Altium Designer or Eagle?

[BiOzZ]

I started a job working at an electronics company that works mainly in mixed signaling and i was given a licence for Altium Designer v13.1.2 and was given the option to use either that or eagle

i have been using eagle for YEARS (well 6 years ... but im 21 thats a long time XP) and know it a fair bit

looking around it appears as if people used both and no one in upper management told me what they would prefer me to use!

is Altium worth relearning everything? or should i just stick with eagle?

it looks like i will mostly be starting off working with SMPS design or something of the sort ... tho im still going threw schooling in in class we use eagle and at home i have a professional version of eagle

by any chance do you know if altium comes in russian without paying extra and having all the files open-able in the english language version?

thanks guys!

PS: please no fighting ... im not after what has the biggest and most militant fan base ... if i want to see people punching them selves over a form post i would have mentioned my preferred MCU platform XP

[ve7xen]

Altium is much more powerful and nicer to use. I would avoid using it for free/open hardware projects personally, as it's a huge barrier for others to build on your projects, but for commercial work I think it's well worth the effort.

[BiOzZ]

thanks!
and yes all my personal projects are open and ill use eagle for that no matter if it takes a little longer to make it easier for others

but would you recommend learning it for work?
does it produce neater results with less effort?
are the library's as extensive / library builder as nice?

OH how about this feature i heard off handed on kcad where you can convert a datasheet to package?!

[EEVblog]

Altium beats Eagle hands down. Not even in the same category.
For your needs, both will get the job done, so that point is rather moot.
But I would take the opportunity to learn a proper package like Altium that's widely used in the industry.
Eagle is essentially hobby level stuff, and doesn't look nearly as good on the resume.
Do it for that reason alone.

[BiOzZ]

Thanks dave!
i installed it and licensed it and played around with it ... its a major change and will take lots of getting used to but you convinced me its worth the time but i can assume they have every video i need to master this thing!

[marshallh]

I have used Eagle for years like you (7 years now) but it is sorely lacking in advanced features. I am doing 6layer fast-ish digital in Altium and it just beats the hell out of Eagle.
It does have somehwat of a learning curve but it comes with a huge amount of extra power (design rules using regex, priority, etc) not to mention routing and accomodations for fast digital/rf.

For simple stuff? Doesn't matter, learn it anyway. I dread going back to eagle to maintain designs i've already done in it

[BiOzZ]

WOW! played arround with it for just a few minutes and FPGA programming, circuit simulation, VHDL, i can send PCBs right to my router, ARM programming .... and lots more!!!

Dave should really do a video on this! ... granted lots of people might be pissed at him recommending a tool that costs an arm and a leg
granted lots of people get pissed everytime the word "pic" or "avr" is used XD

[EEVblog]

WOW! played arround with it for just a few minutes and FPGA programming, circuit simulation, VHDL, i can send PCBs right to my router, ARM programming .... and lots more!!!
Dave should really do a video on this! ... granted lots of people might be pissed at him recommending a tool that costs an arm and a leg
granted lots of people get pissed everytime the word "pic" or "avr" is used XD

I used to work for Altium.

Don't get seduced by the FPGA stuff, circuit simulation, or embedded stuff, it's great on the surface, but dig deeper and try to do something out of the box or support new devices and you'll "come-a-gusta" as they say. Hardly anyone in the industry uses Altium for any serious FPGA or embedded use, much to Altium's disgust, because they bet the entire company on it 10 years ago and they failed.

[BiOzZ]

I used to work for Altium.

Don't get seduced by the FPGA stuff, circuit simulation, or embedded stuff, it's great on the surface, but dig deeper and try to do something out of the box or support new devices and you'll "come-a-gusta" as they say. Hardly anyone in the industry uses Altium for any serious FPGA or embedded use, much to Altium's disgust, because they bet the entire company on it 10 years ago and they failed.

Ah damn but its still nice to have ... tho most of my time will be spent learning the CAD!

thanks again mate!

[free_electron]

Altium = proper CAD software. , actully EDA : electronic design assitant
Eagle = glorified pencil/eraser/paper replacement.


That's about where they sit...

[BiOzZ]

been playing arround with it for hours now ... its nice but its library system is a pain and its search is practically useless even after downloading tons of libraries that were not built in :/
not a confident start but ... im sure ill figure it out im still sticking with this

 %-B

[Arp]

From what I've read, designing your own components is pretty simple, and compared to Eagle, with only a few hours experience with Altium, it seem's like a legitimate claim. Eagle can be narly to work with

Found this video:

[CraigHB]

Anything would be an improvement.  I really dislike the way EAGLE handles library components and building your own components.

[David_AVD]

With Altium, I find building new schematic components very quick.  PCB components can take longer, especially if you want it accurate, detailed and 3D.

