Author Topic: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk  (Read 53247 times)

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Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #75 on: June 15, 2021, 03:27:49 am »
But you'll still need to replace your PC at one point. I bought a USB dongle with the CAD package (not Altium) I'm using. In the end you don't know how long Altium's servers will be kept up & running to support old licenses which are not under a maintenance contract. Especially when taken over by a company that pushes the subscription model agressively. OTOH you can likely find a cracked version so at least you can keep using the software you paid for.

Altium licenses don't run out.  Single user?  Save a local copy and use it forever, only the subscription service runs out (updated vault stuff, software updates, support).

AD also isn't geolocked, at least as far as I know, and not in the way people seem to accuse it of being.  It's up to the customer how they wish to distribute their licenses, and if that ends up having a geo-locking effect, that's essentially their fault.

The sharing mechanism is a license server, operating over the LAN.  If you need to travel, then either you need to VPN into it (or use some equivalent tunnel to access the service), or you need to reserve that license for the duration (roam), in which case it will be unavailable to others whether you're using it at that moment or not.  It's only in this sense it might be considered "geolocked".

AFAIK, it is not disabled by not having internet access, or by travelling internationally, or by connecting to a different network, or by using it on a different machine, etc.

Even if multiple users are detected using the same license, just a nag dialog pops up every 10 min or so, it doesn't lock out either user.

You could just as well "steal" by firewalling AD's internet access and using local license copies on each machine, of course you can't access online services that way (vaults/updates/etc.).

Mind, this is my experience as a US user, I don't know if they have other terms and restrictions in other markets, or other types of licenses besides the standard "seat".  YMMV.

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Offline Batang

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #76 on: June 15, 2021, 02:30:09 pm »
Promo
 

Offline Gerhard_dk4xp

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #77 on: June 15, 2021, 02:42:26 pm »
I'm a big fan of KiCad but I think Altium has a bigger lead than you give them credit for. Nobody is going to be designing mobile phones, tablets, laptop motherboards or other high complexity stuff in KiCad any time soon. A large amount of PCB design is not high end, but if you're a company that does 90% simple stuff and 10% stuff that requires a product like Altium, you're probably going to use Altium for everything. This may eventually change but it's going to be a while.

Meanwhile...

done with Orcad STD on  DOS / Compaq286 @ 16 MHz     :-DD
 
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Online coppice

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #78 on: June 15, 2021, 03:03:03 pm »
I'm a big fan of KiCad but I think Altium has a bigger lead than you give them credit for. Nobody is going to be designing mobile phones, tablets, laptop motherboards or other high complexity stuff in KiCad any time soon. A large amount of PCB design is not high end, but if you're a company that does 90% simple stuff and 10% stuff that requires a product like Altium, you're probably going to use Altium for everything. This may eventually change but it's going to be a while.
done with Orcad STD on  DOS / Compaq286 @ 16 MHz     :-DD

Gerhard
I feel a Yorkshireman sketch coming on....We used to lay out dense 24 layer boards with black tape and mylar sheets, and we used to push those tapes 5 miles, up hill, both ways. Thank goodness those days have gone. Boards were a nightmare to get right, and every time we needed to modify a design, the drawing office people nearly cried.

Its interesting that Kicad is being used for quite complex boards, but it says nothing about whether this is an efficient, cost effect, way to work in 2021.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2021, 07:00:43 pm by coppice »
 

Offline Karel

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #79 on: June 15, 2021, 05:10:23 pm »
Its interesting that Kicad is being used for quite complex boards, but it says nothing about whether this an efficient, cost effect, way to work in 2021.

