now that my hopes for Altium hobbyist edition have been dashed, now what?

[Zero999]

RS are very good to me. I'm a hobbyist and I get free delivery on any order, thanks to the fact I signed up with a business account when working for my previous employer.

Try ordering something online at 6PM for next day delivery.

Yes done that before, not that I ever need anything that urgently.

And since we're talking about students, why would they need next say delivery other than because they've waited too close to the coursework deadline before starting their project?

[shadewind]

Now don't get me wrong, I like Farnell a lot. For me personally, it's not a problem since I run my own little business so I can happily order from Farnell and receive the order on the next day, shipped from UK to Sweden. I've never had a problem with them to be honest, always great to deal with. And when you compare the stock of Farnell with the stock of ELFA, the biggest Swedish component distributor, there's really no competition.

But at least here in Sweden, Farnell refuses to deal with you unless you are a registered company and can provide an "organization number", something I can do, fortunately. I believe RS Components are the same. Most American distributor doesn't seem to care, though, and they'll happily sell to anyone. DigiKey shipping is too high most of the time but Mouser gives you free shipping over a certain order total.

But then again, I prefer using Farnell since I know the order will arrive the next day at my door... and I live right in the middle of nowhere.

[Mechatrommer]

DigiKey shipping is too high most of the time

i agree which led me to order from element14 in my recent order. just few mg of chips can save me ~9/10 price compare to if i order from digikey. e14 now have their branch in my region, limited stock though.

[EEVblog]

And since we're talking about students, why would they need next say delivery other than because they've waited too close to the coursework deadline before starting their project?

Enthusiasm.
If you need to wait ages for parts, your enthusiasm for a project can die and you go onto something else.
In any case, in Australia you get free next day courier delivery from both Farnell & RS, and they will sell to anyone with a credit card, or even cash at the trade counter.

Dave.

[slburris]

I've never had a problem ordering from Newark here in the US, which
is Farnell/Element 14/name of the week.

I used to have big problems trying to order from the big boys Avnet, Arrow,
Allied, etc., but again at least in the US, they will take my order now.
Still you can run into ridiculous line or order minimums though.

I remember in the 80s trying to order from Wyle Laboratories.  I had
to drive down to their building, sit in the reception lobby and hand them
a cashier's check for the parts I wanted.  Not an easy way for a hobbyist
to do business back then.

Frankly, I'm starting to order direct from the manufacturer for a lot of things.
For example, I started ordering various LED displays direct from Kingbright:

http://www.kingbrightusa.com/Default.asp

because their stuff seems to be out of stock a lot at Digikey and Mouser.
Not only were they happy to take an order from me from their web site,
their prices were *cheaper* than the distributors.  I'm not sure how
undercutting your distributors makes economic sense, but I'm happy to
see it.

Scott

[ivan747]

And since we're talking about students, why would they need next say delivery other than because they've waited too close to the coursework deadline before starting their project?

Enthusiasm.
If you need to wait ages for parts, your enthusiasm for a project can die and you go onto something else.
In any case, in Australia you get free next day courier delivery from both Farnell & RS, and they will sell to anyone with a credit card, or even cash at the trade counter.

Dave.

Some times I feel forced to continue a project I lost enthusiasm of just because I paid quite a lot of money on it.

[slburris]

So $145 has gone to another company, not much, but if 10,000 hobbyists around
the world purchased, that's $1.5M that Altium left on the table.....

Quoting myself....

I'm now working on a bigger project so I upgraded from the Lite version to the
Standard version for an additional $200.  So that's $345 that's gone to Diptrace,
which would have gone to Altium, had they let me do so.

I've become a fan of Diptrace's pricing model as well.  Cost by # of pins makes
sense to me, compared to say, Eagle's model of charging for board size which
I really didn't like.

Scott

[shadewind]

And since we're talking about students, why would they need next say delivery other than because they've waited too close to the coursework deadline before starting their project?

