Free Altium is Coming

[Laertes]

My personal two cents: I think that marketing something to the Open Source Harware community and forcing them to use a public cloud for it isn't really that big of an issue, is it?
The only big risk is CircuitMaker being scrapped and all desings lost, that would suck indeed, but then, who guarantees the survival of your harddrive? Ever lost a file because your drive hiccupped or failed? I know I have, and it's happened more than once. Now I backup regularily on a RAID5-Array on my NAS, but from what I can tell not many people do(and I myself tend to forget for weeks so there's still that risk...). If you work on your Laptop somwhere on a trip you run the risk of it getting stolen, dropping and breaking it etc. etc.

And for those of you who still think that it really sucks to be forced to do it - if CircuitMaker is a lot better than any of the other freebies around someone will crack the binaries and provide a server you can run locally to provide your own "Cloud" to the program...there's bound to be a few good software crackers in the hacker and maker community isn't there?

And personally, as a commercial user of AD and previous long-time Eagle user(and later a little DesignSpark) I think that CircuitMaker will be ages ahead in terms of usability and man-machine interface... I mean the community only suffers through what CadSoft calls an interface(I'd say it's more of the opposite - making the features as unaccessible as possible ) because everyone supports Eagle so nicely don't they? At least from the very few screenshots it seems they took a lot of the good stuff from AD over to CM..

[Rigby]

I think open source hobbyists won't worry about cloud storage, true.

I don't see Altium folding anytime soon.  My employer alone buys enough TASKING licenses to keep Altium afloat for decades.

[Laertes]

I think open source hobbyists won't worry about cloud storage, true.

I don't see Altium folding anytime soon.  My employer alone buys enough TASKING licenses to keep Altium afloat for decades.

Well that's not really the issue is it? I think someone else here stated it, what happens when someone buys them? What happens when some Altium Board Guy gets another brainfart and decides to scrap CircuitMaker because he realizes he doesn't give a shit about the OSH community after all? Altium Board Guys are well known for their brain farts, aren't they?

I guess I get why some people are really put off by that prospect of "cloud-only" and of course, why CircuitMaker doesn't appeal to the small business owner or something... but I also think that unless you're running business-grade server infrastructure yourself the argument of data security is actually rather insignificant.
And the argument that the "forced-open" will cost the hobbyist his chance at making a little money aside from his Kits or whatever is rather ridiculous too - if you want to sell your little hobbyist kit most people would publish their schematics and artworks anyway, or is that a misconception?

So - I don't know I think they're getting bashed for their cloud thing because people aren't used to it and maybe people will be far more accepting once they have seen it(assuming, of course, it's actually well implemented!). Just because it's not ideal, doesn't mean it's a dealbreaker...

[Rigby]

Well don't use it, then.  Geez.  Ships don't change course or cancel a journey because there MIGHT be a storm. They effin' sail!

I'm not worried about it.  If I see signs of trouble at the horizon, I'll take measures to protect myself.  Until then, smooth seas.

Planning based on what MIGHT happen is folly;  The gut feeling is more often wrong than right.  We're wired to fear the unknown; the secret is to ignore our stupid gut feelings and look for evidence.

[K6TR]

Phew ! I just plowed 41 pages of comments. No one can accuse this bunch of being shy about expressing their opinions.

I guess I get why some people are really put off by that prospect of "cloud-only" and of course, why CircuitMaker doesn't appeal to the small business owner or something... but I also think that unless you're running business-grade server infrastructure yourself the argument of data security is actually rather insignificant.
And the argument that the "forced-open" will cost the hobbyist his chance at making a little money aside from his Kits or whatever is rather ridiculous too - if you want to sell your little hobbyist kit most people would publish their schematics and artworks anyway, or is that a misconception?

So - I don't know I think they're getting bashed for their cloud thing because people aren't used to it and maybe people will be far more accepting once they have seen it(assuming, of course, it's actually well implemented!). Just because it's not ideal, doesn't mean it's a dealbreaker...