Its interesting that Altium is being used for quite complex boards, but it says nothing about whether this an efficient, cost effect, way to work in 2021.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #80 on: June 15, 2021, 06:13:54 pm »
What *is* typically used for high end boards? The last company I worked for that made hardware used Altium IIRC, they were making settop boxes which were essentially computers. Back in the early 2000's I worked at a place that was making another device that was essentially a custom PC motherboard, they were using OrCad.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #81 on: June 15, 2021, 06:35:56 pm »
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Offline asmi

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #82 on: June 15, 2021, 06:43:02 pm »
What *is* typically used for high end boards?
Cadence Allegro. Since it costs a fortune, I doubt many people use it to design STM32 boards or Arduinos.
Also pretty much all middle-to-high-end SoCs I came across have their reference designs done in Allegro. I don't think that's a coincidence.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2021, 03:33:36 pm by asmi »
 
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Offline free_electron

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #83 on: June 16, 2021, 08:12:50 pm »
Where did you hear that?
Protel for DOS was written from scratch by Nick Martin in Borland Pascal, and then moved to Delphi once they moved to Windows. It never used Fortran.


Yep, I can't see why there would be any Fortran in that given the history and platform.

Do you know if AD is still all written in Delphi?
c#. al the old codebase is gone.
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Offline free_electron

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #84 on: June 16, 2021, 08:33:04 pm »
What *is* typically used for high end boards?
Cadence Allegro. Since it costs a fortune, I doubt many people use it to design STM32 boards or Arduinos.
Also pretty much all middle-to-high-end SoCs I came across have their reference designs done in Allegro. I don't think that's a coincidence.
The reason behind that is that the silicon is designed in Cadence tools (which are different from the PCB tools) . The silicon market is owned by Cadence and Mentor.
The silicon tools can export data to the pcb tools. Things like drive strengths, node loads, internal wire lengths for x-net matching.
If you are a semiconductor maker you pay millions in license fees a year for the semiconductor tools and you get the pcb tools for free.

so there's two factors :
1) the tool is free for those people
2) the data exchange for all the stuff like lpddr4 and other critical stuff where information from the silicon is needed.

That is the ONLY reason it is being used. If you just need the pcb tools the license fees are astronomical. The learning curve is also a huge roadblock. They cling to archaic concepts like padstacks. The internal database format is not backward compatible and many more issues.
They dont' want regular pcb-only users. They borged OrCad to get their hands on the masstek codebase , ported it and then sent a 'dear john' letter to all the users that the PCB was going to be discontinued and you needed to switch to Allegro and Concept HDL.

The methodoly used is so different from what we are used to in the Windows world. It is clearly noticeable they have their pedgree in complex unix based tools with extensive customisation using arachic languages like Skill and TCL. The menu system is complex and inefficient and the whole UI totally sucks. It reeks of 1980's Solaris UI design.
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Online coppice

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #85 on: June 16, 2021, 09:41:38 pm »
If you are a semiconductor maker you pay millions in license fees a year for the semiconductor tools and you get the pcb tools for free.
If that were true, there wouldn't have been a move in the early 2010s by some major silicon vendors to use Altium for all their board work.
 

Offline asmi

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #86 on: June 16, 2021, 10:06:26 pm »
That is the ONLY reason it is being used. If you just need the pcb tools the license fees are astronomical. The learning curve is also a huge roadblock. They cling to archaic concepts like padstacks. The internal database format is not backward compatible and many more issues.
The learning curve isn't that bad. Orcad/Allegro has one huuuge advantage over Altium - it does. not. crash. In all my time using it I've never came across any issues or bugs, but in my time with Altium I stumbled over quite a few, not to mention how many times did it crash. Also Altium's SI tools is utter garbage compared to what's included even in 5k$ Orcad Professional, while Allegro is simply in another league. SI in AD is so bad that I have to export my designs from AD into Orcad so that I can do SI sims. I was told my Altium that they are going to improve it in the version 22, so we will see.

They dont' want regular pcb-only users. They borged OrCad to get their hands on the masstek codebase , ported it and then sent a 'dear john' letter to all the users that the PCB was going to be discontinued and you needed to switch to Allegro and Concept HDL.
Yes they do want pcb-only users. Which is why they got rid of old Orcad and just use Allegro engine across entire lineup. That's something Altium should learn from them.

