Introducing Altium Discover, Altium Develop, and Altium Agile

[nctnico]

And that is exactly why I bought a perpetual licence... for the case a project would require a change or something 5 years later.

Agreed. But if you can't get a perpetual license, this won't work. I've got a big re-design coming up for a customer with an old Altium license. The initial PCB design (in Altium) was outsourced and we ended up with files made in a newer Altium version so the customer would need to upgrade. But with this new licensing scheme, it would be better to move the entire project over to Orcad and have the customer purchase a perpetual Orcad license to get access to the files.

[free_electron]

What license type do you have ? If you have a perpetual it is frozen in time at the point your last paid subscription ended. You can't get newer versions but you can keep using that version AND ANY VERSION BEFORE !
Let's say you paid subscription till end of 2024. You can use any version up to 24.11.xx. The license file will work.

You can open newer files with older versions. The structure of the file is such that it will simply remove the stuff that is incompatible. You will get a list of the things that are incompatible. Most of the time those are additional design rule types and some polygon/pad/via types (rounded pads , donut pads, arbitrary shape pads for example. or the ipc via types.).
I've opened 2025 files with 23 and even 22, and 22 version files with 17 or 18. Sometimes you will need to open with an intermediate version to be able to regress.

Another option is to export to ASCII format and re-import.

If the version delta is not too large one of the above methods should work.

of course , if you never had a perpetual license this doesn't do you any good.

[nctnico]

What license type do you have ? If you have a perpetual it is frozen in time at the point your last paid subscription ended. You can't get newer versions but you can keep using that version AND ANY VERSION BEFORE !

The problem is that the customer has version 19 IIRC and that version isn't quite up to dealing with the complexity of the design. I got the files back from the PCB designer (who used a newer version) but somehow all the not-in-bom markers got lost (for starters) on top of the newer features being used in the PCB layout. So the entire design ended up in limbo.

[free_electron]

the PCB versions that can;t be backported are diff-pair tuning  ? ask them to convert to primitives. then it can be loaded.
As for the DNP parts : that is an issue with the variant file. the file may be missing. It is often forgotten to add to the version control system

[tszaboo]

the PCB versions that can;t be backported are diff-pair tuning  ? ask them to convert to primitives. then it can be loaded.
As for the DNP parts : that is an issue with the variant file. the file may be missing. It is often forgotten to add to the version control system

Variants are saved in the project file as far as I can see.

[Psi]

I thought they were in the . PrjPcbVariants  file, but maybe it has changed in newer versions.

[nctnico]

Well, the design used the not-in-bom marker in the part properties and those got lost. It doesn't use variants for that purpose as the 'not in bom' parts are never supposed to be placed.

[thm_w]

If you have someone you trust with new Altium version that sees the part property, they can do a find by "Component Type" = Standard No BOM. Give that list to you via SCH List. Then you generate a variant based on that.

Shouldn't be too much work. Unless "got lost" was someone messing with the files and the data is gone.

[ali_asadzadeh]

Unpopular Take: if the software can not be cracked, it would be dead soon.

[jusaca]

Last week we wanted to buy two new perpetual licences in addition to the one we already have. Well, with this new SaaS model this is not possible any more...

We now instead started to test KiCad for new projects and just keep the one perpetual for work with the old exisiting projects. I'm quite excited to see how far KiCad will take us and how responsive the KiPro Service is, if we wan't to have a specific feature added for us. Right now starting to work with KiCad seems really lovely, I'm just dreading the awful lot of library work to create all our parts in our own new library... Hopefully it is worth it to get away from all that annoying licencing trouble with Altium.

[ajawamnet]

Last week we wanted to buy two new perpetual licences in addition to the one we already have. Well, with this new SaaS model this is not possible any more...

We now instead started to test KiCad for new projects and just keep the one perpetual for work with the old exisiting projects. I'm quite excited to see how far KiCad will take us and how responsive the KiPro Service is, if we wan't to have a specific feature added for us. Right now starting to work with KiCad seems really lovely, I'm just dreading the awful lot of library work to create all our parts in our own new library... Hopefully it is worth it to get away from all that annoying licencing trouble with Altium.

You can import the Altium libraries into Kicad - and binary too.  In fact - Kicad will use the Altium binaries as is.  Pretty cool... https://www.nextpcb.com/blog/how-to-import-altium-libraries-into-kicad

[ajawamnet]

https://www.nextpcb.com/blog/how-to-convert-altium-to-kicad-vice-versa

[ajawamnet]

But I will say Kicad is still a bit toy like.  For instance loop removal sucks compared to Altium. 

[thm_w]

Quotes from Altium employee on reddit:

Hey, I'm an engineer working at Altium. Long story short, you're right. In the meantime, hope this helps:

Altium Develop pricing is basically 1k per seat (up to 5 seats... called "Author Spots") and 1k for the workspace. So, for example, three develop seats ("author spots") with a workspace is 4k per year.

Altium Agile is the enterprise-oriented product... but pricing hasn't been released yet. Worst case, you can always renew your current seats under your current license structure, so you don't have to wait around for pricing to get finalized.

Altium has (understandably) had hesitation about sending reps to reddit haha but I hope to try and fill that gap a little bit. I'm not a sales person and I just want to see the engineering community more re-engaged with what we are doing and why we are doing it. Brutal honestly is always appreciated and I'll do my best to answer any questions anyone has here.

Current users with existing, on-subscription licenses can download the Agile Platform for free and run the tool with your pre-existing licenses. This will give you access to all the latest updates without buying anything new. Let me know if you need a step by step for this.

