Pulsonix design software, whats the general opinion

[MasterBuilder]

What are your opinions about the Pulsonix schematic/ PCB design software?

I have conducted a comparison test to determine the most suitable design software to move to, the comparison included Orcad, Altium, Proteus, Diptrace, Pulsonix and Eagle. I found that Pulsonix seems to have the best performance and features set for my needs. The comparison was focused on development of moderately complex electronics with the emphasis on the ability to produce professional designs quickly.

My own opinion of Pulsonix is that it is most similar to Altium. It has less advanced features. In general it is fast and intuitive to use. There is great compatibility with other formats such as Altium ASCII. It is actively being developed with a new version released recently. There doesn't seem to be much opinions or posts regarding Pulsonix on this forum so I was wondering are there any strong opinions regarding it and why does it not have more users?

In the attached picture are current approximate Euro prices of the software I compared, this is for a single user license.

[Neganur]

Is Altium really just 4K?

[Wilksey]

I've used it, personally didn't think much of it, but each their own and all.

I know it is used in some industries, one that makes CAN bus headlamps for cars for example here in the UK uses it, most job adverts I see here in the UK state Altium Designer as their tool of choice.

Depends if you want to use it to get a job using it afterwards in which case look at what jobs are being offered at the moment and what tools they use, or speak to some local companies to find out.

If you want one to use for yourself or your own business then go with whichever you feel most comfortable using that has the features that you need and is within your budget, if you are using it for business purposes and are thinking of hiring / subbing stuff out (e.g. you do schematic someone else does layout) then don't forget to consider tool popularity in that case as above as it will be easier to find someone competitively priced if it is a "common tool".

[nctnico]

Is Altium really just 4K?

AFAIK not unless this is some kind of quantity license price. Add a few options and training to Altium and you easely end up north of 10k euro.

[JanTheVan]

I've used Pulsonix about 10 years ago when contracting at a place that designed car lighting systems. I was OK, but I was really used to Altium, It seemed quite low end, but was ok for what we were doing.

My last quote for altium was nearly 7K GBP, that was only a few months ago, so I think your pricing is a bit off. I thought Pulsonix was more like 1K.

Scott

[MasterBuilder]

There was a little discount included in that price and it was 2018 version. I would say the 2019 version of Altium would be over 5k euros for a new license without the discount. A years support subscription would be another 1k or 1.5k. Ill double check my information but I think this is accurate.

[nctnico]

Also the Orcad pricing seems to low. The schematics and PCB package should be somewhere in the 3k to 4k ballpark.

[MasterBuilder]

After double checking my information on the Altium price, what I posted is an upgrade price and it would be 5200 euros with no discount.
Orcad is 2200 for PCB layout professional and schematic capture or 4400 with PSpice AD feature.

[Wilksey]

Don't forget that a gotcha within the PCB tool industry is that they "forget" to tell you that you have to add another £2k to that pricing for a years support, and that it is an ongoing cost (you can choose to cancel support after the first year).

So, I haven't used it in a while and it seems to have more features but it looks like Proteus is just shy of £4k for their entire suite of tools, still one of the best MCU sims I have found thus far but by no means perfect.

I have found that if you know what you are doing and can spend a bit of time learning it and living with some of the quirks that KiCAD for most things will perform just as well as Altium, Altium is more feature packed - don't get me wrong it has some nice tools like Xsignals etc, but I think they should start looking at their pricing especially with the likes of Circuit Studio being pricey for the features you get.

Altium to me is a bit like Apple to me, it's known, it's nice, shiny, it's what is used by certain people and industries and it just works mostly, but it's a bit pricey and has features that most of us will never use, need or know exist, people use it but don't know why, "industry standard".

Some like the support that these software developers give, I like to figure stuff out for myself if I can, software bugs, timescales and such are where these top paid packages come into their own, so it really does depend on your circumstances.

[MasterBuilder]

Proteus was good, fast and stable in my use but it lacked some more advanced features.

I am a user of KiCAD and do think it is a good option for many people, especially if doing hobby and "normal" workflow designs.

