is on the development roadmap for the next version. Once that is there, there is very little reason to choose Altium.
I can't imagine why anyone buys Eagle. We used to find it extremely useful for designing evaluation and other similar small boards, with Eagle as a free package. You can pass your CAD files around, and anyone can immediatly work with them without needing to buy anything. However, as soon as it costs even $1 it has lost that benefit, and it has little to offer as a commercial package.
Eagle had the traction it did because the maker scene started using it. Adafruit, Sparkfun et.al because there was that free version that allowed you to do small boards which is what the entire maker arduino scene was all about.
Harly anyone in industry used it for serious high end work.
The latter goes for Altium as well. Every SoC design example which has some high speed interfaces and / or memory on it is made using Cadence Allegro. My guess is that KiCad is starting to eat into Altium's revenues as well and Altium can't climb up the ladder fast enough. If Autodesk transforms Altium into a subscribtion only model then it is probably the last nail in the coffin. The only thing currently missing from KiCad is a real, database driven part management system but that is on the development roadmap for the next version. Once that is there, there is very little reason to choose Altium.
I've seen quite a few big organisations dump Allegro in the last few years, and use Altium across their entire organisation. I'm not sure of the reasons, but Altium is being used for all kinds of exotic designs.
Perhaps a fair number of Altium users aren't doing chip-level designs, so the lack of that very high-level stuff isn't an issue. After all, you wouldn't use Pagemaker to run off a letter, or a 747 to nip down the shops.
