Should I buy Proteus or Circuit Studio?

[canol]

Hello, we are a small company that needs to make PCBs from time to time. The PCBs are usually not very complicated, like 2 layers with a few USB buses, a microcontroller, a relay etc. But we may need to do a PCB with HDMI connection and maybe 4 layers in the near future. I used Eagle so far but thinking about buying a professional package before that design. We don't for example design a graphics card or something that caliber and also we don't have that big of a budget so we are not thinking about Altium Designer. I don't particularly like Eagle's UI and recently Eagle is bought by Autodesk so its future is kind of uncertain for now, so we are not considering it, either.

Proteus and Circuit Studio seem like good candidates. Recently, Circuit Studio reduced its price to 1000$ which is attractive and at the level of Proteus. Proteus seems to have good simulation capabilities, which would certainly be beneficial.

I have not used both of them, are there anybody who is familiar with both of them? Which one would you prefer?

[nctnico]

I'd stick with what I know if it is productive enough for me. There are various online calculators which you can use to produce trace widths and clearances for differential pair routing. You don't need to buy & learn an entirely new PCB package for that.

[LabSpokane]

Don't switch yet.  Eagle is serviceable and may well be the winner based on the lack meaningful responses I'm getting back from E14 and Altium on Circuit Studio. 

[Warhawk]

I would go for Circuit Studio although Proteus is nice. I also seriously doubt that you would effectively use the simulation engine in Proteus. I have never met anybody using in-built simulation tools in PCB-oriented EDAs. OrCad is an exception and together with LT spice became the industry standard.
These are my two cents 

[PCB.Wiz]

Proteus and Circuit Studio seem like good candidates.

Get Eval's of both and see which you like.

Check the Import and Export abilities, and watch out for closed Binary databases & time locked Licenses.

I'd also suggest you try KiCad, which has a nice Shove Router, and has Simulation coming.
An example design you can load and play with, is here (converted from Altium)
https://github.com/FPGAwars/icezum/tree/master/src-kicad

[rfbroadband]

download both versions, design a small PCB with both of them and figure out where limitations are in areas that are important to you.
Watch out for software limitations that are introduced by the vendor. For example Proteus does the following:

Starter Kit: 500 pin capacity : 284 $
Level 1:   1000 pin capacity : 487 $
Level 1+: 2000 pin capacity : 652 $
Level 2:   1000 pin capacity : 982$
but other features included
Level 2+:   2000 pin capacity : 1,542$
Level 3: no capacity limit: 2,022$
Platinum Edition : 6,592$

You may want to choose a tool that enables you to upgrade down the road as you get more experienced and your requirements grow.

But comparing different tools in detail in is a lot of work.

You may want to consider looking at an integrated Spice simulator. Even though you may not use it initially when you do you can stay in the same environment.

Another feature I would look for is "design reuse".

Finally, understand the annual maintenance fee structure.

[DerekG]

Proteus and Circuit Studio seem like good candidates.

Proteus is great software, however I have not upgraded Altium for several years now, preferring instead DipTrace which has come a long way in the past 2 years.

Give it a try. It is certainly one of the easiest PCB design packages to learn.

[Ice-Tea]

Wouldn't ditch Eagle that easily... Nothing wrong with it for low-ish complexity boards. And keep in mind the 1k$ is just part of the cost. Setting it up and learning how to use it will cost you at least that much in man-hours.

Another thing to consider is the longeivity of CS. If Eagle being bought by Autodesk scares you, the Altium marketing department and their way of setting prices, dropping policies etc. should give you nightmares...

Another way to go is to outsource projects where you think you and your EDA package are outgunned.

[electrolust]

It is hard and complicated  to decide.

Could have stopped there. 

Although Proteus may be a competitive or even better in some ways tool, I think market share and reusable experience counts for something.  Full AD CAD has many problems and annoyances and a high learning curve in some ways but it can be a very adequate and fairly productive system (after the learning curve) and frankly compared to the even HIGHER costs of some competitors out there full AD seems a good choice for a business for performance vs. price.  I could scarcely recommend anything with much less capabilities for modern designs and although you could pay a lot more or similar for some other vendors' tools I'm not sure the grass is any greener in those areas.
In the realm of $1000 costs it does not matter what the cost is you could scarcely hope to pay less for a usable professionally supported tool from any vendor, so really it is down to features and support and risk and productivity and learning curve.

Well there's the rub, innit.  CS is not supported.  That's why it's sold via E14 -- in exchange for the distributorship, Altium get to say E14 shall offer the support and wash their hands of it.  However E14 is not in a position to offer any kind of meaningful support.

Proteus, for the same money (say $500-$1500 depending on option level so the same, give or take), I've found to have great support, albeit slow if you're in the US working day hours.  Far far better than Eagle for the same money I paid, in fact I believe I paid much more for Eagle (before Autodesk) and the support was abysmal.

[Quiggers]

I use  Cadstar at work, if a project requires an upgrade we balance price vs getting an external design house to do it.
Quite often we'll do the bulk of a design, leaving space and instructions on the pcd for a design house to do the specialist
bit. It works out cheaper in annual service costs and you dont lose time learning a new tool and you get expertise in using that new tool.
The managers also like that the external house can be held accountable if say a 50ohm line doesnt perform. Accountants also love it, but they're devil spawn.

[EEVblog]

I would go for Circuit Studio although Proteus is nice. I also seriously doubt that you would effectively use the simulation engine in Proteus. I have never met anybody using in-built simulation tools in PCB-oriented EDAs. OrCad is an exception and together with LT spice became the industry standard.

