Author Topic: Is Altium free anywhere?  (Read 12365 times)

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Offline FaringdonTopic starter

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Is Altium free anywhere?
« on: May 11, 2023, 05:39:55 pm »
Hi,
Are there any countries/places in the world, where Altium is free, or very cheap?
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Offline tom66

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2023, 07:22:56 pm »
I thought you had already started working on an Altium design?  And now you are asking about the licence cost?

The short and long answer is no:  Altium has unified pricing, so you pay the same everywhere, within a few normal variations of currency and the like.
 
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Offline thm_w

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2023, 09:25:16 pm »
We have an Altium forum... why are you asking here.

Anyway Dave just updated us on a cheap license: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/affordable-license/msg4857650/#msg4857650
Profile -> Modify profile -> Look and Layout ->  Don't show users' signatures
 
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2023, 09:50:59 pm »
Certainly - AD is routinely used by many engineers in relatively poor countries. And it's probably all perfectly legit licenses.
 
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Offline hans

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2023, 08:43:52 am »
No Altium is not free, nor cheap. 2k$/yr for individual is a lot.

Just assume people borrow Altium from work, etc.
 
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Offline voltsandjolts

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2023, 09:27:08 am »
Hi,
Are there any countries/places in the world, where Altium is free, or very cheap?

Altium seems extremely cheap, compared to the hundreds of hours of engineers' time you've wasted on this forum, with all your moronic nonsense BS threads.
 
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Offline FaringdonTopic starter

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2023, 11:09:36 am »
Any country who has it for free, is massively advantaged in the world of electronics.
I am pretty certain you can get Altium licenses for next to nothing in certain parts of the world.....ive had people tell me this, who are from those places.
All i can say is "come on KICAD".
At least you can learn it for free....and use it for free.
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Offline tom66

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2023, 11:14:12 am »
Any country who has it for free, is massively advantaged in the world of electronics.
I am pretty certain you can get Altium licenses for next to nothing in certain parts of the world.....ive had people tell me this, who are from those places.

You can't get it legally for free or next to nothing.
Those people are probably pirating it or, against the terms of the agreement, sublicencing a copy with multiple seats available.

If you are doing free work at home it's vanishingly unlikely Altium will take any action except to disable your software (possibly).  However if you are doing commercial work, you are at risk of being targeted by their licencing division. It seems, from at least one user's case, that they go after the company you are working for, too.

Besides, at the hourly rate a PCB engineer can get in the UK (we pay up to £50 per hour for one) the cost of Altium (~£10,000 one off perpetual licence without support) is paid off by the time that engineer has done a couple of decent sized jobs.
 
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Offline nctnico

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2023, 11:27:56 am »
Any country who has it for free, is massively advantaged in the world of electronics.
I am pretty certain you can get Altium licenses for next to nothing in certain parts of the world.....ive had people tell me this, who are from those places.

You can't get it legally for free or next to nothing.
You can. But it depends on the jurisdiction you are in and thus whether copyright is enforced. I don't think I'm telling anyone something new when I state that companies like Altium are very likely to create holes in their licensing system on purpose in order to gain traction in markets where they can't get into due to their pricing. Once those markets mature and the legal system improves, the money is raked in. See it like university licensing; get people used to a product and they are likely to keep using the product in their professional career. And this is not something that happens only far away. I've spend quite a few years in various jobs where the software provided by the company wasn't paid for.

Meanwhile, Orcad is a much cheaper option compared to Altium with several advantages as well (faster and less buggy).
« Last Edit: May 14, 2023, 11:31:41 am by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 
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Offline Simon

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #9 on: May 14, 2023, 12:38:23 pm »
Any country who has it for free, is massively advantaged in the world of electronics.
I am pretty certain you can get Altium licenses for next to nothing in certain parts of the world.....ive had people tell me this, who are from those places.
All i can say is "come on KICAD".
At least you can learn it for free....and use it for free.

If you are a student you will get access via university for the duration of your studies, the reason why is obvious, it's not very obvious as to why giving your work away would do you any good, would you work for free?

KiCAD is quite usable, I went back to it after my escapade with circuit studio which is just Altium Designer really without the later features.
 
