R
Rikard Astrof
Guest
FYI: Altium limited has laid off 60% of their staff and will be
closing the australia offices by the end of the month.
closing the australia offices by the end of the month.
Altium Limited closing up shop - Altium Designer discontinue
F
Frank Buss
Guest
Rikard Astrof wrote:
Do you have a link? Last time I tried Altium
Designer it was a nice program. Of course expensive and with some bugs,
but would be bad for many people who are using it if it will be
discontinued.
--
Frank Buss, http://www.frank-buss.de
piano and more: http://www.youtube.com/user/frankbuss
April 1 is over
Do you have a link? Last time I tried AltiumDesigner it was a nice program. Of course expensive and with some bugs,
but would be bad for many people who are using it if it will be
discontinued.
--
Frank Buss, http://www.frank-buss.de
piano and more: http://www.youtube.com/user/frankbuss
P
PovTruffe
Guest
I have found this:
http://www.electronicsnews.com.au/news/altium-relocates-from-sydney-to-shanghai
Nothing was mentioned about Altium Designer being discontinued
http://www.electronicsnews.com.au/news/altium-relocates-from-sydney-to-shanghai
Nothing was mentioned about Altium Designer being discontinued
R
Rikard Astrof
Guest
On Apr 10, 7:17 pm, Frank Buss <f...@frank-buss.de> wrote:
main architects Marc Depret, Dejan Stankovic and Benjamin Wells will
not be making the move as such have tendered their resignation, but
have been requested by Altium management to not make it public until
after the June EOY ASX fillings have been made.
The reality is there is no guarantee that Altium as a company will be
around this time next year, so who knows what will happen to multi-
year subscriptions and promised upgrade cycles.
This is not an April fools comment, this is real. 3 out of 4 of theRikard Astrof wrote:
FYI: Altium limited has laid off 60% of their staff and will be
closing the australia offices by the end of the month.
April 1 is over
Designer it was a nice program. Of course expensive and with some bugs,
but would be bad for many people who are using it if it will be
discontinued.
main architects Marc Depret, Dejan Stankovic and Benjamin Wells will
not be making the move as such have tendered their resignation, but
have been requested by Altium management to not make it public until
after the June EOY ASX fillings have been made.
The reality is there is no guarantee that Altium as a company will be
around this time next year, so who knows what will happen to multi-
year subscriptions and promised upgrade cycles.
R
Rikard Astrof
Guest
On Apr 10, 8:00 pm, "PovTruffe" <PovTa...@gaga.invalid> wrote:
made by Alan Smith, he's saying last week they retrenched most of the
AU staff (http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alinkedin.com+altium
+limited) with the hope of setting up a team in China, well since then
inside sources have confirmed that the vast majority of the people
that were supposedly meant to head off to china to setup the new
offices/team have decided to take voluntary redundancy, which means as
of today Altium Limited and their product Altium designer is in limbo.
To furthermore, lay-offs will be made this week in the San Diego
offices, this will include transfering all support calls to the China
offices.
If you read the comments at the end of the article, specially those
made by Alan Smith, he's saying last week they retrenched most of the
AU staff (http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alinkedin.com+altium
+limited) with the hope of setting up a team in China, well since then
inside sources have confirmed that the vast majority of the people
that were supposedly meant to head off to china to setup the new
offices/team have decided to take voluntary redundancy, which means as
of today Altium Limited and their product Altium designer is in limbo.
To furthermore, lay-offs will be made this week in the San Diego
offices, this will include transfering all support calls to the China
offices.
N
Nial Stewart
Guest
I'm posting as an AD user, concerned for the long term future of the tool.
This _could_ be interpreted as FUD by a competitor.
Rikard, who are you and what's your source for the detailed information
above?
Nial
This _could_ be interpreted as FUD by a competitor.
Rikard, who are you and what's your source for the detailed information
above?
Nial
R
Rob Irwin
Guest
On Apr 11, 11:10 pm, "Nial Stewart"
<nial*REMOVE_TH...@nialstewartdevelopments.co.uk> wrote:
ill-informed comment. I work at Altium, currently in the Australian
office, and can assure everyone that Altium Designer is not being
discontinued in ANY way. The move of HQ to China (we will remain an
Australian company) is actually aimed at allowing us to ramp up our
development schedule, and to get Altium Designer on to the desktops of
more designers and engineers around the world.
So, yes. Perhaps Rikard needs to declare who he is and who he works
for. Otherwise his comments can be disregarded.