The methodoly used is so different from what we are used to in the Windows world. It is clearly noticeable they have their pedgree in complex unix based tools with extensive customisation using arachic languages like Skill and TCL. The menu system is complex and inefficient and the whole UI totally sucks. It reeks of 1980's Solaris UI design.
And yet somehow it's PCB editor is FAR superior to what's in Altium - it's faster, more efficient and RELIABLE.
 
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Offline apurvdate

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #87 on: June 17, 2021, 04:34:47 am »
They dont' want regular pcb-only users. They borged OrCad to get their hands on the masstek codebase , ported it and then sent a 'dear john' letter to all the users that the PCB was going to be discontinued and you needed to switch to Allegro and Concept HDL.

That in fact was better move IMHO. The Allegro interface is way better than old OrCad Layout.
Also I don't need much to learn extra stuff related to ui menus or how a tool interface is, even if I scale up my tool from OrCad Standard to OrCad Professional or even if I move from basic OrCad to higher package Allegro.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #88 on: June 17, 2021, 08:20:25 am »
They dont' want regular pcb-only users. They borged OrCad to get their hands on the masstek codebase , ported it and then sent a 'dear john' letter to all the users that the PCB was going to be discontinued and you needed to switch to Allegro and Concept HDL.
That in fact was better move IMHO. The Allegro interface is way better than old OrCad Layout.
I'm not sure I would call the interface better perse but it is hard to compare since the UI design philosophy between Orcad Layout and Allegro are so far apart. But Allegro is a whole lot faster compared to Orcad Layout. Designs that Orcad Layout is struggling with (resulting in slow redraws) are a piece of cake for Allegro. For what it can do the minimum system requirements of Allegro are really low. I can easely work on a complex SOC design on a core i3 laptop which is nearly a decade old.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2021, 10:05:45 am by nctnico »
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Offline Karel

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #89 on: June 17, 2021, 09:11:06 am »
The methodoly used is so different from what we are used to in the Windows world. It is clearly noticeable they have their pedgree in complex unix based tools with extensive customisation using arachic languages like Skill and TCL. The menu system is complex and inefficient and the whole UI totally sucks. It reeks of 1980's Solaris UI design.

Sounds interesting. Looks like I'd like it. Everything that doesn't smell/look like windows is a huge advantage already.
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #90 on: June 17, 2021, 09:48:31 am »
The methodoly used is so different from what we are used to in the Windows world. It is clearly noticeable they have their pedgree in complex unix based tools with extensive customisation using arachic languages like Skill and TCL. The menu system is complex and inefficient and the whole UI totally sucks. It reeks of 1980's Solaris UI design.

Sounds interesting. Looks like I'd like it. Everything that doesn't smell/look like windows is a huge advantage already.
It may be nowadays, but in the turn of the century I used Mentor tools in a similar capacity (Si and some PCB design) in Sun Ultra 1 stations running Solaris. It was really painful and the UI was very broken (those typical rolling bars in ill-fitted contents in those dialog and options boxes, for example). That gave me an entire new appreciation for the polish of the applications in the then current Windows 98 and 2000. This was one of the reasons why we called it "torMentor".

Fast forward fifteen years, I started dabbing in Cadence at work and the whole interface is not as bad  but it still has that similar feeling. I guess that past experience kinda ruined for me. More or less at the same time I started using Altium in a limited capacity and find its interface better. Performance wise, though, the use of Vault in a networked environment is very upsetting.
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Offline free_electron

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #91 on: June 17, 2021, 02:23:22 pm »
i've seen multiple tools evolve over many years and used them over that timespan.
Smartwork -> Hiwire (dos)
Orcad 3.xx for DOS to Orcad 11 for Windows (dos to win)
Cadence Allegro (sun/win)
Autotrax 1.61 to Altium Nexus Server. (dos to win)
as well as a number of esoteric systems
Valid (sun)
Visula (sun)
Bentley Systems (sun)
EDS (sun)
Teradyne Vanguard (dos)
Intergraph (Clipper)

They all had their pro's and cons.
I do not like the amount of work involved to create a footprint in Allegro, nor it's ui. it still feels like old Sun software
In my opinion you simply can't beat Atlium in terms of productivity. You can whip up a design very quickly. If you combine the tool with a vault installation to do concurrent design, library management and version control, you boost productivity even more.
Link it to your PLM system, suck in datasheets through octopart, exchange live 3d data with the mechanical world. (cad connector to solidworks and others ) and you crank it up another notch.