Enthusiasm.
If you need to wait ages for parts, your enthusiasm for a project can die and you go onto something else.
In any case, in Australia you get free next day courier delivery from both Farnell & RS, and they will sell to anyone with a credit card, or even cash at the trade counter.

Dave.

I don't really understand why they won't do that for Sweden
Anyway, doesn't matter to me since I have my own company.

I totally agree about speed for not losing enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for a project is not something you can easily control yourself

[EEVblog]

I've become a fan of Diptrace's pricing model as well.  Cost by # of pins makes
sense to me, compared to say, Eagle's model of charging for board size which
I really didn't like.

Yeah, board size is a poor way to limit a PCB program I think.
"Complexity" based on number of pins and/or layers is a much better way.

Dave.

[hisense999]

I've become a fan of Diptrace's pricing model as well.  Cost by # of pins makes
sense to me, compared to say, Eagle's model of charging for board size which
I really didn't like.

Yeah, board size is a poor way to limit a PCB program I think.
"Complexity" based on number of pins and/or layers is a much better way.

Dave.

One page of schematic and 2 layers board this limitation will be enough and can fit in any hobbyist project. Also watermark added automatically to Gerber files.

[EEVblog]

One page of schematic and 2 layers board this limitation will be enough and can fit in any hobbyist project. Also watermark added automatically to Gerber files.

That would make a brilliant free version of Altium.
$100-$200 gets you say 4 layers and the same one sheet schematic limitation (any size schematic sheet of course), or maybe two or four sheets to temp people into the whole harness wiring thing. Next step up the full blown package.

Altium would own the market from hobbyist through to medium end, and dominate the market, yet they are too delusional to see it. What a shame.

Dave.

[Bloch]

My vote go to a release Protel 99 as freeware or  1-200 $.

1. It old
2. It miss a lot of new "things"
3. For the beginner / or for the guy that not very often need a good program

[EEVblog]

Not any more! Last point has been cleared by Dave's EEVBlog #183 (and also #187 ).
You no longer buy your parts from a local shop: you order them through global distributors, where you can get BGA packages.

And you avoid BGA if at all possible! 

You now send your PCB to online PCB shops, where you can get 4-6 layer PCBs.

The next frontier is ASIC design, but for how long? See Hacking the PIC 18F1320, the Reverse-Engineering Custom Logic Challenge won by Jeri Ellsworth, and take a look at her own chip lab where she actually built some working active devices...

Don't get me started on that!
I just had a fight with Jeri and Chris on todays AmpHour over this!
ASIC isn't going to happen at the hobby level (unless it's some co-op service or something), and neither is home made chips, forget it. It's just a cool thing to do, but is otherwise impractical, and will have no relevance to the foreseeable future of electronics design.

So back to the main subject, these limitations based on # of pins, # of sheets, # of layers or PCB size are quite irrelevant today:

Not to a vast majority of hobbyists, and many small scale commercial or OSHW projects.
Countless very useful projects fit within the various layer/size/pin limitations.
But I get your point about it can be an irrelevant limit.
Limits can catch people at many ends of the design spectrum, and it's not necessarily the complex end.
It's a hard choice to make when you cripple a package in some way.

For example, a single sided 165mm long board with 2 leds on it at either end can't be done with the $500 Eagle package!

right now, I am working on a hobby project that would require at least a 4-layer PCB with 256-pin BGA FPGA and DDR2 chip, ie. controlled-impedance and matched-length traces!

A free  (or even a few $100) version of Altium for non-profit projects would be nice... And a great way for them to have day-time EE try their product! But then, how to make sure you are not using it for a commercial product?

You don't, the honor system usually works just fine if the prices are reasonable.

Dave, we need a spokesman 

Ironically, I was hired to give them and industry perspective and advice. They didn't like it, and they don't want to listen to me now (or anyone else!).
I hope they change their mind.

Dave.

[EEVblog]

My vote go to a release Protel 99 as freeware or  1-200 $.

