Anyone have real world prices for PADS and Altium Designer PCB design apps?

I believe that, in both cases, there are so many licensing options available that at best you'll be getting a *wide* range of prices. Your best bet probably really is to call up the vendors and ask them what that range is as well as what a *typical* setup goes for, in addition to the information you get here.

As you seem to hint, a report such as the one you're writing is good primarily for figuring out which packages are immediately cut due to their being entirely out of your price range... for everything else you have to sit down and play with the tools yourself.

I plan on meeting with a number of vendors, I was hoping to get some idea of what people have actually paid for CAD packages before negotiating with the sales reps. As you mentioned, if the price for some packages is really high, I won't spend time with some vendor reps.

It's been a week and no one has responded with any actual figures, so I'll repost my original query in sci.electronics.design. I'll add a note that although I'm cross posting, I've already post once in sci.electronics.cad with no result.

A very active forum is available through the

website. You can access it through a newsreader with listserver.pads.com/talk. I think the web address is: but the server is down right now.

The local VAR for Maryland is Trilogic in Columbia. They have branches elsewhere.

It would be good to look through the history of the posts to see how frustrated many loyal PADS users have become since they were purchased by Mentor and now are coerced into buying an expensive annual maintenence contract just to be eligible for bug fixes that usually break more than they fix.

Paul

I suspect that most people who read s.e.c. also look at s.e.d. and filter the noise. I also suspect that the reason you haven't got prices is that most people who use the non-free versions PADS, Altium etc. don't pay for it, and vice-versa.

Paul Burke

********* See the corrected web address below ************

Thanks. I didn't know about that forum.

Thanks again. I've already found the local rep. I attended a PADS seminar at their location last year.

I was curious about how pricing works in the PCB CAD industry, if everyone pays list or if discounting off list is common practice. It's beginning to sound like high end CAD systems have both high initial purchase prices and high annual maintenance fees.

I've read similar complaints about how Protel went downhill after it was rebranded as Altium.

I've also heard hints about very expensive PADS maintenance annual fees, but I haven't read the actual figures yet. Maybe someone posted that information on that listserver.

I haven't posted to s.e.d yet, I thought I'd think about it before posting there. But you may be right, perhaps all users of CAD systems in the sci.electronics newsgroups are using pirated copies of PADS and Altium.

I suspect that choosing a CAD system is something of a sticky decision, once you've chosen one, invested heavily in training and have become used to using one system, you're probably not very interested in looking at another system. So s.e.d may be populated with users who have chosen a system already and have no need to read s.e.c.

Before posting my question here in s.e.c, I was actually afraid that the topic might start a flame war between PADS and Altium users. I never expected that hardly anyone would respond.

Crossposting is frowned upon, but this situation might have been one of the few times that crossposting was appropriate. I would have guessed that s.e.c was the right forum to ask about PADS and Altium pricing, but it that doesn't appear to be the case. So a crosspost to s.e.c and s.e.d, if only people in s.e.d respond, wouldn't have created dual newsgroup threads, the usual complaint about crossposts.

In any case, I thought I'd wait a little while longer before posting to s.e.d. That way, with enough of a posting delay and with no actual answer to my original question in s.e.c, s.e.d readers might be less inclined to complain about a very much time delayed cross post.

Generally speaking, the more expensive the product is, the more likelihood there is that you'll be able to negotitate a discount/better package price/etc. Speaking very roughly, anything $10k has somewhat flexible pricing. Additionally, the more licenses you have, the more likely you are to be able to negotiate a deal. For instance: Some packages such as Pulsonix and Protel have free viewers available, whereas ironically enough more expensive package such as PADS don't. However, if you have at least a small handful of PADS licenses, usually Mentor will give you a "viewer only" license for the asking.

(In some ways EDA tools seem like hotels... nice, mid-level hotels give you free amenities like WiFi and breakfast, the most expensive hotels want to nickle and dime you for every last little thing...)

As you'd expect, there's usually more pricing flexibility when a company is coming to the end of its fiscal quarter and the salesguys are trying to meet their quotas or qualify for bonuses.