Does it do signal integrity and power integrity ? No, but link it with dedicated tools for that and you are set. Does it do simulation ? yes ( again) . I'd rather they focus on shcematic/pcb than waste resources chasing an SI /PI simulator. Leave that to the dedicated tools.

Does it crash ? rarely. i'm running this thing 24/7 leaving the session open. I rarely have to restart it (keep an eye on the bottom right resource monitor. if it goes red , either save all and a quick Altium restart, or close all the other gunk you have open. This is a windows issue and not always an altium issue. We are in 2021 and windows is still stuck to 64K UI handles for all processes combined.. The garbage collection doesn't always work properly on those either. The latest versions of Altium have gotten much better at avoiding that misery.

The vault has never restarted in the 5 years i've been running it (and there's hundreds of floating licenses with over 400 people using it)

Does altium become unstable ? yes.
When ? From my experience supporting the installation ( like i said hundreds of licenses and 400+ users)

- underpowered hardware
- glitchy hardware like consumer grade or self built , overclocked stuff.
- graphics drivers (ATI / AMD is problematic. Get a Quadro with certified drivers )
- emulation ( on macbooks )

I'm running the latest version on a 6 year old Zbook 17 G2 with a K3100 quadro. Connected over VPN to a Nexus server backend. Whenever i get complaints from users that it is unstable my first question is : what do you run it on ? if it is not workstation grade machinery (zbook or Z8xx series machines) they get my standard "go to IT and request a real computer" answer. Those that do listen , never come back.
5 year old Zbooks can be had on ebay for as low as 400$ ( and that includes a quadro graphics board).
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Offline asmi

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #92 on: June 18, 2021, 07:18:26 pm »
In my experience Altium really doesn't like sleep or hibernation. I don't ever turn off my PC (except a couple of times a year for cleaning, or every once in a while for a component installation/removal), but I let it sleep/hibernate, and whenever it wakes up, there is close to 50/50 chance that Altium is going to be messed up and will need to be restarted. While Orcad PCB editor often stayed open for over a month with sleep and hibernation, and never had any problems. And none of the issues I had with Altium were caused by PC itself. And Windows is obviously not a problem too as Orcad manages to work for a very long time just fine.

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #93 on: June 18, 2021, 10:36:05 pm »
In my experience Altium really doesn't like sleep or hibernation. I don't ever turn off my PC (except a couple of times a year for cleaning, or every once in a while for a component installation/removal), but I let it sleep/hibernate, and whenever it wakes up, there is close to 50/50 chance that Altium is going to be messed up and will need to be restarted. While Orcad PCB editor often stayed open for over a month with sleep and hibernation, and never had any problems. And none of the issues I had with Altium were caused by PC itself. And Windows is obviously not a problem too as Orcad manages to work for a very long time just fine.
I dont think it is hibernation, I think it is changing video cards and or outputs. Put my desktop into hibernation for months without restart, no issues. Got a laptop with two video cards, constant crashes and errors when doing that.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #94 on: June 18, 2021, 11:31:11 pm »
I've had issues with more than one monitor where one of them is a Samsung and the screensaver has kicked in - on waking up the Samsung causes Windows to move and resize any open windows. Twice. Maybe it's something like that.


