General > General Technical Chat
Is Altium free anywhere?
Simon:
--- Quote from: tom66 on May 15, 2023, 07:00:46 am ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on May 14, 2023, 09:50:49 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on May 14, 2023, 04:30:21 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"
--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---
Weirdly have the opposite opinion. MS Office isn't great, lots of weird formatting bugs. But far better than LibreOffice and I refuse to use anything other than the MS product for office tasks.
But for CAD, I think KiCAD is there for 90% of use cases. One of the bigger hurdles will be getting engineers and contractors familiar with the package. If you advertise for a contract role for a guy with Altium experience, you'll fill it quickly. (We use contractors for PCB design - it wasn't and isn't my decision.) For KiCAD I suspect you'll be waiting for some time.
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If someone con't convert from one program to another then I'd not want to employ them. Trying to find someone at work, the best candidate in the last batch we looked at listed Altium as a skill but did not list electronics, I said no good to me, I want a brain not a copy paste machine, don't have the time to tell him what to do all day.
floobydust:
Converting from one program to another is never that mentally painful but I find most of the investment value of schematic/PCB CADD is instead in the libraries.
Many 100's of hours, checking for errors, adding DFM etc. So if you jump ship, $$$$ labour costs to reinvent the wheel. No other software I know of has exclusive, proprietary libraries as a leech parasite that clings to you sucking the cash out of you lol. You have been assimilated lol.
I tolerate a lot with freeware but do laugh and cry and swear when using GIMP compared to Photoshop. GIMP has a punishing UI, dare you try draw a circle with it lol. But it's still pretty powerful, well maintained and costs nothing.
PlainName:
--- Quote ---I don't see any evidence the Chinese copyright system will change and start to force Chinese companies to pay for Altium.
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I don't have an opinion either way on that, but just having Altium as the de facto standard surely means anyone co-designing with the Chinese would either have to pirate or pay for their own copy.
Thinking that through, Altium would be a good match since it is backwards and forwards compatible in versions you could pirate and old version and your partners could be using the latest. If Kicad were in that boat then everyone would have to use the same version, and if you paid for the latest version (because, ethics) then your partners could be mighty pissed off at you.
langwadt:
--- Quote from: floobydust on May 15, 2023, 08:18:24 pm --- No other software I know of has exclusive, proprietary libraries as a leech parasite that clings to you sucking the cash out of you lol. You have been assimilated lol.
--- End quote ---
operation systems and microprocessors also tend to have a lock in effect
Simon:
Yes but if you know one program and have to use anther because say your new job uses it then I don't see the drama, if someone is going to make a fuss on their CV about which PCB program they are a master of then I'm not sure they will switch easily :)
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