Annual maintenance fees are typically 10-20% of the purchsae price. Companies differ in how much support they'll provide to those out of maintenance... Mentor won't let you do much of *anything* (no access to their knowledge base, no access to service packs, etc.). This "no downloads of anything, even if it's just a patch to fix a BUG in the software we ALREADY sold you" approach unfortunately seems to be getting more common -- Pulsonix just adopted it with their newest release, 4.5.

---Joel

Well you certainly haven't gotten much of a response.

Largely it looks like you understand the issue(s) pretty well. There are licensed users on this group of both PADs and Altium but they are probably all sure that there is no sure single answer to your enquiry. It varies with all the conditions you mentioned, including how well sales have gone this quarter, this half, this year. The biggest question would be how many seats are you going to buy? Also those actually using licensed software probably aren't keeping up on pricing and bundling.

As for the comment about Altium support getting worse than prior Protel support, someone is feeding you a complete line of shit. Having used Protel/Altium for the last 7 plus years, their support has gotten better in recent years. That is not to say there still isn't loads of room for improvements on their part. Some of the current issues people have issue with is policies rather than support. i.e. Long waits for bug fixes to actually be released (You're told it has been fixed but it will not be released until the next update, many months down the road.).

Just FYI. You will find very similar comments and gripes about all the main software vendors. Myself having used a number of them over the years can attest to the fact that they are all much the same and even those that are significantly better at any one time will cycle through the dregs periodically. (OrCAD, PADs!) Even an acquaintance that used Mentor Board Station used to tell me that for the money his employer paid (approx. $75,000 per seat), he figured it was about the same cost per bug/issue. They just had that many more bugs and issues because the system was so much more complex.

--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

 wrote in message 
news:mv1fr2l4d0dk07edp6snpjn50k7bpve4he@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 08:22:33 +0000, Paul Burke 
> wrote:
>
>>> 
>
> I haven\'t posted to s.e.d yet, I thought I\'d think about it before
> posting there. But you may be right, perhaps all users of CAD systems
> in the sci.electronics newsgroups are using pirated copies of PADS and
> Altium.
>
> I suspect that choosing a CAD system is something of a sticky
> decision, once you\'ve chosen one, invested heavily in training and
> have become used to using one system, you\'re probably not very
> interested in looking at another system. So s.e.d may be populated
> with users who have chosen a system already and have no need to read
> s.e.c.
>

Joel, Just to correct you on the one point, PADs does have a free viewer. At least up until very recent versions, they did. Just install the software without entering a valid license code and voila, a free viewer. Won't save anything but you can view files all day long. Worked up until 2004 versions anyway, we have several installs configured in such a manner at work.

-- Sincerely, Brad Velander.

Thanks Brad, I'll try your suggestion -- it would be nice if I'm wong! We're uisng PADS2005sp2 (we're on the $$$ maintenance plan...).

---Joel

I wouldn't have minded any response about pricing, even out of date prices. ;->

We're only thinking about buying two seats. When I thought about it though, just finding out what other people had bought, which packages and options and how much they cost, would have been quite interesting. That would have been a guide to what we should be looking carefully at buying.

You're right, there are a lot of options that could be purchased and it would be interesting to find out what other users bought and which options they found were most useful.

Actually, all I know about Altium is what came up on a google search of s.e.c and s.e.d. while searching for "Protel" and "Altium". I read a number of posts about how the best version was Protel 99 and that things had gone downhill since then.

However, it's possible that, as you mentioned, Altium has many more features and is much more complex than any earlier version of Protel. So it might appear that Altium is worse, but the bugs/feature ratio may not have changed over the years.

That ratio might even have improved, but with enough new features, the total absolute number of bugs has increased. So things look worse, but they really aren't.

We're likely to spend more than $10K, so if a discount is possible in that price range, that's good to know. As an example, if you're buying a car in that price range, you probably wouldn't expect much of a discount. But if $10K is roughly the threshold at which CAD tools begin to be discounted, that's something I didn't know.

