EEVblog #527 - Altium Entry Level PCB Tool Rant

[AndyC_772]

How much is Altiums package? I have been looking to get a copy of Orcad with PCB but I can not justify 6K for it especially since it is their low end package. I think if they priced the full package at no more than 2K it would be swing able.

Orcad PCB Designer Standard is about £2k (UK). If you can do without differential pairs and other useful time saving / high speed design stuff, it's pretty good value IMHO. I'm guessing that the price you've quoted is for PCB Designer Professional which is the next level up.

[Rigby]

Suggestions to Altium:

     1. $150USD - Fully-featured, perpetual licensed copy of Altium Designer, with the caveats of having no tech support and the software is not for commercial use.
     2. $300USD - For commercial use, but with restrictions on maximum board size and the number of board layers. May further restrict access to more advanced
                           features such as BGA escape routing, FPGA capabilities and 3D modelling.
     3. $600USD - Fully-featured, time-limited licence (3-years?). For commercial use.
     4. $1500USD - Fully-featured, perpetual licenced copy. Support beyond 3-years costs extra.

There must be a free version, too.  For many people, $1 is a significant enough barrier to entry that it will never be crossed.  It's not because these people can't afford a $1 expense, it's because a $1 piece of software is much more expensive than their current, free tool, and will therefore never be purchased.

A no barrier entry point is important if you wish to gain market share.  Once users are familiar with your free tool and need enough of the pay-only features, they will pay, but if you start at $1 or $10 or $100, anything that isn't $0, they will never use your product to begin with, and can then never be "sold" on the pay-only features.

[arvidj]

From a business point of view: I wonder if offering a student version would be a way to attract people early in their careers. It seems that almost everyone offers a student/academic discount.
I know matlab's got me for life with a student version, it's just too damned useful to not have at home.

As someone who is just getting restarted as an electronics hobbyist a "student version" is a non-starter. When I was younger electronics was a hobby. Then real life intervened for 40 years. Luckily I am now able to return to my hobbies, however being a "student" is not on the list.

An inexpensive full featured but limited capacity "hobbyist" version would be great.

But I will admit that I am not in the demographic they want to court. My career path ... it's called 'retirement' at this end of the path ... will not lead to additional sales of the full featured product.

[Rigby]

But I will admit that I am not in the demographic they want to court. My career path ... it's called 'retirement' at this end of the path ... will not lead to additional sales of the full featured product.

Any smart marketer will include you in their demographic, because quite often, the retiree is the type of fellow that will offer advice on software to young folks.  They may not get sales from you, but they very well could get sales because of you.

[ddavidebor]

From a business point of view: I wonder if offering a student version would be a way to attract people early in their careers.

Yes, Altium have always done this, from the very early days. They have set up countless Altium equipped labs in schools.

Not here, they don't give a shit about the best electronic school in the north-west of my country

[Rasz]

[Fsck]

From a business point of view: I wonder if offering a student version would be a way to attract people early in their careers.

Yes, Altium have always done this, from the very early days. They have set up countless Altium equipped labs in schools.

Not here, they don't give a shit about the best electronic school in the north-west of my country

It'd be interesting to see which countries are included.. Probably (almost definitely) the US.. but which other countries?

[shashwatratan]

I would love to use Altium. specially for my commercial product design. But i don't think it would be possible with altium's current prices. for small companies like mine. it is very important to channelize financial resources towards company growth. Right now we are using Dip Trace. it's a great tool for its price. I have never used altium because of same reasons as Dave mentioned.

There is as huge market of small start-ups and free lancers. which could be using the altium if it is affordable to them. and they could try for small projects. Players like Diptrace  and eagle are catching up with altium day by day.

So Altium. Listen to Dave and Millions of us. Put something in the market for every one to taste. else after some years you will start seeing  Rapid decline in your business growth.       

[nardev]

I hope they will also think about cross platform support.

Why not support Linux and Mac?

If microchip made a netbeans, cross platform tool and compilers for their microcontrollers, they can do it too

[free_electron]

I find it intriguing why nobody screams for a free version of Orcad, Pads, Allegro , Boardstation , Zuken or any other hi end PCB  tool. Yet everyone screams for a free version of Altium ...  curious...

Ditto why nobody screams for cross platform of those tools...

[FrankBuss]

Ditto why nobody screams for cross platform of those tools...