 

Offline free_electron

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #95 on: June 19, 2021, 12:22:12 pm »
In my experience Altium really doesn't like sleep or hibernation. I don't ever turn off my PC (except a couple of times a year for cleaning, or every once in a while for a component installation/removal), but I let it sleep/hibernate, and whenever it wakes up, there is close to 50/50 chance that Altium is going to be messed up and will need to be restarted. While Orcad PCB editor often stayed open for over a month with sleep and hibernation, and never had any problems. And none of the issues I had with Altium were caused by PC itself. And Windows is obviously not a problem too as Orcad manages to work for a very long time just fine.
I dont think it is hibernation, I think it is changing video cards and or outputs. Put my desktop into hibernation for months without restart, no issues. Got a laptop with two video cards, constant crashes and errors when doing that.
That is a hardware / driver issue. If one monitor is on the embedded graphics and the other is on the discrete gpu it does indeed give problems. if you hibernate, close the lid ( but keep running external through a docking station ) the system is thrown fro one graphics driver to another. if they don't support the same feature set in terms of hardware acceleration your application can crash ( and not only altium ... )
When the application starts it interrogates what hardware it runs on and decides to use one GPU library. At startup the JIT engine 'compiles' this library in and the application starts. if you now all of a sudden switch graphics hardware your program is using a graphics library that is not made for that hardware ! Ideally this should work if you are using only the basic , common functions of a graphics card. But once you use the accelerators .. are bets are off. Here run this heavily optimized code for an ATI card (using ATI specific libraries) on an nvidia. it doesn't work. You cannot expect an application to dynamically switch hardware configurations. It is an unreasonable scenario. if it is removable hardware like usb to ethernet dongles etc the OS has a mechanism. But a graphics card is not a 'removable' device.

If you run altium on such a system and drag the window from one screen to another ( or set it in the middle between two , you will only be useing the common windows graphics library. no acceleration will be started. if you start altium on the real GPU , acceleration launches. drag it to the other window and acceleration ceases for the remainder of the session. do this from the OS side (hibernation ,turnign the graphics card off ) without signalling the application : all bets are off.

That's why ,on the Zbook i use the discrete graphics is turned off. it is disabled in the bios. only the Quadro shows up. Two monitors on the dedicated displayports (doscking station) . One on the Thunderbolt port that switches to mini displayport mode.
I've seen all these issues that are mentioned and, like i said before, my standard answer is : get a real computer. in the sense : get a workstation grade machine with fixed hardware and none of this 'dynamically can change' or 'emulated' ( wine, parallels , bootcamp ) environments. You are running CAD software, not video games. I had engineers mucking around with altium on a 13 inch macbook... complaining it is slow. well duh -facepalm- . besides you have to be insane running it on 13 inch screens. back in the dos days the standard was already 14 inch.

What's next ? altium for Iphone ? If we are going that route i also want it on flipphones with 320x240 like motorola razor (it has a second 64x64 display. dual screen ! schematic one , pcb other)?  (no , sorry we will not support blackberry , don't ask. Eagle already has that market  >:D )
how about nokia 3310 ? that certainly needs to be supported ! such an ubiquitous platform !
Maybe we should run it on HD44780 'graphics cards'. That a known standard that's been around for ages. Lets go for 2x8 char configuration. they are cheap on ebay . less than a dollar. let's hook up a few hundred to an arduino and see if we can make it run altium. We already did Doom, so how hard can it be ?



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Online Bud

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #96 on: June 19, 2021, 01:49:16 pm »
I ran Altium for 14 months on a Win7 PC with Nvidia extension GPU card without rebooting or restarting, just hibernation. That was Altium 17 though.
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Offline asmi

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #97 on: June 19, 2021, 09:24:24 pm »
I've seen all these issues that are mentioned and, like i said before, my standard answer is : get a real computer. in the sense : get a workstation grade machine with fixed hardware and none of this 'dynamically can change' or 'emulated' ( wine, parallels , bootcamp ) environments. You are running CAD software, not video games. I had engineers mucking around with altium on a 13 inch macbook... complaining it is slow. well duh -facepalm- . besides you have to be insane running it on 13 inch screens. back in the dos days the standard was already 14 inch.
How come every other software manages to work just fine on my system (including Orcad PCB, and even - God Forbid - KiCAD!), and the only one which has problems is Altium? It tells me that the problem is not a PC.