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Online EEVblog

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #10 on: May 14, 2023, 01:37:47 pm »
 
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Online EEVblog

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #11 on: May 14, 2023, 01:42:16 pm »
You can. But it depends on the jurisdiction you are in and thus whether copyright is enforced. I don't think I'm telling anyone something new when I state that companies like Altium are very likely to create holes in their licensing system on purpose in order to gain traction in markets where they can't get into due to their pricing. Once those markets mature and the legal system improves, the money is raked in. See it like university licensing; get people used to a product and they are likely to keep using the product in their professional career. And this is not something that happens only far away. I've spend quite a few years in various jobs where the software provided by the company wasn't paid for.

Altium spent a long time watching with tears in their eyes as practically the entire Chinese design market uses Altium 99SE for free, it was the industry standard, and they couldn't do anything about it.
They still struggled when I was there, and are still struggling today to convert these into legit licenses I'm sure.
They don't do it deliberately.
 
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Offline FaringdonTopic starter

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #12 on: May 14, 2023, 01:55:18 pm »
Quote
Altium spent a long time watching with tears in their eyes as practically the entire Chinese design market uses Altium 99SE for free, it was the industry standard, and they couldn't do anything about it.
Thanks, this is what i'd also heard...it can only be a matter  of time, before goverments round the rest of the world realise, that they must make either Altium, or an "Altium equivalent", free of charge in their own countries,  otherwise they wont be able to compete.
(ie buy out Altium and dish it out for free, or just encourage say KICAD more, say)
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Offline tooki

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #13 on: May 14, 2023, 02:26:14 pm »
KiCAD is quite usable, I went back to it after my escapade with circuit studio which is just Altium Designer really without the later features.
Out of curiosity, what pushed you away from Circuit Studio towards KiCad?
 

Offline FaringdonTopic starter

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #14 on: May 14, 2023, 02:34:57 pm »
..............Whilst we wait for @Simon to hopefully answer....ill speak on KICAD if i may.....i am certain it will stay free of charge, and will become "THE ONE". Knocking all others out of its way.....Unless Altium perhaps is bought out, and then dished out for free everywhere.....dont honestly known how Altium fully compares to KICAD, but am told KICAD is just as good....and can do the same high end stuff.

I like Altium....but cant afford it...so having to use it now without familiarity....am still working on a small 4 layer board which i could have finished long ago if i had been  allowed to use my "well known" Eagle Pro.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2023, 02:37:02 pm by Faringdon »
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Offline tom66

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #15 on: May 14, 2023, 03:03:03 pm »
Quote
Altium spent a long time watching with tears in their eyes as practically the entire Chinese design market uses Altium 99SE for free, it was the industry standard, and they couldn't do anything about it.
Thanks, this is what i'd also heard...it can only be a matter  of time, before goverments round the rest of the world realise, that they must make either Altium, or an "Altium equivalent", free of charge in their own countries,  otherwise they wont be able to compete.
(ie buy out Altium and dish it out for free, or just encourage say KICAD more, say)

If you seriously believe that the thing making the UK or other Western nations less competitive for engineering is Altium being free, you're nuts.  Sorry if that offends you, but it's just so far down on the list of reasons.   
 
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Offline tooki

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #16 on: May 14, 2023, 04:30:21 pm »
..............Whilst we wait for @Simon to hopefully answer....ill speak on KICAD if i may.....i am certain it will stay free of charge, and will become "THE ONE". Knocking all others out of its way.....Unless Altium perhaps is bought out, and then dished out for free everywhere.....dont honestly known how Altium fully compares to KICAD, but am told KICAD is just as good....and can do the same high end stuff.
Not in a million years.

OK, maybe in a million years. But right now, KiCad can't hold a candle to Altium or the other professional programs. Can you make it produce excellent boards? Absolutely. Does it support you in doing so the same way Altium can? Absolutely not.

Basically, "KiCad is just as good as Altium" is a typical open-source software fanboy claim. It's just as untrue as the claims that "LibreOffice is just as good as Microsoft Office" or "GIMP is just as good as Photoshop". In every case, the open-source program can do all of the basics (and then some), but simply cannot compete with the feature sets that those established commercial programs built up over the course of decades.