<nial*REMOVE_TH...@nialstewartdevelopments.co.uk> wrote:
Hi Nial. Not sure if this is FUD by a competitor, but it certainly is
ill-informed comment. I work at Altium, currently in the Australian
office, and can assure everyone that Altium Designer is not being
discontinued in ANY way. The move of HQ to China (we will remain an
Australian company) is actually aimed at allowing us to ramp up our
development schedule, and to get Altium Designer on to the desktops of
more designers and engineers around the world.
So, yes. Perhaps Rikard needs to declare who he is and who he works
for. Otherwise his comments can be disregarded.
D
David L. Jones
Guest
On Apr 11, 6:57 am, Rikard Astrof <rikard.ast...@gmail.com> wrote:
One of those names has left, yes, that's fairly well known, but he
decided to move to another company way before the whole China move was
even known, it had nothing to do with China.
The other two names are incorrect, unless you know something that
myself (ex) and other employees don't.
And AD being discontinued is just plain rubbish, as is the Australian
office closing.
So not a single thing you have posted is true.
But considering that based on your profile, your ONLY contributions to
this and other Usenet groups has been to post misinformation about
Altium, I call troll, or FUD stooge.
Dave.
And your source of this is?On Apr 10, 7:17 pm, Frank Buss <f...@frank-buss.de> wrote:
Rikard Astrof wrote:
FYI: Altium limited has laid off 60% of their staff and will be
closing the australia offices by the end of the month.
April 1 is over
Designer it was a nice program. Of course expensive and with some bugs,
but would be bad for many people who are using it if it will be
discontinued.
This is not an April fools comment, this is real. 3 out of 4 of the
main architects Marc Depret, Dejan Stankovic and Benjamin Wells will
not be making the move as such have tendered their resignation, but
have been requested by Altium management to not make it public until
after the June EOY ASX fillings have been made.
One of those names has left, yes, that's fairly well known, but he
decided to move to another company way before the whole China move was
even known, it had nothing to do with China.
The other two names are incorrect, unless you know something that
myself (ex) and other employees don't.
And AD being discontinued is just plain rubbish, as is the Australian
office closing.
So not a single thing you have posted is true.
But considering that based on your profile, your ONLY contributions to
this and other Usenet groups has been to post misinformation about
Altium, I call troll, or FUD stooge.
Dave.
E
Ed McGettigan
Guest
On Apr 11, 4:18 pm, Rob Irwin <rob.ir...@altium.com> wrote:
of the engineers that was laid off?
It seems strange to lay off most of the staff before ramping in the
new location first.
Ed McGettigan
--
Xilinx Inc.
The post came from a DSL line in New South Wales, Sydney. Maybe one
of the engineers that was laid off?
It seems strange to lay off most of the staff before ramping in the
new location first.
Ed McGettigan
--
Xilinx Inc.
D
David L. Jones
Guest
On Apr 11, 7:10 am, Rikard Astrof <rikard.ast...@gmail.com> wrote:
There were no voluntary redundancies, and the product and company is
not in limbo.
So who are you, and who do you work for?
Dave.
Rubbish.
There were no voluntary redundancies, and the product and company is
not in limbo.
More rubbish.
So who are you, and who do you work for?
Dave.
D
David L. Jones
Guest
On Apr 12, 1:32 pm, Ed McGettigan <ed.mcgetti...@xilinx.com> wrote:
Internet account.
Dave.
Yes, the message traces to the Hornsby area in Sydney, via a TGP
Internet account.
Dave.
B
Blue Banshee
Guest
On Apr 10, 2:10 pm, Rikard Astrof <rikard.ast...@gmail.com> wrote:
North America and there is no plan to push support calls into China.
This is completely baseless. We have development in the US, China,
Kiev, Australia and the Netherlands. Altium Designer is not going
away and some development will continue to be done in our two
development centers in Australia (Sydney and Hobart). Do some
research on any major software vendor's global development centers and
you'll find development going on all over the world. No major EDA/CAD/
CAM company that I know of has a single development center in any
single country. True there has been some retrenchment but the sky is
well and truly, *not* falling.
Matt Berggren
Altium
What rubbish. I *am* one of the management team for Altium, managing
North America and there is no plan to push support calls into China.
This is completely baseless. We have development in the US, China,
Kiev, Australia and the Netherlands. Altium Designer is not going
away and some development will continue to be done in our two
development centers in Australia (Sydney and Hobart). Do some
research on any major software vendor's global development centers and
you'll find development going on all over the world. No major EDA/CAD/
CAM company that I know of has a single development center in any
single country. True there has been some retrenchment but the sky is
well and truly, *not* falling.