Yep, I would not base my PCB package decision on the inclusion of a circuit simulator.

[ebclr]

I guess both

Proteus for simulation

Circuit Studio for PCB

Proteus main PCB problem is Libraries, you can't export or import libraries, this is a very week point, But proteus simulation is really nice

[rfbroadband]

@canol
did you make a decision? you received lots of feedback from people and I am interested to know if and how you selected the tool.

[DerekG]

Literally EVERY company in the past 10 years or more has already used full Altium or has been planning to switch to it.  Sometimes they would ALSO use Orcad / Pads because they were used in the past but new designs were to be done in Altium. 

This is where DipTrace has it over Proteus.

DipTrace allows you to export both the schematic & pcb design into PCAD ASCII format.

The PCAD format imports very well into Altium who acquired PCAD (in the days of Protel International Pty Ltd) in 2000.

I use both DipTrace & Altium & export/import between them regularly.

[Warhawk]

Literally EVERY company in the past 10 years or more has already used full Altium or has been planning to switch to it.  Sometimes they would ALSO use Orcad / Pads because they were used in the past but new designs were to be done in Altium. 

This is where DipTrace has it over Proteus.

DipTrace allows you to export both the schematic & pcb design into PCAD ASCII format.

The PCAD format imports very well into Altium who acquired PCAD (in the days of Protel International Pty Ltd) in 2000.

I use both DipTrace & Altium & export/import between them regularly.

Derek, I know that you are a big fan of DipTrace. I used to be too but face it, It is one of the most frustrating EDA packages you can find. Not because of the concept but because of bugs which have been known for ages, because of clumsy schematic editor, because of some missing core features...
I would rather invest time into learning KiCad and its quirks (and thus have it for free then) rather than pay for DipTrace and get frustrated.
The both mentioned share the same phenomenon - programmers rather implement new features than fixing old stuff. It is simply not fun.

Back to the topic. I worked with Eagle, Diptrace, tried Zuken and Allegro and now I am with Altium 16. I found Altium far the best for an engineer who does circuit design and PCB design on his own. If there is a separate layout department then Zuken or Allergo would be my choice.

[DerekG]

Derek, I know that you are a big fan of DipTrace.

True, but only after ver 2.3 / 2.4

I used to be too but face it, It is one of the most frustrating EDA packages you can find. Not because of the concept but because of bugs which have been known for ages, because of clumsy schematic editor, because of some missing core features...

Ver 3 (in particular ver 3.0.0.2) has seen most of these problems resolved. There have been a group of beta testers who also use Altium who have worked hard with Novarm's programmers to get DipTrace back on track.

I would rather invest time into learning KiCad and its quirks (and thus have it for free then) rather than pay for DipTrace and get frustrated.

I fully understand. The last time I tried KiCad I could not even change the background colour to my choice. I was offered only black or white & when I spend hours in front of a screen I like to use "dark grey" to reduce eye stream

I have been using Altium 14 & just can't see the value in paying another AUD$3,600 to take the current upgrade.

[UberVexer]

I've just finished an evaluation of Circuit Studio, and I didn't feel at home with it.

E14 reached out for feedback, I asked a specific question about BoM generation, and they linked me an hour-long video about the UI that didn't answer my question.

EAGLE ultimate allows you to create 16 layer boards, and has some features that will help you with differential routing.

Also your time isn't free, so I second this.

Setting it up and learning how to use it will cost you at least that much in man-hours.

[ebclr]

I would suggest only 2 options

Circuit Studio or even better Altium AD if you have money for that, since Circuit studio is nothing more than a simple Alluvium design who have no match. Do decide you can use circtuimaker for  some time Circuit Studio is the same with some minor improvents, and will not force you to have everthing shared on web as circuit maker do since is targeted to open source.

Kicad is free powerful and decent, but have that open source smell

Forget Proteus for PCB,  is a nice program for simulation and decent for pcb, but the way labcenter handle libraries om proteus is unacceptable, no imports and export from anywhere, that makes a white elephant

Eagle also can be a option. But not for me

[digsys]

I've used Proteus from it's beginning and done / doing several 100s of PCBs. Creating new footprints etc is very easy and pleasant. I've never needed to import
someone elses. I mostly do 2 layer with very occasional 4 as well. And it is quite stable with no annoying bugs. I've used / tried others for contracts, but meh. ymmv

[DerekG]

I've used Proteus from it's beginning and done / doing several 100s of PCBs. Creating new footprints etc is very easy and pleasant. I've never needed to import someone elses.

My experience is that people often criticise software that they are unfamiliar with.

I'm sure those who use Proteus in a professional way (like you & I) speak with a full understanding of just how good a schematic/pcb design package it is.

Just take a look at all the people asking for help in dozens of on-line forums about how to do this or how to do that when using Altium. Just goes to show how un-intuitive Altium really is.

[glicos]

Well, Proteus is the first software i used to design PCB and yes..its very easy to learn and use. Most of the boards i designed is no greater than 4 layers. I bothered not to explore others since it still fit our company requirements. The main thing i like with Proteus is i can export the designed board directly to Solidworks in *stp file format, thus very easy to add mechanical requirement to our PCB design.

[ebclr]

Comparing Proteus with Altium is the same as compare a Cesna with a boeing 777, for sure a Boeing have a lot of  people who don't know everything and have a lot of question to ask on how to do things,  But the reason is  because Altium is loaded will thousands of options for the pro user that Proteus even dream to have, on the other hand Proteus is easy and intuitive just because have no power at all, it's simple but extremely limited but very fun to use.