Hi,
Background: I use Altium Designer at work, active subscription. At home I used to use Eagle but now I have a CS license which I bought wanting to have a rather homogeneous setup. Win10 x64, Core I7, 12GB RAM, SSD, Geforce GT330M.
Since I see that someone from Altium is looking I will add my 2 cents.
But before that, I want to say that right now there is a very big difference in performance between AD <=17 and AD18 (which I enjoy at work). It may be now the time to either upgrade CS to 64bit code base / multithreading therefore adding 64bit performance, or even better: add more features and leave the CS performance as it is.
Those are the things that I'm missing or they nag me on CS:
- lack of "Find similar objects" feature - this is very useful when, for example, one wants to change the designator dimension's at once;
- make the Mechanical layers name changes persistent on the application level. I want to rename the mech layers to my own customized names and I don't want to be forced to rename them for each project; those names has to be reflected in the Gerber outputs;
- solve the bug that the application sometime is not remembering the way I setup the side panels (set to autohide); sometime when restoring to window from the maximized state, the panel that is docked on the side become by itself floating or the order of the panels is messed;
- remove the animation on the opening or closing of side panels set to auto-hide; make it appear and disappear instantaneous (hidden after a timeout or a mouse click elsewhere).
- in the library manager, if I reorder the columns they don't stay as I am setting them; it annoys me a lot to see that the first column is set to "Description" (and get restored every CS launch) and I want to be the Component Name column first. If I set something there, I want to always stay like set on the application level.
- in the component Properties (schematic side) I need a reference note with the library from where the part was placed in case I want to change something to it. I don't want to start searching everywhere when that info could be more easily accessible;
- there is a need for a IPC Footprint wizard. Ok, fine, the AD has it and CS can't. But in that case at least give us the possibility to import the components from other applications (like Ultra librarian or PCB library expert) without having to resort to hacks (like using Eagle as intermediary); Therefore bring scripting into CS.
- interactive routing should push and shove vias too, not only traces.
- in Eagle I used to set shortcuts for certain operations. It will be nice to be able to customize shortcut keys. I know about the accelerator keys but those I don't use even in Altium Designer (instead I am using my own shortcuts, or sequence of keys). Bring this into CS.
- allow CS to import the latest PcbDoc from AD. Or even better, there should be a single file format set (project, schematic, pcb, libraries) across Altium family of products.
- add a tool to place a adjustable (angle) protractor on the PCB (especially when we are in PCB library building footprints). It helps to build footprints that are a circular collection of pads. EasyEDA has it.
- solve the issue with the missing setting for the polygon pours. Everytime there is a change on PCB it keeps asking if you want to repour or make the polygons unpoured. Make it a setting in Preferences (like it is in AD). Actually on the same window popup there is a reference to "Jump to PCB preferences" in order to disable that popup window, but it doesn't work because there is no such a setting in the PCB Preferenes.
A very good thing will be to expand the printing support:
- have the ability to print layers in black and white and in negative to serve as exposure film when working with negative photosensitive dry film. The outline (and/or keepout layer or even better, one of the mech layers from a drop-down) should serve as a limit for negative conversion. You want to print only the negative of the artwork (on a 1:1 scale) not to invert the entire sheet.
- have the ability to scale the above print on X and Y axis (each one separate) in order to compensate the laser printer non-linearity in printing
- allow the artwork to be placed in a certain position on the page to be printed
- allow the signal layers to be printed in black with white holes in pads where the drill hole should be - that should be optional;
- add 3D PDF export
Conclusion: I understand that Altium has to maintain a gap between the high end product (AD) and entry level product (CS) but now the gap is big (in performance and in capabilities) and Altium could follow the direction set by others (eg Cadence) not only on price but on features, too. Keep the high speed stuff on AD and let CS be complete by adding common-sense things.
CS is a nice piece of software (on it's level), please make it nicer