While I have every reason to believe that open-source server software (servers, databases, etc.) can do everything their commercial counterparts can, that simply isn't the case for desktop software. The fact that no open source desktop app has ever managed to dethrone its commercial counterparts... well that speaks volumes -- s does the fact that in many cases, open source server software has dethroned commercial equivalents. That means the market is willing to go open source when it's good enough. And the corollary that open source desktop software just isn't there. (Nor do I think it ever will on the whole, for various reasons, but that's well beyond the scope of this discussion.)



As for your trouble with Altium: You really need to just watch some tutorials or something. I gave an Altium primer to the apprentices at my old work, and had them designing a little board in under 2 hours.
 
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Offline FaringdonTopic starter

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #17 on: May 14, 2023, 06:33:34 pm »
Thanks, being mentally challenged certainly doesnt help me learn Altium......but i got Eagle cracked inside of a day, and layed out an involved 4 layer board within 24 hours of using it.
Being free, there were really good tutorials/vids available for Eagle.
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Offline Simon

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #18 on: May 14, 2023, 07:05:54 pm »
KiCAD is quite usable, I went back to it after my escapade with circuit studio which is just Altium Designer really without the later features.
Out of curiosity, what pushed you away from Circuit Studio towards KiCad?

CS had a very non illustrious career, it started out as overpriced and incredibly unstable from what I heard. By the time I bought into it the £2500 license was £900, then they did an "offer" for £400 and that offer never ended. I felt rather slighted as weeks after shelling out so much for such a poor product they made it clear that they would charge whatever it took to get people to buy it. So Farringdon, if you want AD then just buy CS assuming they are not giving it away now.

Clearly CS was just a means to get you into AD, Farnell distribute it exclusively and Altium do not provide any support that is up to Farnell. Support was done by one bloke at Farnell. So Altium have no interest in CS, it is a crimpled piece of garbage. So bad that things like a BOM export required microsoft office and the export process took about 10 minutes (I am deadly serious). Any time I could not do something that you would think obviously such a program could do and contacted "support" I got back an email telling me that there was not a problem, you could do this if you used this long procedure. It was just silly. The last time I paid for the licence the bugs were not fixed, instead they added 3 features that were of no practical value like PDF export, pointless, you could already export a step file, and if you were deing 3D CAD your 3D CAD program would be able to spit out a 3D PDF. I just gave up.

Naturally Altium have been after me ever since the day I bought it to buy AD, just a few days ago I replied to another email encouraging me to AD and told them to get lost.
 
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Offline Simon

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #19 on: May 14, 2023, 07:09:00 pm »
Quote
Altium spent a long time watching with tears in their eyes as practically the entire Chinese design market uses Altium 99SE for free, it was the industry standard, and they couldn't do anything about it.
Thanks, this is what i'd also heard...it can only be a matter  of time, before goverments round the rest of the world realise, that they must make either Altium, or an "Altium equivalent", free of charge in their own countries,  otherwise they wont be able to compete.
(ie buy out Altium and dish it out for free, or just encourage say KICAD more, say)

I don't know what sort of fantasy land you live in. What has a national government got to do with how a private company distributes software? just because you can't have your expensive toy you want someone else to foot the bill. For goodness sake, what is it about AD that means you can't do your poxy SMPS designs in KiCAD like the rest of us?
 
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Offline nctnico

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #20 on: May 14, 2023, 07:10:20 pm »
..............Whilst we wait for @Simon to hopefully answer....ill speak on KICAD if i may.....i am certain it will stay free of charge, and will become "THE ONE". Knocking all others out of its way.....Unless Altium perhaps is bought out, and then dished out for free everywhere.....dont honestly known how Altium fully compares to KICAD, but am told KICAD is just as good....and can do the same high end stuff.
Not in a million years.

OK, maybe in a million years. But right now, KiCad can't hold a candle to Altium or the other professional programs. Can you make it produce excellent boards? Absolutely. Does it support you in doing so the same way Altium can? Absolutely not.

Basically, "KiCad is just as good as Altium" is a typical open-source software fanboy claim. It's just as untrue as the claims that "LibreOffice is just as good as Microsoft Office" or "GIMP is just as good as Photoshop". In every case, the open-source program can do all of the basics (and then some), but simply cannot compete with the feature sets that those established commercial programs built up over the course of decades.