I do however have a need for advanced editing features which allow for tricky design changes to be made in a short amount of time. The only real alternative to Altium that I've found has these features is this Pulsonix software.

[DerekG]

Altium is more feature packed ....... but I think they should start looking at their pricing especially with the likes of Circuit Studio being pricey for the features you get.

Altium tried this some years back by reducing their pricing by around two-thirds.

They quickly learnt they could not make money for their shareholders ............ so the price quickly went up again after 2 years.

[MasterBuilder]

Is Altium really just 4K?

I've used Pulsonix about 10 years ago when contracting at a place that designed car lighting systems. I was OK, but I was really used to Altium, It seemed quite low end, but was ok for what we were doing.

My last quote for altium was nearly 7K GBP, that was only a few months ago, so I think your pricing is a bit off. I thought Pulsonix was more like 1K.

Scott

There was a little discount included in that price and it was 2018 version. I would say the 2019 version of Altium would be over 5k euros for a new license without the discount. A years support subscription would be another 1k or 1.5k. Ill double check my information but I think this is accurate.

I have the price for a new Altium license now, it is 8400 Euros with a years subscription/ support 

[Wilksey]

Gotta love the "hidden" yearly support cost! 

[DerekG]

Gotta love the "hidden" yearly support cost! 

But this does qualify you for "free" upgrades which is the reason most people take it up.

[Wilksey]

Yes until they realise that they have paid for their "free" updates.

I mean if it is a new tool, you probably want to have it at least for the first year.

[Wilksey]

Yes until they realise that they have paid for their "free" updates.

I mean if it is a new tool, you probably want to have it at least for the first year.

And they threat their customers with their back pay pricing strategy.
If you drop from subscription, the next time you come back on track, you are asked to pay all subscription fees you haven't paid for all the years you were off sub.
So unless you certainly understand that you will never use any new features in the future, no matter how attractive they may look like, you are going to pay every single year.

I had heard this, but never 1st hand experienced it, the Altium rep said that if we don't take the subscription out then and we take it out in the future we will have to pay a percentage of a full license again, didn't mention back paying though.
So, something like 1 years subscription + 20-30% of a new license per subscription per license.
We've always taken the subscription, business case and company policy kind of insists we do.

Sounds like a real shitter for anyone not knowing this though!

[Ysjoelfir]

Regarding Pulsonix: I have worked with other tools before, mainly EAGLE and Altium, before I got hired by my recent company. I really enjoyed the switch to Altium after I had been working with Eagle for so long but now that I have to use Pulsonix I would rather be happy to use Eagle again. I just don't like Pulsonix, it feels clunky, stiff, outdated... Has some quirks you need to get used to.
We mainly chose Pulsonix because of the PCB transformer functions since we use that principle pretty often, but even that isn't an valid argument in my eyes as it is as complicated to create the coils as it would be using altium tracks and arcs.

I mean, you CAN absolutely build amazing stuff with the tool, as the products we build have shown, but if I had to choose I would definitely prefer Altium over Pulsonix (which is, by the way, also pretty pricey if you need more than the standard one workspace license). Maybe I would even consider using eagle again...

[poorchava]

I thought that I may comment on this one, even if the thread is quite old, as Pulsonix is not a particularily popular piece of software.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Pulsonix and/or WestDev in any way.

I have actually switched from AD to Pulsonix in April 2019 and i may have some comments to what was said above:
I chose it because of the pricing and functionality. There is almost nothing I could do in AD and can't do in Pulsonix, while the price of Pulsonix  ~1/5 of AD and (contrary to AD) you can get a reduced pin version. the rough pricing was 550€/750€/1.4k€ + VAT for 1k/2k/unlimited pin versions, nodelocked licence.

Annual sbscription is ~20% of the license price. They have the same arrangement as some other eCADs (including AD) where is you stop paying subscription fees for some time, and then want to get subscription again, you need to pay for past years too. 

They also had an offer (dunno if it is still available), where if you bought a brochure for some 5€ u got a 3 month 1k pin license and were eligible to prolong that period for another 9 months for 30% of catalog price. If you decide on getting full licence, you only pay the remaining 70%. All licences allow full commercial use.