Laertes you and Rigby are both right to say the Cloud Storage is, in the assessments here, overblown. Not because this group is paranoid or the concerns are not justified but because there are other concerns the Altium Board must take into consideration. In this case its a concern of Altium's Core Client Base. I consider the participants on this messageboard to be beyond or above the typical "Maker" for which Altium is targeting Circuitmaker. Specifically many of the participants here are Professional Engineers that are gainfully employed. Many if not most of those Engineers have signed Exclusivity Agreements as a Term of Employment. I'm not defending Exclusivity Agreements I think they are Bullshit but I also know they are the way of the world and without a coordinated fight there is no way around them. The Altium Board has to consider what the reaction would be from its current clients if it created a product that would allow their employees to down load it and set up shop clandestinely and surreptitiously moonlight. Hence the need for posting files publicly. I don't think this matter is a brainfart on the part of the Altium Board at all ! As a matter of fact they are carefully considering their current clients being antagonized to the point of jumping ship to a competing product, albeit one that is not currently in the market place, to protect the integrity of their products.

As to myself I come back to the statement Dave Jones made at the outset. People commit to products they are invested in, for me that is Diptrace. I purchased a "Starter" License in April and upgraded to a "Lite" License in July. I was specifically holding off with the beefy upgrades until Altium's Entry Level product surfaced. Now that it has and now that the details are out in the public it validates my initial decision and encourages me to continue the process. When Circuitmaker is released  I will download it. Circuitmaker will be worth the effort to familiarize myself with it if for no other reason to put it on a resume. I may even use it for a project or two but that will be it. But that does not change the fact that I will be sinking my money into Diptrace and a functioning Autorouter Program. I harbor no ill will towards Altium and wish them well with the product but I will be pulling for Diptrace in the hopes that they come up with a functioning Autorouter and clean up the lose ends.

I'm more than a little bit puzzled by all the gnashing of teeth regarding the decision Altium made about Circuitmaker's method of file storage.

[neslekkim]

I don't understand AT ALL why you guys are shying away from showing unfinished designs.

I want EVERYONE to see my stuff before it's done, because after it's done changes are a lot harder to make.

Who cares if I make a silly mistake in the beginning?  I want to know then, not later.

Every designer has mistakes.  Every one of us.  Everyone.  Showing your design before its done is like asking, or offering, proofreaders to look at your stuff and offer input.

I would much rather have help when the concrete is wet than after I'm done and it's difficult to change.

The question is, can it be marked as work in progress?, does the tool support more than one unfinished project?

[DerekG]

I come back to the statement Dave Jones made at the outset. People commit to products they are invested in, for me that is Diptrace. I purchased a "Starter" License in April and upgraded to a "Lite" License in July.

Good move. DipTrace has come a long way with their last 2 releases.

If you need more than what DipTrace has to offer, take a look at Proteus. It is also excellent value for money, quite powerful, yet easier to learn than AD14.

But that does not change the fact that I will be sinking my money into Diptrace and a functioning Autorouter Program.

Take a look around to see if you can find the "Freerouting" autorouter which works very well with DipTrace. Otherwise look at purchasing the Electra Autorouter which I believe does every bit as good a job as Altium's - maybe it actually does a better job

I harbor no ill will towards Altium and wish them well with the product but I will be pulling for Diptrace in the hopes that they come up with a functioning Autorouter and clean up the lose ends.

Actually, it is worth spending a bit of time setting up the standard DipTrace autorouter. Try & place all your components on a common grid (being where possible all metric or all imperial) as this helps a lot too.

Set your minimum clearances to the minimum your can accept also goes a long way to getting a reasonable end result.

[Rigby]

The question is, can it be marked as work in progress?, does the tool support more than one unfinished project?

One free private project per account.  If you want more, set up more accounts or pay for private designs.

[Laertes]

The question is, can it be marked as work in progress?, does the tool support more than one unfinished project?

One free private project per account.  If you want more, set up more accounts or pay for private designs.

It doesn't have to be private to be marked as Work in Progress. I think that, if Dave is right and Altium are actually trying to listen to the community, there's a big chance they will make some kind of system to "cathegorize" the development state of your board, like marking it as WiP, Finished and Locked(so no more comments on "you could change that resistor value"), "Requesting Feedback", ... because that's something loads of people are concerned about and will cost Altium absolutely nothing. And I choose to believe that the community can be reasonably sensible to designs that are clearly marked as "not finished, not usable, in development", so you don't get a ton of comments like "your design is shit and I had it made and it didn't work...".

