PCBWorks: WTF Altium?

[xuio]

Why is altium creating so many new products?
CircuitMaker and CircuitStudio seem to serve a purpose - being a free/low-cost Altium Designer, but why did they announce PCBWorks?

At first glance I thought that this would be some sort of extension to Altium Designer so you can interface it to SolidWorks better,
but no: PCBWorks seems to be a complete PCB design suite on its own. (please correct me if I'm wrong)
(source: http://gfxspeak.com/2015/02/13/mechanical-electronic-integration/)

I like the idea of interfacing Altium to Solidworks, but why create another tool, when they could have just offered it as a (paid) extension to Altium Designer.

Moritz

[ElektroQuark]

To charge even more.

[hkBattousai]

25kg sack of flour: $20
1kg packet of flour: $1

You always earn more as you divide your product into smaller pieces.

[xuio]

25kg sack of flour: $20
1kg packet of flour: $1

You always earn more as you divide your product into smaller pieces.

Yes, but I think most companies don't want to switch to another tool and re-train all their people.

[hamdi.tn]

i don't think it's a complete pcb design suite, i think it use pcbdoc created and edited with AD then export them to solidworks friendly form , like step better than AD do, cause for now altium can't export the copper layout or the mechanical layout, just the 3d package linked to the component on the board and the board itself.

so i guess your first thought is the right one , just an additional tool, not a cad by itself

[xuio]

i don't think it's a complete pcb design suite, i think it use pcbdoc created and edited with AD then export them to solidworks friendly form , like step better than AD do, cause for now altium can't export the copper layout or the mechanical layout, just the 3d package linked to the component on the board and the board itself.

Maybe, but there is an exsisting tool for that: http://www.desktop-eda.com.au/solidworks-modeler-for-altium-designer/

Maybe this is meant for MCAD people, to give them a mechanical look on the PCB, but still being able to change something opposed to a STEP model.

[hamdi.tn]

i don't think it's a complete pcb design suite, i think it use pcbdoc created and edited with AD then export them to solidworks friendly form , like step better than AD do, cause for now altium can't export the copper layout or the mechanical layout, just the 3d package linked to the component on the board and the board itself.

Maybe, but there is an exsisting tool for that: http://www.desktop-eda.com.au/solidworks-modeler-for-altium-designer/

Maybe this is meant for MCAD people, to give them a mechanical look on the PCB, but still being able to change something opposed to a STEP model.

could be , but as a daily user of altium i rarely use altium 3d capabality in useful thing except giving an idea to a client about how his product will look like ... but once i needed to do some thermal analysis with solidworks so i needed to export a board with it's copper on it to take count of the thermal dissipation du to the copper. couldn't do that cause AD can't do it. so after all this can be useful.

[RF-Tech]

I called up GoEngineer to see how much PCBWorks will be priced, they say it will be about $5K USD - they were right about the CircuitStudio pricing, so they are probably right about this as well.
-S