While I have every reason to believe that open-source server software (servers, databases, etc.) can do everything their commercial counterparts can, that simply isn't the case for desktop software. The fact that no open source desktop app has ever managed to dethrone its commercial counterparts...
Kicad more or less killed Eagle (with a bit of help from Autodesk though) and several other low end PCB design packages. And Altium will be next in a couple of years. Altium may have a lot of features but the bugs and extremely low performance make that Altium sits between a rock and a hard place. It is too expensive to do simple boards with and it is not good enough for complex boards. Every SoC reference design I have come across is made using Orcad.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2023, 07:54:33 pm by nctnico »
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Offline langwadt

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #21 on: May 14, 2023, 07:23:35 pm »
Quote
Altium spent a long time watching with tears in their eyes as practically the entire Chinese design market uses Altium 99SE for free, it was the industry standard, and they couldn't do anything about it.
Thanks, this is what i'd also heard...it can only be a matter  of time, before goverments round the rest of the world realise, that they must make either Altium, or an "Altium equivalent", free of charge in their own countries,  otherwise they wont be able to compete.
(ie buy out Altium and dish it out for free, or just encourage say KICAD more, say)

I don't know what sort of fantasy land you live in. What has a national government got to do with how a private company distributes software? just because you can't have your expensive toy you want someone else to foot the bill. For goodness sake, what is it about AD that means you can't do your poxy SMPS designs in KiCAD like the rest of us?

did you not see who the poster is?
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #22 on: May 14, 2023, 07:37:56 pm »
I did :)
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #23 on: May 14, 2023, 09:50:49 pm »
Basically, "KiCad is just as good as Altium" is a typical open-source software fanboy claim. It's just as untrue as the claims that "LibreOffice is just as good as Microsoft Office"
I don't know about Altium vs KiCAD, but I have to disagree with you about LibreOffice vs MS Office. I find MS Office virtually unusable. It's appalling. LibreOffice is much better. I've taken work home, just so I can use LibreOffice, because MS Office is too slow and clunky. It's not a matter of taking time to get used to it. I've used plenty of other GUIs in my time, not just on Windows, but other platforms and have definitely found MS Office to be one of the worst.
You can. But it depends on the jurisdiction you are in and thus whether copyright is enforced. I don't think I'm telling anyone something new when I state that companies like Altium are very likely to create holes in their licensing system on purpose in order to gain traction in markets where they can't get into due to their pricing. Once those markets mature and the legal system improves, the money is raked in. See it like university licensing; get people used to a product and they are likely to keep using the product in their professional career. And this is not something that happens only far away. I've spend quite a few years in various jobs where the software provided by the company wasn't paid for.

Altium spent a long time watching with tears in their eyes as practically the entire Chinese design market uses Altium 99SE for free, it was the industry standard, and they couldn't do anything about it.
They still struggled when I was there, and are still struggling today to convert these into legit licenses I'm sure.
They don't do it deliberately.
It's certainly true China's weak copyright system has benefited them hugely. It's very naive to believe it'll change soon. Plenty of people have said the same about democracy following wealth, but Singapore has demonstrated it doesn't always follow.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: Is Altium free anywhere?
« Reply #24 on: May 14, 2023, 10:21:28 pm »
You can. But it depends on the jurisdiction you are in and thus whether copyright is enforced. I don't think I'm telling anyone something new when I state that companies like Altium are very likely to create holes in their licensing system on purpose in order to gain traction in markets where they can't get into due to their pricing. Once those markets mature and the legal system improves, the money is raked in. See it like university licensing; get people used to a product and they are likely to keep using the product in their professional career. And this is not something that happens only far away. I've spend quite a few years in various jobs where the software provided by the company wasn't paid for.

Altium spent a long time watching with tears in their eyes as practically the entire Chinese design market uses Altium 99SE for free, it was the industry standard, and they couldn't do anything about it.
They still struggled when I was there, and are still struggling today to convert these into legit licenses I'm sure.
They don't do it deliberately.
Sorry, but how can near 100% market penetration be bad? Ofcourse nobody will officially admit that they tolerate piracy (not internally or externally). But financially it is a huge win as it takes zero marketing costs to win new customers. The customers are there, locked into the ecosystem and they only need to be made to pay. Imagine a Chinese company made a PCB design package and Altium would need to try and penetrate that market? It is almost a lost cause.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2023, 10:26:06 pm by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 


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