That would likely ruin the company.
Deep down i think they know that 99SE is probably 99% of what most of their current customers need in a PCB/SCH tool.
And releasing that for free would likely be very bad for business.
They be much better off releasing a crippled/cheap version of their latest and greatest, at least that way they can better temp people into the higher end/higher priced package.

Too bad they made CircuitMaker 2000 disappear. That was a decent package, and a really nice simulator to boot.

Dave.

[peter_mcc]

Hi
I'm glad I found this forum! I used Protel/Altium at my last employer and was happy with it. I've just bought a small electronics business and needed to get some SCH/PCB software.

I was keen on Altium but... it's $A6.5k for the software plus 1 year of bug fixes. So that was out... Mentor was around the same.

I started playing with Eagle, because it seemed like everyone else was using it - at least on Sparkfun and a few other sites. Wow - it was just painful! Too painful. And weird - why do you use "cut" to copy things to the clipboard?? I did a whole schematic design but couldn't get the PCB side done because of the PCB size limits on my (expired) trial. Given that they wanted $1500 for a useable version (because my enclosure is 170mm long... just outside the 160mm limit) I wasn't keen.

So... I stumbled across this site/forum & heard about DipTrace. It's great! I miss my Protel 99SE keyboard shortcuts (v a = view all, etc) but I can live with it. I've redone my library, schematic & PCB in no time. It's simple to use, makes sense and seems powerful enough. As soon as the trial ends I'll be buying it for sure.

peter

[joelby]

Altium just responded to my request for information on a student license.. six or seven months after I submitted it through the Web form!

I eventually did manage to get on to someone by emailing sales.au at altium.com (which I found buried somewhere on the site), but it was annoying that it was such a struggle to pay for the software.

[qno]

A little trick with EAGLE.
You cannot place components in outside the size limited area but you can make the board outline  a little bigger than the restricted size. So 161 mm should work as long as the components are within the 100 * 160 mm.

[Gridstop]

Yes you can put the dimensions as far out as you like in Eagle, as well as put drill hits and traces & ground plane outside the allowed area. I've used this for the 10cm by 10cm boards from itead/seeed to put the mounting holes in what would be wasted space, and run a couple traces around a few components at the edge.

[Ed.Kloonk]

I've been away from this forum for a while but have been still getting the videos. Those free designer tools that Dave did his 'first impression' on just about negate the need or use for a Altium hobbyist edition it seemed to me.

Is this the case?

[EEVblog]

I've been away from this forum for a while but have been still getting the videos. Those free designer tools that Dave did his 'first impression' on just about negate the need or use for a Altium hobbyist edition it seemed to me.
Is this the case?

There is always room for another player in the low end PCB space. And the Altium tool is very good.

Dave.

[ampdoctor]

Too bad they made CircuitMaker 2000 disappear. That was a decent package, and a really nice simulator to boot.

Dave.

It didn't disappear!  You just need to know where to look for it. "Wink, wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean?!"

[DrGeoff]

Ironically, I was hired to give them and industry perspective and advice. They didn't like it, and they don't want to listen to me now (or anyone else!).
I hope they change their mind.

Dave.

At 23 cents per share they are going to need something to improve their market capitalisation. Or maybe they are hoping for a takeover or PE buyout.

[EEVblog]

At 23 cents per share they are going to need something to improve their market capitalisation. Or maybe they are hoping for a takeover or PE buyout.

23 cents is a bonanza compared to their low of 8 cents not that long ago.
Considering their market capitalisation used to be well over 1/4 of a billion dollars at one point, they are down into pennies on the dollar territory.

Dave.

[DrGeoff]

And still not attractive as a takeover target. Says a lot for the perceived market and value of the company.

[diracshore]

Now you either give Altium 5K or you stop by the pirate bay and spend 50c on a burnable DVD.

I think Altium would prefer you learn their CAD over the competitions, even if it were through a pirated version. This was Microsoft's strategy in China.
Then if you actually learn the CAD system and it makes you money, by all means purchase the retail version. If it is not working for you then reuse the DVD as a coaster and you will not have lost that 50c.