Polish distributor provides quite good support, Including one of their enginners actually sending me a quick screen capture video as a response to my question how to do XYZ. Dunno how other distributors are in that regard.

Also AD devs basically don't do shit, getting feedback of any kind is difficult, the price is rising every year, while feature set is almost the same. Pulsonix devs are actually available on a forum you get access to when you buy a license. They are very responsive, react to bugs in a matter of days or to and will give you some hints on how to do certain stuff (kind of like Diptrace devs). They also actually listen to what users have to say. I actually met one of them in person at Electronics 2018 at a German distributor booth. The downside of the forum is that the it is not very active from users' side.

The software itself clearly was built using different mindset than AD. In AD I feel that you can accomplish all the stuff with some very versatile options (eg. logical formulas in DRC rules). In Pulsonix you generally have a specific tool/option/function for doing specific things. Those functions in generally seem to work a bit better than in AD (for example layout copying and track hugging), but if a function is missing for what u want to do, u may be quite screwed. While in AD you'd be able to figure something out using existing options to get what you want, in Pulsonix mostly 'if there isn't a tool to do it, then it doesn't do it'. A good example is a total lack of 'Silkscreen over pads' DRC check. They say that PCB fab will remove silk from pads anyway, but ref designators may get lost just due to an oversight.

The interface is completly different for AD, takes a good while to get relatively proficient with it (after 10years of using AD). It takes more time to setup Pulsonix to be usable (libs, grids, hotkeys and so on) while AD is generally quite usable out of the box.

The entire Pulsonix system is very devoted to standarization of processes and rules. You have templates (called 'Technologies') for averything including PCB, SCH, symbols, footprints and so on. Very easy to use and powerful. Much better than AD in my opinion.

Library system is more powerful than that of AD, and completly different at that. There is a very strong support for symbol/footprint reuse. Libraries do not need compilation. instead you have footprints, symbols and parts as 3 files. Parts are used to bring symbols and fotprints together into something u can use for a design.

Graphically Pulsonix is generally inferior to AD. It is much more raw and much less polished than AD. 3D mode is much less intuitive and comfortable to use and has less features than AD, but those featuers that are there are done well (eg. enclusure clash detection work better and faster than AD). The 3D mode in Pulsonix is the main development area right now AFAIK.

In my opinion SCH editor in Pulsonix is superior to AD's one in that i can draw schematics faster with it after 9 months of use than in AD after 10 years. The schematics are more readable too (probably due to being much less eye-candy than AD).

Pulsonix is less of a resource-hog than AD. Quite likely due to having simpler graphics and beign done completly in modern programming (i think c++). Many parts of AD are still in Delphi if I'm not mistaken.

As for stability, Pulsonix has some crashes, but nothing really horrendous. I'd same roughtly the same as AD.

In general: I have to use AD in my day job, and I use Pulsonix in my own company. I'm probably not going back from Pulsonix to AD in my private business.

[Feynman]

We also switched to Pulsonix a couple of months ago. It's a very capable tool at a very reasonable price.

Support is very good and you can talk to the developers on the official forum. Unfortunately, as poorchava mentioned, the forum is not very active. Months may go by without a single post (good or bad sign?). However, the developers are very responsive: I recently made an improvement suggestion, got an answer one day later and another day later they replied that the suggestion would be part of the next release.

It generally seems the developers follow a conservative design approach meaning they focus on improving existing features and not bloating the tool by always adding the latest fancy shit (installation folder has 342MB (!)).

One decent plus is that the trial-version (a regular installation without a license) of the program is only limited in the number of pins. If you open a design with more than 100 pins, it is read-only. But the rest of the software is 100% functional. So our firmware developers and people in test and production can use the tool as viewer without struggling with crippled viewer software or production files.

Usability is very intuitive. If you once get used to the basic concepts (e.g. the technology/profile approach) you find out stuff very quickly by 'playing around'. However, if you are used to Altium you might find things a little 'different'. EAGLE, Zuken or Mentor PADS users generally get comfortable in Pulsonix very quickly.