One acquintance we works at an end user company told me that their ASIC design package didn't have a purchase price or annual maintenance fee, just an annual license fee of $140K per year per seat. That price also came with an NDA so he couldn't tell me which package he was referring to. Aside from jolting me awake, we weren't looking to make our own ASICs, so that information was only peripherally interesting to me.

Nice!

Ever read John Cooley's ESNUG newsletter? It's primarily aimed at people using Synopsys tools doing digital ICs, and it has lots of good war stories. Early on Synopsys didn't like the fact that John was publically exposing bugs in their software, and tried very hard to sue him out of existance. Typical big company arrogance there!

Some years ago I attempted to use Synopsys's FPGA Express and found it quite disappointing -- we went out and purchased Veribest within weeks...

---Joel

Oops, not Veribest, that should say, "Synplify" (from Synplicity).

As per your comments below.

We haven't purchased Protel/Altium in this decade so there is no relevance to you. The most recent pricing I am privy to, is approx. $11,000 USD per seat for the full Altium AD package that includes their full FPGA & Tasking features but not the Tasking hardware interface. today they have approx. 3 bundled options for all the features, sorry don't know the pricing haven't pruchased nor enquired. Other than that there is surely a lot more information you can get out of a call to their sales office.

PADs, in my last experience a decade ago was a myriad of features and packaging options that sometimes found you purchasing modules with not one feature that you wanted but it was necessary for the next module that had a few features that you did want. Starting out at approx. $5 - 7K as the very bottom end, one quickly found yourself over $10K and even approaching $20K. Now that is decade old information and pricing, but then my comments would also be that their software is 2 decades old. It is truly a decade plus old DOS engine with a cheesy GUI. If you are well used to Windows software and conventions, throw that out the window if you purchase PADs.

My comments about Altium support was that, strictly about support. Now you are bring that around to number of bugs/issues, those are not related figures one is support availability/response the other is a bug count. You are right, the software is a lot more feature and complexity rich. Remember when searching for issues on the internet, generally everyone posts their gripes few people post their praises when they have no problems or issues. There are also few professional users posting on the general web, they are on the software specific list servers. Some of those listservers may let you join, I know several won't because you are not a registered user (PADs and maybe Altium. But I would give Altium a try, if you are serious they should let you join as a sign of good faith and to allow you to research.).

--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

 wrote in message 
news:spckr21a509lnc2kncuoi75ll1fq479234@4ax.com...


> I wouldn\'t have minded any response about pricing, even out of date
> prices. ;->
>
> We\'re only thinking about buying two seats. When I thought about it
> though, just finding out what other people had bought, which packages
> and options and how much they cost, would have been quite interesting.
> That would have been a guide to what we should be looking carefully at
> buying.
>
> You\'re right, there are a lot of options that could be purchased and
> it would be interesting to find out what other users bought and which
> options they found were most useful.
>
>>    As for the comment about Altium support getting worse than prior 
>> Protel
>>support, someone is feeding you a complete line of shit. Having used
>>Protel/Altium for the last 7 plus years, their support has gotten better 
>>in
>>recent years.
>
> Actually, all I know about Altium is what came up on a google search
> of s.e.c and  s.e.d. while searching for "Protel" and "Altium".  I
> read a number of posts about how the best version was Protel 99 and
> that things had gone downhill since then.
>
> However, it\'s possible that, as you mentioned, Altium has many more
> features and is much more complex than any earlier version of Protel.
> So it might appear that Altium is worse, but the bugs/feature ratio
> may not have changed over the years.
>
> That ratio might even have improved, but with enough new features, the
> total absolute number of bugs has increased. So things look worse, but
> they really aren\'t.
>

When the issue has come up before the standard answer has been "Install Pads without a license" in that it defaults to Demo mode where you can open and look at files.

Robert

Thanks. I suspect their pricing hasn't changed all that much.

That's very interesting, thanks again. I never would have known about PADS interlocking feature set, forcing you to buy modules that you don't necessarily need. I'll watch out for that when I start talking to them.

I'll ask Altium about getting access to their listservers. $20K is a fair amount of money, they ought to allow me to do some research with their user base comments.

No, I didn't know about Cooley's newsletter. I found it in a search just now. It's very interesting. Thanks.