I've also had a look at Circuit Studio. It much cheaper (almost an order of magnitude), but is a stripped down version of Altium Designer IIRC.
The question is: Do we actually need the additional features that Altium Designer has? Is it worth throwing 10 grand at? Why? Why not?
Allegro is top of the range. It might look like crap but that's because it's been around for ages. Can you even think of designing this in Altium (see attached), with no crashes, no slowdowns? 24 layers, mixed materials, blind and buried vias, Gbps design rules, differential pairs, modularized layout (parts of PCB that can be done by others/at night and just loaded back in and replicated), and tons of DRC checks?
Not to mention fiddly power shapes, HDI design, RF features, 3000 parts, etc...
I've seen some quite in depth designs in AD, we mainly route with 2-6 layers, and I think the highest speed stuff is DDR3 for us!
Would you call AD a high or mid range package?
We focus on ALL areas of the industry. We have CircuitMaker - Free and focused on open source HW. We have CircuitStudio - $1K - Which is a robust commercial level SW. Altium Designer in the mainstream, you know that, and we plan on introducing a high-end product early next year.
The name of the product is Atina and it's long term strategic focus is around agile engineering. It'll introduce things like 64 bit, multi-threaded services, multi-board design...We currently can't discuss much more, but we'll definitely be talking about it more soon...
How is Altium designer a Car vs a bicycle? Is CircuitStudio really that stripped down/terrible?
Allegro is top of the range. It might look like crap but that's because it's been around for ages. Can you even think of designing this in Altium (see attached), with no crashes, no slowdowns? 24 layers, mixed materials, blind and buried vias, Gbps design rules, differential pairs, modularized layout (parts of PCB that can be done by others/at night and just loaded back in and replicated), and tons of DRC checks?
Not to mention fiddly power shapes, HDI design, RF features, 3000 parts, etc...
I've done boards that complex in Altium.
Buy yeah, stability has always been a major issue for AD.
The name of the product is Atina and it's long term strategic focus is around agile engineering. It'll introduce things like 64 bit, multi-threaded services, multi-board design...We currently can't discuss much more, but we'll definitely be talking about it more soon...
How is Altium designer a Car vs a bicycle? Is CircuitStudio really that stripped down/terrible?It is not terrible. But features are missing. It is deliberately stripped down, as said, and it will make your work slower. If your job is primarily electronics, and you spend some time on PCB design (say, at least 20% of your time) get Altium, because the productivity is soo much higher.
For example:
In CS, I need to do an online search and select, just to be able to place a resistor. It takes me 2-3 minutes. I need it to exist in their database, and know the part number, before I can place it. In Altium, I have an excel sheet with the standard series resistors, I have one footprint, it is liked together in Altium, so I can place one just by typing the resistance value into the search field. 4 seconds. Imagine that all these basic tasks are slowed down. Instead of hotkeys (burned into the brain) you need to fiddle with ribbon menu. For placing a track. You loose time, only a few seconds, but it all adds up.
It needs some setup, and knowledge how to use it, but it saves time so money. Overall, I dont think, that CS is wort it for electronics designers (with salary), even if they give it away for free. As I said, you can go with unicycle somewhere, but it will be slower than walking. I can probably design a PCB faster in MS Paint, than in Eagle. And CS is the bicycle. Fine for small boards, few dozen components, few boards per year. I would design ie an Arduino shield in it, to go to Kickstarter.
The name of the product is Atina and it's long term strategic focus is around agile engineering. It'll introduce things like 64 bit, multi-threaded services, multi-board design...We currently can't discuss much more, but we'll definitely be talking about it more soon...https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/59qyt3/my_name_is_lawrence_and_im_an/
Whu? So, instead of making their product 64-bit and decently multi-threaded roughly 10 years late they decide to stick it to their existing customer base and spin another product? Booh!
Whu? So, instead of making their product 64-bit and decently multi-threaded roughly 10 years late they decide to stick it to their existing customer base and spin another product? Booh!
Altium shooting themselves in the foot again and pissing off their entire customer base if it goes down like that.
But that's what Altium specialise in. Seriously, they are famous for doing this.
I thought that stuff had mostly stopped once Nick Martin got the royal boot.
I just started working at a small company that designs DSP audio gear and HDMI splitters/repeaters for professional installation.
The question is: Do we actually need the additional features that Altium Designer has? Is it worth throwing 10 grand at? Why? Why not?
Buy yeah, stability has always been a major issue for AD.
At least it handles SEH events well. I've never had Altium crashed to a point that it can't even save its work-in-progress.
It's always a popup telling you it is screwed, and at that point I know I should save and restart Altium.
Another question; Can one start a project in AD, and continue in CS or vice versa? We have another employee here that atleast want to view the files and maybe do some small changes. Is that an OK job for Circuit Studio?
Buy yeah, stability has always been a major issue for AD.
At least it handles SEH events well. I've never had Altium crashed to a point that it can't even save its work-in-progress.
It's always a popup telling you it is screwed, and at that point I know I should save and restart Altium.
No?? You never had that infinite parade of pop-ups that are replaced by a new one before you can save?
Buy yeah, stability has always been a major issue for AD.
At least it handles SEH events well. I've never had Altium crashed to a point that it can't even save its work-in-progress.
It's always a popup telling you it is screwed, and at that point I know I should save and restart Altium.
No?? You never had that infinite parade of pop-ups that are replaced by a new one before you can save?Please wait a moment...
Chatastrophic failure...
Error while accessing 0x1234Y0UAREFUCKED
Once I had soo many error message, it filled my screen. Windows 95 was the last time I see something like this.