But it really takes a while to get used to the technology/profile concept, where you can literally standardize everything (if you wish to do so): Text styles, via styles, what via style to use with a specific net classes, etc, etc ... Once you invested some time in creation of the technologies, there is almost no setup overhead when starting a new design. If you start a new schematic, you choose your schematic technology and immediately start drawing the schematic. If you start a new PCB, you choose your PCB technology and immediately start placing components.

Stability of the program could be improved. Especially in multi-screen mode the two program instances occasionally have problems talking to each other. But overall stability is neither worse nor better than other tools I've worked with.

One quirk i discovered recently is the step preview and collision detection features being very slow on machines without dedicated graphics card (laptops). In other tools on the same machine there are no problems with the same step models so i consider this a problem with Pulsonix. Maybe this is fixed soon, since i heard they are improving multi-core support in the next release.

Look and feel of the application seems a little outdated (MS Office XP style). And display of some objects in the schematic or PCB only refresh if you change the viewing area e.g. by panning or zooming.

Most design files are binary (PCB, schematic, footprints, technology files, ...) an thus neither diff- nor merge-able. I've been told they once had readable files but decided to go back to binary, because they where overwhelmed by support requests of people damaging their files with merge tools or manual edits.

But overall we are very happy with Pulsonix so far. It feels like it does in the mid-class what EAGLE does in the low-end: Everything necessary without being bloated.

[aykon]

I spent 2 years in Eagle, then 5 years in Pulsonix and last 3 years we switched to Altium. For home projects I am using KiCAD.

Eagle is nice, cheap and it is very well working classic. It has not much advanced features, but it is very stable. There is not so much to say, everyone knows eagle well.

Pulsonix looks like an advanced software, but it is not entirely true. You can find a lot of videos on youtube with functions which does not exist or does not work properly, at least in 2018. I always used the latest version and the most expensive highspeed license. I believe that they are following the rule “fake it, till you make it” and simply releasing or presenting something unfinished. 3D functions are painfully slow (it looks like it just generates some step file and then open it, collision detection is pita). Routing of busses, differential pairs and length tunning is slow job where you spend hours with filling all rules and names by hand to tables. In general, it has architecture and look and feel from year 2005. It is obviously one thread application (movement in diagram or PCB on bigger screen is a slideshow, DRC can take more than a minute on bigger designs etc). After 5 years I can write here whole book about Pulsonix (for example crashing if you pull out HW key, wrong gerber output, wrong connections after update PCB from schematic …), but in short words, if you have smaller designs (tens of wires), then it is OK. If you have something more complex (hundreds of wires) then it is crazy. There does not exist any community support, but on the other hand, at least in Germany, it has a good support directly from Pulsonix. I have a feeling that Pulsonix is more suitable for conservative people. Price 4300 is questionable. We are still using Pulsonix to maintain older projects and I would never use it again.

Altium seems to be the most modern software, it always goes forward with new technologies and it is not coincidence that it is used by large companies like a TI, NXP, ON Semiconductor, STM, or Nordic. It is very fast, multithread, OpenGL accelerated (PCB and even schematic) software. It is focused on efficiency of design (multiple entities editing at once, multi selection with logic operands, rules with logic operands and much other stuff, which can save you hours of work). Multi PCB designs is also quite good feature (if you have device with more than one PCB). The PCB design is done in 3D from the beginning, so it has perfect immediate collision detection between parts and housings. Switching between 2D and 3D is a one second task. You have precise control on things which will change during schematic / pcb synchronization. Altium supports GIT versioning system with comparison between revisions! More people can work on design simultaneously, similar way like programmers. Templates with predefined design rules and parameters (in Pulsonix it is called Technology or profile) for whole project, PCB or schematic are a matter of course. As a negative could be, that Altium may looks bit complex for people which are switching from some less complex software, but on the other hand, Altium has perfectly working support, documentation and very big community. The biggest disadvantage is a price and if you want to stay up to date, you must pay for subscription. They have very hard business policy, but still providing few “viewer only” licenses peer every subscription for free.