The 10GB number came about by looking at many reference designs and estimating how large the average design file size is. Reasonable minds disagreed on exact numbers, but we generally decided that 10GB of free workspace was roughly equivalent to 50ish active projects. I'm actually curious to know what the community here thinks in terms of average project size. Worst case (I'm pretty sure) you can deploy your own git background and bypass A365 (and consequently the workspace data ceiling). Personally, I also wish this free data ceiling was higher.

Short video, nothing interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3-6S2flKjo

[gamalot]

It might affect corporate users, but for a "free" hobbyist like me, the standalone license for Altium Agile still works great.

[mengfei]

Unpopular Take: if the software can not be cracked, it would be dead soon.

Jack sparrow has entered the room 

[gdr771]

According to our Altium account-manager-of-the-month, "there will not be a perpetual license offering from Altium ever again".   So rather than pay $2500 US per seat annually for software we don't use every day, we're sticking with v24 and trying some new projects with KiCad.

[Ice-Tea]

Pricing seems to... suck slightly less than anticipated? No perpetual licence but you'd pay about the same as before for a subscription but without the upfront cost? That isn't horrible...

Off coarse, if they get back to "that'll be 500€/month, thx" somewhere down the line that would suck royaly but still... This doesn't seem horrible...

[PlainName]

Paying up front is a sunk cost. It's done, never to trouble you again. Subscription is ongoing debt, never cleared. For me, either I can pay it now or it's unaffordable, regardless of the current subscription. Maybe next month I'll get robbed and not have two farts to rub together, but at least I can still do work.

[Ice-Tea]

Not disagreeing. But I was kinda OK with paying a subscription every now and again in the past, the cost is comparable. And if I can't justify 2k a year for the SW, I probably should just call it quits. And I still have my old perpetual as a backup.

So, not terrible. Not great either.

[PlainName]

And I still have my old perpetual as a backup

For all its faults, Altium is very good in this respect. I have the 09 viewer which will still open current files and display them (and tell you what it can't deal with). Your old perpetual could well be a useful and workable backup. Other software - and even Kicad is terrible at this - require that everyone opening a file has to be using the same version, and there is no forward compatibility at all.

[Ice-Tea]

Ah, Altium. Never change.

I was looking for a quick way to upload some BOMs to monitor shortages for batch sizes etc. I found Octopart (well, not really found, it was kinda obvious). Does what I want, mostly, but only allows to upload 1 BOM. It also tells you to login with your Altium credentials, apparently Altium bought it.

Being the optimist that I am, I actually did login. I don't have an active subscription but you can still access it. Nice.

Now I want to monitor more than one BOM. Browsed around a bit, some clicky-later I find myself on the Altium BOM Portal. Clearly built on the same tech/API but that place allows to have multiple BOMs. Hurah!

Fast forward to the afternoon. I closed my browser before, I can't exactly find the portal directly but after some browsing and clicking I'm back in. But my previous BOM is no longer there. Upon closer inspection this is because, somehow, I now have two workspaces. One "Develop". One Agile.



Any by the time I found my account I in fact have three.


I mean.. if this was meant to convince me to go "workspace" and "cloud" and stuff... No? Really, really: "No"?

Also: I'm not sure what to expect. Either sales reps from three different countries on the phone slightly panting, slightly turned on? Or just three invoices for 3 different tiers of annual, recurring subscriptions.

The suckage is real.

[thm_w]

Being the optimist that I am, I actually did login. I don't have an active subscription but you can still access it. Nice.

Not quite understanding, you aren't paying anything but now its given you a subscription?
The first screenshot looks like altium365 (https://365.altium.com/) which you shouldn't be able to access (other than read only), unless you have an active subscription.

Octopart link is here: https://octopart.com/my/bom-tool

[Ice-Tea]

10/10, no comments. I let my subscription lapse in 2022, I have no active subscription. Or at least I didn't have one. Seems I have three now. 

[ajawamnet]

Cloud? There is no cloud.  It's just someone else's computer... and I don't want a forced partnership where I have to maintain a financial relationship with some company to access my intellectual property in perpetuity.    On their official forum I mentioned this "forced partnership" and one long time user mentioned,

"You hit the bull's eye with that Wayne. But it is actually worse. A partnership is between two relative equals. This is not a true partnership. You need to worry about Attium's health, with no influence over it, because your business health depends upon them. But Altium does not have to care about your wellbeing at all because they do not need to.

Stepping back to a larger view, the issue of access to IP is very interesting. Can you sign away your intellectual property rights so your access to your own property is contingent on an unspecified, and potentially unreasonable, payment in the future?"

Which to me is a violation of Antitrust laws as well as unconscionable. In the paper from Seton Hall titled "The Evolving Doctrine of Unconscionability in Modern Electronic Contracting" it states (PDF link https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1675&;context=student_scholarship )

"It is the author’s belief that end-user license agreements are intrinsically both procedurally and substantively unconscionable—they are textbook examples of take-it-or-leave-it situations where more powerful parties leverage their superior bargaining positions to force weaker parties to accept their terms, with no real alternatives. If, however, the reader is not persuaded by the author’s arguments, either because of personal constitution or the subconscious desire to remain safely huddled inside Plato’s cave, the author hopes that the reader will at least concede that problems exist with current electronic contracting."

So yea. They threw all of us long time users under a bus just to satisfy their greed for a recurrent revenue model.

"The tech industry has devolved into one driven by glitzy soundbites that mean nothing, infested with a bunch of "Man Bun, Java Jockey, Pitiful Python Pirates" whom were told by their parents that STEM was better than being an archaeologist (or whatever line of work they really wanted to do [IF ANY]), being led around by their nose (and promises of BMW's and sapphire martinis at happy hour) by a clownfest of technically illiterate, greedy business monkeys." ~~~ Wayne Mitzen