The option of private projects makes it attractive to people like Dave who will inevitably get an absolute metric fuckton of comments on everything they do, even if it's far from finished and clearly marked as that. But then, people like Dave probably also don't profit too much from the comments in general because they probably don't make too many beginner mistakes anymore that people could point out to them...

[kxenos]

And the argument that the "forced-open" will cost the hobbyist his chance at making a little money aside from his Kits or whatever is rather ridiculous too

If you've done any OH projects you should of known that the moment there is a public (OH) project that has some market value the Chinese produce clones before you have the test prototypes assembled. Even if you want your project to be OH the exact timing of the release should be on your hands. This process flow will be Chinese delight for what I can see. Think of it reasonably, without insulting people: You design your board and you produce your gerbers to manufacture some prototypes to test, characterize etc. You haven't produced any boards to sell yet but your schematics and board files are already online. Do you see a problem with that or not?
Do you know Gerry Sweeney? He created a very nice and elegant decade substitution box for hobbyists (search for "Seven Decade Programmable Resistor" on ebay). Well, he sells his boards for 15,3Euros. The Chinese clones start at 5,50Euros with free shipping. And again, the Chinese will copy a design if it has market value no matter what. But would you give them the lead right from the start?

[Rigby]

Again, you wouldn't use this software for that, would you?

THIS IS SOFTWARE FOR HOBBYISTS.

This is NOT software for professional designers.

This is NOT software for entrepreneurs.

This is NOT software for someone that wants to keep all their super sparkly special My Little Pony board outlines secret.

We all agree that this software is not what Sparkfun or Adafruit would use for design.  The only people who think this software is aimed any ANYTHING other than a hobbyist think so only because they haven't read what is available on this software.

So, no.  Don't use this software if you're a professional board house that is copied by someone in China thrice per week.  You probably already have perfectly fine circuit and PCB design software you're already using.

[BloodyCactus]

We all agree that this software is not what Sparkfun or Adafruit would use for design.  The only people who think this software is aimed any ANYTHING other than a hobbyist think so only because they haven't read what is available on this software.

since all sparkfun / adafruit stuff right now you can get as eagle files, the above would be a huge blow imo. Altium need people like that on board this train. imaging going into CM, browsing sparkfun stuff and dropping a premade design piece into your design, drop the Si4703 FM Tuner board in, BAM, wire it up into your own design.

linux/mac are really tiny markets, but go to a maker faire, and you see LOADS of mac laptops and such. no cross platform is huge in a tiny market. (obviously it does not to offset the development).

[EEVblog]

Do you know Gerry Sweeney? He created a very nice and elegant decade substitution box for hobbyists (search for "Seven Decade Programmable Resistor" on ebay). Well, he sells his boards for 15,3Euros. The Chinese clones start at 5,50Euros with free shipping. And again, the Chinese will copy a design if it has market value no matter what. But would you give them the lead right from the start?

The Chinese one is not the same board.
Same functionality (as countless people have done in the past), but entirely different layout and form factor.
It is very possible they have never seen Gerry's design, and if they did they certainly didn't copy his form factor. Not that Gerry invented anything here, there is only so many ways you can do a decade resistor board with jumpers/switches. I did one ages ago that looks very similar to Gerry's in form factor, but used SMD DIP switches.

[ehughes]

The blog is updated with some more information about where things are going

http://blog.circuitmaker.com/Blogs/circuitmaker-community-09-30-14

[Laertes]

And the argument that the "forced-open" will cost the hobbyist his chance at making a little money aside from his Kits or whatever is rather ridiculous too

If you've done any OH projects you should of known that the moment there is a public (OH) project that has some market value the Chinese produce clones before you have the test prototypes assembled. Even if you want your project to be OH the exact timing of the release should be on your hands. This process flow will be Chinese delight for what I can see. Think of it reasonably, without insulting people: You design your board and you produce your gerbers to manufacture some prototypes to test, characterize etc. You haven't produced any boards to sell yet but your schematics and board files are already online. Do you see a problem with that or not?
Do you know Gerry Sweeney? He created a very nice and elegant decade substitution box for hobbyists (search for "Seven Decade Programmable Resistor" on ebay). Well, he sells his boards for 15,3Euros. The Chinese clones start at 5,50Euros with free shipping. And again, the Chinese will copy a design if it has market value no matter what. But would you give them the lead right from the start?