I've tried Eagle a couple of times over the last couple of years (just to see what it was like) and wanted to scream.  Was deleted off my PC quickly each time.

[daveatol]

For the basic schematic capture and PCB layout, it seems to take longer to learn to use Eagle than Altium. Altium truly is a breeze to learn and as stated by others is the accepted professional package.

Unfortunately all the versions I used at work and the last demo copy I (and others) used have serious bugs (rotating all multipart components on quiet annotate, destroying PCB libraries by moving all silkscreen to infinity), hopefully fixed in the current release. The component libraries were years behind the market (I think this may have been addressed more recently though).

[BiOzZ]

Thanks you guys!
im still trying to figure out how to get and find components faster than selecting the library, finding the component ... but im learning this software fast with some remapping!

i swear this is the only forum where i actually get helpful people XP

[free_electron]

Install the libraries. Then the search panel can navigate. It has realtime filtering.


Easiest way to 'install'

Open a schematic.
P-P ( place part. Hit the letter p on keyboard for place menu , hit it again for part submenu. Altium keyboard shortcuts are very intuitive.. Pp place part pw place wire, pn place net , sa select all , xa exclude all , si select inside so select outside ... And so on... Spacebr rotates objects.

Pp . A little window opens. This is your mru (most recent used). Top right there is a browse button. Hit that. A larger search box opens. Top right of that search box is ( you can dock this search box permanently .. More on that later ) a button with three dots on it. Click that. This shows the list of installed libs. You can add them there. Make sure they have a checkmark on them or the lister will not search in them. ).

Done.

To dock the library browser. When in a schematic. Look at the bottom status bar. Bottom right there are a few lables. System , sch , pcb and so on. Click sch and select library browser. It will now dock left of the screen automatically.

Another feature that very few people know.
If you are in place mode , you can clone a part by pointing at it and hitting the insert button on the keyboard.

Lets say you already placed a few capacitors and resistors and now you need to place another capacitor , of which you already have one on the sheet. The last part you placed was a transistor.. No need to goescape escape, find the cap , select it... Simply move the cursor over the capacitor already on screen. Hit insert. Presto. Altium understood you needed one of those...

Altium is not a tool you learn in a day on your own.... This software has a lot of history behind it and a lot of development. You can learn the basics in about an hour if someone sits down with you and shows you the basics.

Keep an eye on the status bar. If you are in the middle of a command the statusbar will have scrolling messages in it. Read those. They tell you what you can do at this point in time..

[Randall W. Lott]

I got a job solely because I was proficient with Altium.  I don't have the ability to have a go at Cadence Allegro, so I'll likely never get to put that on my resume until I work for a company that uses it.

I find Eagle to be slightly amateurish and much less efficient.

[fake-name]

With Altium, I find building new schematic components very quick.  PCB components can take longer, especially if you want it accurate, detailed and 3D.

The trick to producing good 3D models is to not use altium for them.

If you have it, SolidWorks is Excellent. You draw up the part model, export as a STEP file, and import into the Altium library.
Also, many manufacturers provide .STEP files for their parts, particularly for unusual connectors.

Last, http://www.3dcontentcentral.com/ is a good resource for generics (DIP, SOIC, capacitors, resistors, whatever). It's free (you have to sign up, though), and you can download models as .STEP files which you can import directly into an altium library.

[David_AVD]

I have gotten quite a few 3D models from there.  You need to be careful though as some of them are not correct.  Just today I found that the model for an NTC surge protector was mirror reversed (legs in wrong place).

[free_electron]

I use rhino3d to make and manipulate step files. Grab from 3dcontentcentral, scale , warp ,add , subtract, whatever. Drawing 3d with the built in tools is a snap.

[olsenn]

Honestly, is Altium that much better than Eagle for things that Eagle can do? There is a yearly student subscription of AD available, but I don't do BGA escape routing and advanced FPGA stuff, etc. I'll probbaly stick with Eagle anyways just because it works well for me, but I thought I'd get some different opinions.

[free_electron]

yes it is. eagle is a glorified pencil / paper and eraser. just like many other cad packages (even autocad ).
altium is up there with the solidworks

what i'm getting at is that eagle and autocad let's you make a drawing. solidworks and altium help you make a drawing and look over your shoulder all the way , telling you what can and cannot be done.

[c4757p]

solidworks and altium help you make a drawing and look over your shoulder all the way , telling you what can and cannot be done.

I'm sure SW and Altium are great (I know Altium is), but damn, when you put it that way.... *shudder*

[David_AVD]

Are there any cheaper (say $200) 3D manipulation software out there that's usable?  I'd have a use for it occasionally, but can't really justify spending $1000+ for it.

For example (as mentioned above), I found a 3D model for an NTC, but it's "back to front" in a way that I can't correct in Altium.