Windows is still de-facto standard in the industry, it would be not profitable to port it to other platforms for the few users who would use it. But you can always use Eagle, it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux

[c4757p]

I find it intriguing why nobody screams for a free version of Orcad, Pads, Allegro , Boardstation , Zuken or any other hi end PCB  tool. Yet everyone screams for a free version of Altium ...  curious...

Ditto why nobody screams for cross platform of those tools...

Because Altium is relatively easy to use, non-sucky, and "accessible" enough (IYKWIM) for people to know that they want it.

The more people like something, the more they want it. Comes with the territory of producing a decent software product.

[alm]

I find it intriguing why nobody screams for a free version of Orcad, Pads, Allegro , Boardstation , Zuken or any other hi end PCB  tool. Yet everyone screams for a free version of Altium ...  curious...

Ditto why nobody screams for cross platform of those tools...

Yes, I wonder why nobody is screaming for a Linux version of Allegro or Zuken .

[komet]

I thought Zuken had a free Cadstar Express? It was limited to very few pins, though, as I recall.

[minibutmany]

His relation to Altium reminds me of Scully's relation to the X-flies

[Rufus]

I hope they will also think about cross platform support.

Why not support Linux and Mac?

If microchip made a netbeans, cross platform tool and compilers for their microcontrollers, they can do it too

I would rather have a tool be optimized and well tested on one platform than slow and buggy on multiple platforms, especially when the tool costs more than the platform. Buggy and slow on multiple platforms kinda sums up MPLAB X.

[Noize]

[Noize]

I find it intriguing why nobody screams for a free version of Orcad, Pads, Allegro , Boardstation , Zuken or any other hi end PCB  tool. Yet everyone screams for a free version of Altium ...  curious...

Ditto why nobody screams for cross platform of those tools...

Because we are members of EEVBLOG and Dave worked for Altium(oNly one  we've heard opinions about), so we have heard of it being a high end CAD package etc.. Most of us aren't a professional like you. But it would be great if the others jumped on board as well. By the way, been testing some op-amps with one of your Jim williams PG's 

[jancumps]

It wasn't the energetic rant I expected. Quite laid back and almost reasonable
Wonder what's in the 21 minutes that were edited away...

[EEVblog]

I find it intriguing why nobody screams for a free version of Orcad, Pads, Allegro , Boardstation , Zuken or any other hi end PCB  tool. Yet everyone screams for a free version of Altium ...  curious...

Perhaps because Altium has always been the affordable "everyday persons" PCB tool, right back to the 80's. That's how they got their start and grew to what they are now, by being affordable, the other ones did not. At one point they just grew too big for their own boots, at around the $12K mark.
Then they had a complete about-face and went back to low priced, slashing the price by like 70% or something and saying they would never go back to high priced tools. Then they have slowly built the price back up again. So many people are used to paying affordable prices for Altium at some point.

[EEVblog]

Wonder what's in the 21 minutes that were edited away...

Nothing really, just dead space and re-takes.

[jancumps]

Oracle - who are not known for their low price settings - have a long standing habit of making their software available for free for evaluation. Even their top products. The restriction is the license: for evaluation only, no productive use.
It has served them - and me - very well.

[Slothie]

As a hobbyist, the one thing about Eagle that really p... er grinds my gears is the stupid board size restriction. As a hobbyist I'm likely to want to use big components - DIP packages, D connectors, through=hole power resistors. Ive been wanting to put together a 6502 computer for my amusement, but to do it in Eagle I'm going to have to make it pretty much one 40pin DIP per board.... And to upgrade to a version that allows bigger boards it a HUGE $1100 price leap to get 4m2 - nothing inbetween!. For FSM's sake, Altium, offer a cheap/free version with at very least Eurocard sized boards. More than 2 layers, microscopic trace widths, commercial licence, FPGA inregration, differential path design are all things I can live with being restricted or missing. But give us a decent board size, even if it requires upgrade to a $100-200 version from the free one. Making the next step $1200 is just stupid. To only have the options ot 160mmx80mm or 4000mmx4000mm is stupid. .

[george graves]

What's the learning curve like for going from Eagle to Altium?

My worry is that a tool that is on version 13 has so many features/menus/options that I would feel completely lost jumping in so late in the game.  Usually it's best to start on an early version, and learn new features as the tool grows.  Maybe that would be why Altium would be going a "beginner" version?  Like like how autocad did with 123d.

[jancumps]

My guess is that Altium's user interface is more mature than the current free ones.
And once you have a free option, there will grow a community that will post free tutorials and YouTube howto's.