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user experiences of Altium Designer?

M

megoodsen

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi,

I'm seeking out a new PCB design package, and have been pointed to look
at Altium Designer from someone in the group.

On (digital!) paper, it looks excellent, ideal in fact.

But I would like to hear from real users, as our current system
(EasyPC) although lacking in many areas being bottem end, still lets us
down in areas it shouldn't because some areas of it are very buggy.

Is Altium Designer stable, and does what it claims to well?

What about support response?

thanks
 
O

OBones

Jan 1, 1970
0
It used to be called Protel, and is definitely very good. It's very
stable and I can't recall the last time I crashed it.
I like it quite a lot, especially the "mouse less - alt less" access to
menus feature.
 
R

Rene Tschaggelar

Jan 1, 1970
0
megoodsen said:
Hi,

I'm seeking out a new PCB design package, and have been pointed to look
at Altium Designer from someone in the group.

On (digital!) paper, it looks excellent, ideal in fact.

But I would like to hear from real users, as our current system
(EasyPC) although lacking in many areas being bottem end, still lets us
down in areas it shouldn't because some areas of it are very buggy.

Is Altium Designer stable, and does what it claims to well?

What about support response?

They have a support forum, available at the
altium website. Even though you have to sign
in, you should ask and listen there. This is
the place where the problems are discussed
and solved.

Rene
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M

megoodsen

Jan 1, 1970
0
Thanks for the reply.

Yeah I saw the forums, but call me a cynic, but I'm always a little
dubious of manufacturer owned boards, all too easy to moderate in a
biased way.

But I will check them out after all to see what's there.
 
M

megoodsen

Jan 1, 1970
0
megoodsen said:
Thanks for the reply.

Yeah I saw the forums, but call me a cynic, but I'm always a little
dubious of manufacturer owned boards, all too easy to moderate in a
biased way.

But I will check them out after all to see what's there.

Or I would if I had an eval number...

Guess its time to speak to Altium...
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Not always. The Cadsoft forums are rather non-censored. Well, maybe not
if someone would let off a political rant or something.

Or I would if I had an eval number...

They should offer a demo pack to test drive it. Also, check out Cadsoft
Eagle. Very favorable pricing. I defected from OrCad to Eagle last year
and the only bug I found so far is that the print routine hangs at
times. Not badly though, deselecting and then again selecting the
printer gets it going. This company is also very good about listening to
customers. One of the line items on my "Dear Santa list" will be honored
in the new release. All it took was one mention and a brief discussion
on one of their forums.

Regards, Joerg
 
W

Winfield Hill

Jan 1, 1970
0
megoodsen wrote...
Thanks for the reply.

Yeah I saw the forums, but call me a cynic, but I'm always a little
dubious of manufacturer owned boards, all too easy to moderate in a
biased way.

We get most of our support straight from Altium's phone-support
guys. Their annual maintenance fees are fairly high, and one
doesn't necessarily get a software update every year, so they
have to provide good support to justify the charges. For the
most part the programs work well (we use their PCAD products),
and the support is only needed to explain something that's not
obvious in the manual. Or, perhaps I should say, not obvious
until *after* you understand it.
 
M

megoodsen

Jan 1, 1970
0
hi Win,

Do you have to take the subscription to annual maintainance?

Define "fairly high" please.

Our Solidworks one's are about 1K per licence! But we do get any new
versions and service packs that come out in the term. When we bought SW
was v2005, we got 2006 'free' when it came out.
 
R

Rene Tschaggelar

Jan 1, 1970
0
megoodsen said:
hi Win,

Do you have to take the subscription to annual maintainance?

Define "fairly high" please.

Our Solidworks one's are about 1K per licence! But we do get any new
versions and service packs that come out in the term. When we bought SW
was v2005, we got 2006 'free' when it came out.

With Altium, you have two options. Either to have
the subscription which costs a yearly fee and
includes every upgrade to a new version, or you
just pay for the new version when it comes out.
The servicepacks are free. A subscription is in
the order of 1100$ plua VAT. The last standalone
upgrade was in the order of 3200$ plus VAT after
a couple of years free servicepacks.

The prices are available at the countries distributor
website.

Rene
 
M

megoodsen

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi Rene,

The subscription sounds like the Solidworks one.

I'd have to disagree with your last statement. I've found that these
higher end re-sellers rarely state a pricing structure, preferring you
to contact them for a quote. Then they can badger you every few days to
see if you're gonna buy yet.

For example, from the altium main site I found this:
http://www.altium.com/contacts/altiumsalessupportukandireland/

leading me to here:
http://www.eda.co.uk/ad_sales_centre.htm

from which I couldn't detect any link to pricing numbers.

With google I did manage to find this:
http://www.altium-designer.com/designer6.html

which at least told me what ballpark figure we were looking at.

Steve
 
R

Rene Tschaggelar

Jan 1, 1970
0
megoodsen said:
The subscription sounds like the Solidworks one.

I'd have to disagree with your last statement. I've found that these
higher end re-sellers rarely state a pricing structure, preferring you
to contact them for a quote. Then they can badger you every few days to
see if you're gonna buy yet.

True. On the other hand you can try to bargain the
price lower each round by complaining on how you
gonna pay for it with the meagre income.
With google I did manage to find this:
http://www.altium-designer.com/designer6.html

which at least told me what ballpark figure we were looking at.

These numbers refer to new purchases. What is interesting are the
upgrade costs, and in what time intervalls they are due.

Rene
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W

Winfield Hill

Jan 1, 1970
0
megoodsen wrote...
With google I did manage to find this:
http://www.altium-designer.com/designer6.html
which at least told me what ballpark figure we were looking at.

Yes, in the high four-figure, low five-figure territory.

You can save a lot by going with their lower-priced Protel
PCB-design program. While it's nice to have the PCB-board
layout program know automatically about any pin changes in
your cPLD or FPGA, the price increment to get this feature
is high enough to keep me transferring that information by
hand. I've had enough bad experiences with cPLD and FPGA-
design programs created by someone other than the original
IC manufacturer (remember the old Data IO / Scenario / ABLE
mess?), that I'm skeptical of the wisdom of that approach;
ditto for its cousin, the manufacturer plug-in. The Xilinx
WebPACK cPLD and FPGA development program I like is free,
and it doesn't talk to Altium's Designer, SFAIK.

Another prime element making up the Designer package is the
integrated Spice analysis, but again I object, pointing out
that the PCB schematic does equal a proper Spice schematic.
Spice analysis needs selected parasitic elements explicitly
added, and benefits from having the irrelevant items removed,
to help Spice converge and to keep the CPU time reasonable.
In the end for a skilled designer there's often little direct
match between a PCB schematic and the corresponding optimized
Spice circuit. And there's also little match between Spice
model libraries and PCB pattern libraries, BOM descriptions,
etc. Trying to press these items together is asking for some
real malfunctions and lots of extra pain, in my experience.

But, if you get Altium's Protel PCB package, you'll at least
be able to upgrade to Designer at a later time if my analysis
above turns out to be wrong, without being forced to leave
your past finished designs behind.


The one extra feature I could be persuaded to spend serious
money on would be better PCB libraries and BOM capabilities.
 
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