Okay, so maybe the decade resistor box example is not quite spot on, as Dave pointed out, but I get the point - you create something neat and the Chinese come and take it, make their kits 1/3 of your price and nobody buys it. Or do they? I don't know, I mean you said yourself that the Chinese will copy any good design(and they don't care if its OH either). And yeah, so they don't get the one week of delay between your finished design and their own, but what difference will that make in reality? Don't most people already start releasing lots of design data before they order two hundred PCBs for sale? I have no idea, but it just seems that somebody who goes and spends this kind of money upfront can't really be called a hobbyist anymore...

Personally, I assume that most stuff makers make and sell is stuff that is directed at the maker community itself - to stick to the example, who else buys a decade resistor box kit? But makers don't necessarily open EBay first, they see a neat little design in Dave's mailbag and go to the kickstarter page of the guy who made it. Or they see a project on hackaday or here in the forum... and they buy it from the original designer, maybe even find the project long before it is actually done and released...and when they have this great new CM platform that they can find all the good stuff at, even better. At least, that's the way I perceived the community. Maybe that's total crap, I don't know.

[Laertes]

The blog is updated with some more information about where things are going

http://blog.circuitmaker.com/Blogs/circuitmaker-community-09-30-14

Nice. Interesting bit: "At the time of deciding to share or release a public project, you’ll be required select an appropriate open-source license and the project becomes public."
So for all those who were afraid of it: Most likely, Altium won't own your designs...

[ampdoctor]

I don't understand how some of you folks don't get it. It's not about whether or not it's targeted at hobbyists or that it's not intended for professionals or entrepreneurs or whatever. It's about some individual having an original idea and some piece of shit stealing it and selling it as their own while making a cool million off of it, and to make matters worse possibly even getting a few lawyers together and filing for intellectual property rights, patent, and/or trademark. When that happens you'll get a damn good idea of how it might feel emotionally to be raped. And if you think that won't happen on a grand scale you're delusional. The better or more innovative the idea, the more likely it is to happen. Might as well just use a pirated copy of the real deal and tell them to blow it out their ass.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

When that happens you'll get a damn good idea of how it might feel emotionally to be raped. And if you think that won't happen on a grand scale you're delusional.

Sorry only grabbed part of the post, so it is slightly out of context, but I find this statement ridiculous.

Personally I wont be using circuit maker as I use Kicad. But I think Circuit Maker seems to be a reasonable offering, a good step toward introducing more people to their product and then selling more of their product.
Also having an upgrade path if you realise your project is really showing potential. I think it is a pretty cool idea. If I was a young design engineer trying to learn the ropes I would probably go with Circuit Maker.
The whole cloud thing, if it is an issue to you dont use it. If you potentially have millions worth of IP then use something else.

[Rufus]

Again, you wouldn't use this software for that, would you?

THIS IS SOFTWARE FOR HOBBYISTS.

And that is the idiocy of it for Altium. Their 2014 investors presentation document shows Altium in the middle of an 'end' triangle with arrows labelled expansion pointing upwards and downwards. They say they are going to expanding into the high end (with new features in the full package) and towards the low end.

CircuitMaker with it's stupid cloud only vault storage doesn't expand towards the low end, it targets a thin strip right at the bottom and pretty much guarantees no one above that strip will touch it.

I have no interest in CircuitMaker. I wouldn't touch it, but, I am pissed off about the possibility of subscription money I pay them being used to fund CircuitMaker instead of improving the product I do use.

The blog is updated with some more information about where things are going

Pretty much what I expected. When Altium first introduced their vaults (3-4 years ago?) I said they would never be used to host anything of value excepting the enterprise version which wasn't available anyway. As far as I can tell my prediction was pretty much spot on. Altium hosts their free libraries, templates, and examples on their vaults and hardly anyone else uses them, even after some of the major reasons not to use them were removed. Vaults are complicated and complicated to set up yet I had to go back 10 pages and 3 weeks on Altium Live to find a post asking about vault usage (which wasn't answered). The guy who asked about vaults here asked there (I assume) and didn't get an answer from anyone actually using vaults.   

