@JamesH-AltiumOfficial
The silence is deafening. Any change you could weigh-in?
Much obliged!
Guys, Diptrace has it's own section, why don't you discuss there the benefits of Diptrace over other software or even make reviews of Diptrace?
I'm not interested in Diptrace (installed it at some point and after 20minutes ... uninstall) but I am in CircuitStudio and this is exactly what I expect to read about in this section. Be it good or bad.
Thank you all!
@JamesH-AltiumOfficial
The silence is deafening. Any change you could weigh-in?
Much obliged!
James called me the day before yesterday. I'm not entirely sure why he wished to call me rather than answer on here and I don't know if that means I'm expected to rely at least some of our conversation. Apparently circuit studio is alive and well but it is second in-line to Altium designer updates. He is disappointed that his promise has not been realised and I am assured that circuit studio will be worked on as soon as Altium designer 18 is out of the stocks.
We did discuss some of the differences between circuit studio and Altium designer I didn't fully understand the implications of all of them as I don't use the advanced features but there are things like dedicated flat flex design tools that allow 3D simulation of the flat flex which does sound quite handy for those of us that use 3D CAD. There is also the ability to have multiple circuit boards within one design which as he pointed out a is quite a challenge from a software point of view where you have nets spanning different circuit boards. All in all I still don't understand why there are two separate products when one mirrors the other. If functionality in Altium designer could be turned off we wouldn't all be sitting here waiting for Altium designer 18 to be released before we could contemplate circuit studio been updated. We would receive the same updates and those on a lower tier licence would also be updated but obviously would not have access to the more expensive features. It would appear that Altium has chosen to develop three separate products simultaneously and by the looks of it put in at least twice the amount of effort necessary. I suspect somebody is dead scared in management of people hacking Altium designer and that if Altium designer is supplied with different licensing levels people will somehow manage to unlock the more advanced features. Although they have perhaps overlooked the fact that you can download a demo.
My next priority software wise is 3D CAD as this is quite essential and something I have access to at work and these days invaluable also in electrical design. I do indeed curse the fact that at work our subcontract designer cannot send me models as it would make my job of then creating drawings and mechanical bill of materials a lot easier. What I usually end up doing is knocking up a quick 3D CAD model to represent a circuit board and then just dump a component on it to represent the bill of materials so that it works in CAD.
Guys, Diptrace has it's own section, why don't you discuss there the benefits of Diptrace over other software or even make reviews of Diptrace?
I'm not interested in Diptrace (installed it at some point and after 20minutes ... uninstall) but I am in CircuitStudio and this is exactly what I expect to read about in this section. Be it good or bad.
Thank you all!
True but I will say that I have used DipTrace and I once paid for a licence and yes it is quite cheap but it is software developed by one person only and I was not impressed with the support or the "attitude" it was a bit like talking to Putin they were always right. You autoroute last time I used it was crap as it could not deal with copper pours so I have very little motivation to try again.
and almost fully compatible files between CS and CircuitStudio sealed the deal.
I know it may not be a product for everyone, our startup is currently an Altium user, but with extra license priced at roughly 10k$, it makes much more sense to buy 20x licenses of CS.
and almost fully compatible files between CS and CircuitStudio sealed the deal.
??QuoteI know it may not be a product for everyone, our startup is currently an Altium user, but with extra license priced at roughly 10k$, it makes much more sense to buy 20x licenses of CS.I"m doing something similar with CS and Altium. We have two people I work with that use Altium and I use CS and it works great.
If you find that you need more power than Circuit Studio can offer you, then take a read of the post below (& some before & after it). Cadence's OrCAD offers a much more powerful product for not a lot more money than Circuit Studio.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/which-software-so-many-choices/msg1466515/#msg1466515
In the case of CS, it was a poor attempt to carve designer up into a lower cost package. Some of the decisions made seem pretty random. But still, it is usable and well integrated. Of all the different PCB programs I have used, it has the best auto router for the price. I'm not so sure why I'm hung up on auto routers when I don't tend to use them. I guess it's because if it's part of the package, I expect it to work at some level, many do not. My biggest issue continues to be lack of support and good documentation. Most of the task beyond very basic operations I have learned by trial and error, or Google search, not the documentation. As far as the subscription, I don't need any of the day to day perks of the subscription. The Vault is not a value add to me. I have local copies of much more than the basic parts libraries I need. If something new pops up, there is still the direct download path or just make the part from there. CS has the potential to be stellar, but I fear Altium is too myopic to get it there.
I'm with Simon:
-Moving from one software to another is a very bad thing.
-I vote for you on the UN Resolution for "One World, One Library" initiative
-Having Altium not fully take ownership of their product is kind of weird at best
To Derek:
In my region (Canada!), cost for EDAs, in USD (Seat/ Yearly Renewal):
-Altium Designer:
- 10,900$ / 1,900$ for Permanent License
- 0$ / 4,000$ for time based
-Orcad Standard:
- 2,600$ / 430$
-CircuitStudio:
- 500$ / 130$
I'm working at a company with a good Altium library, and we needed a new EDA seat.
Altium's pricing just did not made sense.
Buying a small lot of CS license did.
We still have the AD seat for converting things, or for full feature if needs be.
And, well, if we get really pissed at CS, it's still only worth 45 days of AD licensing!!!
For Orcad: I'm not going to pay 5x the price to redo my libraries.
Also, about CS being lagging from AD in terms of feature; totally agree. It's kind of sad, seing the 1.4 version being posted a year ago. I would not tend to pay for renewal.... But who knows, they may drop it altogether with a very sweet deal to convert to full AD licenses
I'm personally living with AD since 2004... I've been trough many versions, and lived trough many bugs, seen new features....
Having a 500$ "Altium Designer 2016" still makes a good value proposition to me.
Obligatory XKCD:
They don't expect you to stick with circuit studio it is merely a sales tool for which the customer pays.
They don't expect you to stick with circuit studio it is merely a sales tool for which the customer pays.That's exactly what it is.