What's next ? altium for Iphone ? If we are going that route i also want it on flipphones with 320x240 like motorola razor (it has a second 64x64 display. dual screen ! schematic one , pcb other)?  (no , sorry we will not support blackberry , don't ask. Eagle already has that market  >:D )
how about nokia 3310 ? that certainly needs to be supported ! such an ubiquitous platform !
Maybe we should run it on HD44780 'graphics cards'. That a known standard that's been around for ages. Lets go for 2x8 char configuration. they are cheap on ebay . less than a dollar. let's hook up a few hundred to an arduino and see if we can make it run altium. We already did Doom, so how hard can it be ?
OMG your excuses are getting more and more pathetic :palm: Altium has some good sides, but stability is definitely not one of them. And no, computer has nothing to do with that.

Offline free_electron

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #98 on: June 20, 2021, 01:59:46 am »
How come every other software manages to work just fine on my system (including Orcad PCB, and even - God Forbid - KiCAD!), and the only one which has problems is Altium? It tells me that the problem is not a PC.

They are not using Acceleration on the GPU. Simple as that. Does OrCad or Kicad support multiple windows served form one application ? split between screens ? Orcad doesn't. Kicad most likely doesn't either. Altium requires hardware that is directx10 capable. what if the directx drivers or version is different for the two graphics cards you have , and the machine switches from one to the other while going into hibernation. you can't expect the software to handle such situations. Who runs CAD on a laptop anyway ? that's what you have workstation grade machinery or desktops for.

I support a pool of over 500 users and 200+ licenses.
if there is trouble it is invariably with people running it on macbooks , office machines and whatnot. Give these people workstation grade hardware (Z8xx series and Zbook)  and there are all of a sudden no more complaints. There may be other machines that work too , but the Z family is readily available for engineering pool due to them being certified for Solidworks and Catia.

I leave Altium running all the time on my Zbook.. it's been up for months without a single hiccup. i can come and go as i wish. The last time i shut it down was to do an upgrade to a newer version. Not gone down since. And Altium work is all i do day in and out. I have mulitple projects open at a time. some of these are 20+ layer boards with more than 15000 design rules , 50000+nets and 10000+ parts , blind and buried vias ,stacked lasered vias. It just works.
That is my experience.
And yes, is see those crashes and weird things too, like people report on the forums. The users i support experience that too , but,  like i said, the moment i switch them to a workstation grade machine with a real GPU ( and the intel disabled) or to a desktop the problems disappear. So explain me how it is not hardware/driver related ? change the machine and the problem is solved. Same operating system.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2021, 02:02:31 am by free_electron »
Professional Electron Wrangler.
Any comments, or points of view expressed, are my own and not endorsed , induced or compensated by my employer(s).
 

Offline Monkeh

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #99 on: June 20, 2021, 03:44:32 am »
They are not using Acceleration on the GPU. Simple as that.

But they do.

Quote
Altium requires hardware that is directx10 capable.

And now we see part of the problem..

Quote
moment i switch them to a workstation grade machine with a real GPU ( and the intel disabled) or to a desktop the problems disappear. So explain me how it is not hardware/driver related ? change the machine and the problem is solved. Same operating system.

Do you complain that wet roads are the problem because you have bald tyres?

Hardware varies. Driver versions, vary. Most software manages to work despite this, because they put some effort into error handling and checking for edge cases, and use libraries which supply proper abstraction. Altium doesn't need to be properly engineered because, what, it's engineering software?

Those 'workstation class' machines are exactly the same important silicon as everything else. Running the same shoddy drivers from the likes of nVidia.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2021, 03:48:12 am by Monkeh »
 


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