Altium seem to be so desperate to get someone using their vault technology that they are specifically targeting people who are not going to create anything of value and giving it to them for nothing with a cut down version of AD thrown in.

[ampdoctor]

Ridiculous? People get intellectual property ripped off all the time! It's not just from China. If circuit maker is mandating you open source all your designs you're handing your ideas to an unscrupulous business on a silver platter. The court dockets are loaded down with companies locking horns over intellectual property. If a business will have a go at another million dollar business, given the opportunity they'll tear some poor maker with no capital to defend themselves a new ass. The problem with the average maker is that many engineering types aren't too business savvy so they probably wouldn't even realize they're sitting on a million dollars worth of IP.

[zapta]

And that is the idiocy of it for Altium. Their 2014 investors presentation document shows Altium in the middle of an 'end' triangle with arrows labelled expansion pointing upwards and downwards. They say they are going to expanding into the high end (with new features in the full package) and towards the low end.

Don't worry, it will be fixed in the 2015 investor presentation. The change is due to shifting market conditions and the company responding to it quickly and with a new game changer initiative.

Seriously, one thing that would help CM's marketing is to partner with a major 'Making' vendor that will endorse and adopt it for its own open designs. I have hard time though to see let's say Sparkfun and Adafruit adopting a Windows only tool. They will get a lot of public beating for it.

[Rigby]

Ridiculous? People get intellectual property ripped off all the time! It's not just from China. If circuit maker is mandating you open source all your designs you're handing your ideas to an unscrupulous business on a silver platter. The court dockets are loaded down with companies locking horns over intellectual property. If a business will have a go at another million dollar business, given the opportunity they'll tear some poor maker with no capital to defend themselves a new ass. The problem with the average maker is that many engineering types aren't too business savvy so they probably wouldn't even realize they're sitting on a million dollars worth of IP.

He was talking about the "rape" part.  That part in particular is ridiculous.

It also won't happen on a huge scale.  It just won't.  Not by my definition of huge anyway. 

This is how open source hardware is supposed to work.  You open it. You ALLOW other people to COPY your design and use it themselves.  That's the whole point...  Complaining that the software doesn't allow you to keep your designs private puts a little too much value into your design skills, as if only you are capable of designing a circuit, while simultaneously afraid to reveal embarassing mistakes that you, as a certified super ultimate master designer, might make in front of every other certified super ultimate master designer on the service.

In short: no one is going to care about your designs.  No one is going to see any mistakes you make.  Look at all this that doesn't happen on upverter.com. all designs are open throughout the ENTIRE DESIGN PROCESS, and folks can see every single step you take on the schematic and the layout.  The horror!!

[DerekG]

Dave, I believe you should close this thread & start a new one.

This thread is called "Free Altium is Coming".

Altium Designer is for professionals who need to keep their designs confidential.

CircuitMaker is not AD & therefore this thread title is misleading.

Let me suggest the correct thread title: "CircuitMaker for Hackers & Hobbyists".

[K6TR]

Ridiculous? People get intellectual property ripped off all the time! It's not just from China. If circuit maker is mandating you open source all your designs you're handing your ideas to an unscrupulous business on a silver platter.

You're flying off the deep-end. Altium addressed that concern directly in their latest update saying the will wall off any design you come up with for a fee. No specifics were mentioned but I would expect the fee structure to be progressive in both quantity and time. The question will be how many designs and for what length of time can a design be protected before the cost becomes excessive.

[ludzinc]

IMHO Altium are onto a good move here.

Free Circuit Maker will be picked up by Universities and other learning institutions, no longer shackled to AD licences, and all their graduates will come to the workforce with a CM way of doing things.

Which I bet will be so similar to the AD way, that very little further training will be needed for someone to become reasonably proficient with AD.

The other win is the vault.  My old employer (very small company) has atrocious data keeping skills.  Sure I set up a repository while there but that server died many moons ago, and I still get calls requesting long lost files. 

Lucky for him I have decent records, lucky for me I can charge a recovery fee.

But I digress - if something like CM with low cost vaults existed for me back then I'd have been able to take advantage of that, and in a decade he'd not be harassing me for lost files. 

Lost passwords maybe....