Altium Designer Pricing

It is RC1, a "release candidate". I.e. it is a trial version. It is still probably the best version to install rather than the actual previous "released" version which is a few years old and missing a lot of the good stuff. I would expect it to be generally compatible with the to-be-released version when it appears.

I did my best but it was last Christmas and my memory is not great.

I was evaluating the bleeding edge version as of ~9 months ago so it is close but should be more polished now.

It is pretty good as-is. The best open-source solution and better than many commercial offerings including what I was using. There definitely are people using it professionally for non-trivial projects and it is only going to improve with time.

Am 23.09.2015 um 17:06 schrieb rickman:

You cannot draw polygons in copper or use them as a footprint. (not even circles or ellipsoids, I believe). The way they created the center pad in SOT89 is, well...

I could not figure out how to draw complex board outlines (with slots, segments of a circle etc) and how to draw exact lines (like 47.7mm to

arc part of a polygon at all.

You cannot trust the library. In my first test, the 7493 had no ground contact due to an error in the schematic library.

Kicad has impressive features (length tuning, differential pairs, the calculator is great!) but also big deficits. Too many to use it for professional work.

Also, the installation process for me was lengthy. There are no instructions. I don't know where the libraries are (footprints seem to be on the Internet only). The schematic libraries are in the program directory! No idea how to move them to a network share. I nearly gave up before I had a running version. Under 'Settings', I find only three paths to modify. Two of them point to directories that do not exist on my PC. Would it have been so much effort to make a clean installer that really works?

Cheers

Robert

Wow, that sounds serious. I've done a little poking around with Kicad, and did generate the gerber files for a project that another guy designed in it.

How do you do SMT pads, then?

Thanks,

Jon

I've generated footprints with circular pads. Mostly by using the python script available here:

There's a crude way of doing it, setting the grid and making careful use of the mouse. I completely agree that that's a crappy workaround - the user interface could (and should) enable exact placement of board outlines.

I've never seen a part library yet that could be "trusted", especially when it comes to ground and power connections.

I look forward to improved installation procedures as well. I haven't used their schematic editor, only PCBnew and associated footprint handling sfwr.

We tried Altium. Struggled with the license manager issues, which despite their tech support were a serious pain. Struggled with importing old Protel designs. In the end (of the evaluation period) we were unconvinced that it was worth the pain, suffering, huge learning curve, and unknown future uncertainties (i.e. subscription model). Of course, none of us do layout as our primary activity.

you can't draw pads free hand, but you can place pads that are rectangular,trapezoidal,round or oval of what ever size you like and you can make multiple pads with the same number to get them connected so it is possible to piece together almost any shape

-Lasse

Sometimes it is even easier to use a text editor and directly edit the KiCAD files. One big advantage is that this files are pure ASCII text and their format is documented and clear enough by itself without consulting the documentation. I have done such things with old OrCAD which had an text export/import function but with KiCAD it is even simpler. Some things are often done more effective using a text editor than using all that pointy-clicky GUI stuff.

Real engineers don't need no f..g GUI. :-)

I used to do that a bit with Protel files (saved in ASCII format, rather than binary format). Sometimes for very big components I would copy the datasheets pin tables from the pdf, and use a bit of python scripting to produce a schematic library list of all the pins with the right names and numbers. I'd use the gui to lay out the pins in a nice way, but the scripting ensured that every pin was accurate without having to manually point-and-click for them all.

Am 24.09.2015 um 21:40 schrieb Frank Miles: ...

You're right. Indeed, the Libraries I'm working with I've created (in Orcad and Bartels Auto Engineer) nearly 100% myself but that was a process over decades. Doing all this again is a big barrier, although probably the best solution.

...

btw. the best and most productive feature I've seen in a schematic editor is in LTspice. You can place your parts and then draw wires just across them. At first it looks as if you produced a single big short circuit but if you end the wire, all short circuits are removed! Also, if you put a part over an existing wire, the piece of wire 'inside' the part is removed. I love it. I don't know why other editors don't work like this.

Same thing in Orcad. I believe they put more work in their license manager than in the real program... and they pay more attention that guys without a license can't use it than that guys with a license can. I would not buy it again but I've grown up with it.

A working import is a rare thing. I tried the tool Kicad mentions somewhere to import an Orcad schematic library. Starting with a 600k library it produced a file with more than 100MB which of course did not work... I do not think of importing complete designs but the libraries would be nice :-)

Cheers

Robert

This was for a small company with 1-1/2 users. We saved our dollars for another day.

Real programmers don't need a computer monitor.

It seems like they have done a lot of really hard things - push and shove routing, differential pair routing, length tuning, 3D viewing. But things that should be trivial are missing or need awkward work-arounds. Hopefully with the new release they will get a lot more users and more real-world feedback and it will quickly shape up. (And it is still possible that the issues I found are just me, there *are* people using it professionally).

Hopefully the 3D printing / "maker community" craze will bring on the 3D CAD programs.

Cool. I usually abuse my PCB schematic editor for this, defining the symbols I need manually etc. But it might be nice to have all the symbols done for you already to some kind of standard.

English... the worlds' "lingua franca".

This is not untypical for open-source software. Some people even say it is typical for open-source.

It depends. For developers it is often more interesting to work on hard problems or to innovate things than to solve mundane problems like installation. So it is not surprising that those areas are lacking when the project is not commercially managed.

I believe the installation process is going to get fixed. Up until a couple of months ago getting a recent version required compilation from source, with a difficult set of pre-requisites needed. They have just now managed to get nightly binary installers up for Windows, Mac and Linux. I think there are still issues e.g. to do with environment variables needing to be set up but these will be fixed shortly I would hope. This sort of thing is what having a RC is for.

I've been using SolidEdge 2D - free, fully functional, parametric modeling (change a dimension, relationships change according to constraints you define).

Once a year (around this time - September) a new version is released and your license key (a small text file) expires. The fix is to download the new version or update the key. All you have to do is provide your info so a salesman can contact you to see if you'd like to upgrade to the pay-for 3D system.

There are tutorials etc. on the youtubes and in the documentation - takes some practice to get all the horsepower into your fingertips.

There's only one piece missing that limits my happiness - the 3D system has a magic helix/spiral function but not the 2D package - it's a bit tedious to set up construction points to thread a spline for a spiral inductor.

DWG and DXF can be exported - the hybrid RF/microwave substrate guys have a path to happiness.

I have had no end of trouble with licenses expiring at very inconvenient times. That is the main reason why I try to avoid them at all costs.

There's actually a warning starting a week or two before expiration. It'll ask you if you want an upgrade or just a new key - painless. ;)

That's great if you used the product in that week. I often don't use CAD tools for weeks or even months at a time. I guess I should just get used to tools requiring activation every time I want to use them, but I don't.

I guess the process for this program is less painless than others. I have started a new project on a Friday only to find I had to wait until the next business day to get a new license which means I can't work over the weekend, which I often do when working. FPGA tools are not very license friendly.

It sounds like they can cut-off usage of the free product any time they want to. In fact it *will* get cut-off when they get tired of running the license server, change their product strategy, the product gets bought out, etc.

Sounds a bit precarious, a CAD system is a big investment not just in financial terms but in the time invested in learning it, the drawings, developing libraries and templates etc.

I don't know what type of tools you use, I do VHDL design on FPGAs. The only device specific investment is the pin out which is not compatible between product lines much less brands. So either I use the tools for that part or I redesign the PCB.

FPGA vendors won't drop their free tools. They would lose a lot of customers and the free tools don't cost them much really.