KiCAD is nice multiplatform software, which is moving forward very fast, because it is used by CERN. In basic tasks, the functionality is comparable with eagle and Pulsonix. It is open source project, so there is no any paid support, only big community.

My conclusion is that everything is question what kind of designs you want to make and how much money you would like to spend. Personally, if I should buy something, I will buy Altium, if I want save money, I will use KiCAD.

[nctnico]

I spent 2 years in Eagle, then 5 years in Pulsonix and last 3 years we switched to Altium. For home projects I am using KiCAD.

KiCAD is nice multiplatform software, which is moving forward very fast, because it is used by CERN. In basic tasks, the functionality is comparable with eagle and Pulsonix. It is open source project, so there is no any paid support, only big community.

That isn't true. You can buy support for KiCad.

My conclusion is that everything is question what kind of designs you want to make and how much money you would like to spend. Personally, if I should buy something, I will buy Altium, if I want save money, I will use KiCAD.

Too bad you never tried Orcad. It works faster compared to Altium and is less prone to problems.
And no, Altium isn't used by the big chip vendors for complex SoC designs. Take TI, NVidia, Microsemi and NXP for example; all their reference designs are made using Orcad.

[Feynman]

As for speed Pulsonix is now multi-threaded since version 11. However, STEP-Preview and collision detection are still terribly slow on machines without graphics card.
But version 11 doesn't seem very mature at this time, so we'll at least wait for another patch to migrate to version 11.

One thing I'd like to add after one more year of using Pulsonix: Support is excellent. If you discover a bug you'll get a hot-fix from the manufacturer within a few days. And "your" fix will be part of the next official patch. And the manufacturer is very open to suggestions. There are a lot of features that are clearly the result of user feedback. 

About the pricing I have mixed feelings: On the one hand you'll get going for ~3k and a limit of 2.000 pins. But things like "differential pair routing" and "length matching" are an option within the "High-Speed" packet. A marketing guy would say "You only pay for what you need". Maybe this is kind of true. But if you cannot temporarily checkout a license from the license server (e. g. for offline use) unless you'll pay another 1k just for the "checkout license" feature... That's overkill in my opinion.

But overall we're still very happy with the tool.

[aykon]

And no, Altium isn't used by the big chip vendors for complex SoC designs. Take TI, NVidia, Microsemi and NXP for example; all their reference designs are made using Orcad.

You are not right. The manufacturers which I mentioned in my post are using Altium, ofcourse I'm not saying that they are using it exclusively, but on their webpage you can find reference designs done in Altium and it is not just a "few pieces". It is a very bold statement if you are saying that "all their reference designs are made in OrCAD" .

I believe that OrCAD is very good software, I've heard about it many times, but I did not want to write anything about software, which I never used.

Thank you for correcting me regarding KiCAD support, you are right.

[nctnico]

And no, Altium isn't used by the big chip vendors for complex SoC designs. Take TI, NVidia, Microsemi and NXP for example; all their reference designs are made using Orcad.

You are not right. The manufacturers which I mentioned in my post are using Altium, ofcourse I'm not saying that they are using it exclusively, but on their webpage you can find reference designs done in Altium and it is not just a "few pieces". It is a very bold statement if you are saying that "all their reference designs are made in OrCAD" .

Read more carefully: I wrote 'Complex SoC designs'. The less complex reference designs are often outsourced to contractors and it might be that the manufacturers require them to use Altium due to the presence of Altium in the mid-range market. All in all having reference designs present in Altium format doesn't really tell you that the big manufacturers are using Altium themselves.

Take this new SoC (which is in preview phase) from TI for example: https://www.ti.com/product/DRA821U. The reference design is made using Orcad / Allegro and it is only a couple of months old.

[aykon]

I wrote that they are using Altium (not exclusively) and that's a indisputable fact. My statement is based on cooperation and not just on references on their webpages, take it or not. I will not continue in this demagogic discussion anymore, it is off topic.