Matt Berggren
Altium
N
Nobby Anderson
Guest
Blue Banshee <bluebansh3e@gmail.com> wrote:
abandoned PCad. But then I'm still bitter and twisted about that ;-)
Nobby
A happy PCad 2006 user.
As far as I'm concerned the sky started falling on on Altium when they
abandoned PCad. But then I'm still bitter and twisted about that ;-)
Nobby
A happy PCad 2006 user.
S
slight_return
Guest
On Apr 13, 7:29 am, Nobby Anderson <no...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Having come from the Accel / PCAD camp myself I can appreciate the
sense of loyalty toward PCAD as it was and in some ways continues to
be a fantastic product. Without steering this thread off course (and
without making this a sales pitch) I know we've transitioned a number
of customers (willingly) over the altium designer, with great
success. It may be that we need to spend some time with you, hooking
you and one of our support teams up to show you the differences and
get you spun up on the benefits (this assumes of course that we
haven't already. A lot of work went into incorporating PCAD
capabilities into AD. Again, I'm not going to try and sell you on it,
but may be worth contacting our support centers (specific to each
region) and get some face time with an Apps Engineer / the tool.
Kind Regards,
Matt
Hi Nobby,
Having come from the Accel / PCAD camp myself I can appreciate the
sense of loyalty toward PCAD as it was and in some ways continues to
be a fantastic product. Without steering this thread off course (and
without making this a sales pitch) I know we've transitioned a number
of customers (willingly) over the altium designer, with great
success. It may be that we need to spend some time with you, hooking
you and one of our support teams up to show you the differences and
get you spun up on the benefits (this assumes of course that we
haven't already
. A lot of work went into incorporating PCADcapabilities into AD. Again, I'm not going to try and sell you on it,
but may be worth contacting our support centers (specific to each
region) and get some face time with an Apps Engineer / the tool.
Kind Regards,
Matt
N
Nobby Anderson
Guest
slight_return <matthew.berggren@altium.com> wrote:
AD and we used it for a few PCBs at the time, and I still have one of the
2009 releases installed here (summer I think). However for our purposes
(for our purposes being important) it was not great for a number of
reasons. Firstly, it tried to be all things for all men, integrating
schematic capture, PCB layout, FPGA design, software and even I think
mechanical design in the later releases (can't remember) and it did
none of the things we used PCad for well. I only want schemtic capture
and PCB layout, ie exactly what PCad does, and nothing else. The PCB
layout capabilities of PCad were, even by summer 2009, far in advance
of anything that AD could do, it was just so much easier to use (all
manual routing here, nothing particularly complicated, max 4 tracked layer
double sided designs). Schematic capture wasn't as smooth, either, but
there was nothing much in it between the two in real terms. ADs library,
and some of the more advanced features of component building was better
than PCad's once you got used to it though.
However we just didn't use or want 80% of the features of the package.
We have no need for FPGA integration, the FPGA tools we use from the
manufacturer do everything we want them to do. We don't want source code
integration, our coding methedologies are way ahead of anything it
actually supported and anyway it's the wrong platform. I don't need
thermal analysis or mechanical integration or any of the other bells and
whistles. PCad does absolutely everything we need, and by 2006 SP2 it
did it well.
As others have said, we also don't want to pay through the nose for a
constant stream of updates, either. It was just far too expensive,
and the perception (and I think the reality) is that we were paying for
ongoing development of a product 80% of which we would never ever use.
So, we paid it for a year or two, and then happily returned to PCad and
free forever use.
PCad was a good, mid-range product, and in my view there is still a
need for something like that, particularly for small outfits like
ours. We might consider AD again, assuming it really has improved,
if we could get a version that did schematic capture and PCB layout
only (and other necessary things like library management of course)
but it would have to be significantly less expensive both in terms
of startup cost and ongoing costs than AD is at the moment (or was
in the 2009 era anyway).
Nobby
WE (well, I, as it's mostly me that uses it) did make the transition toOn Apr 13, 7:29 am, Nobby Anderson <no...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
As far as I'm concerned the sky started falling on on Altium when they
abandoned PCad. But then I'm still bitter and twisted about that ;-)
Nobby
A happy PCad 2006 user.
Hi Nobby,
Having come from the Accel / PCAD camp myself I can appreciate the
sense of loyalty toward PCAD as it was and in some ways continues to
be a fantastic product. Without steering this thread off course (and
without making this a sales pitch) I know we've transitioned a number
of customers (willingly) over the altium designer, with great
success. It may be that we need to spend some time with you, hooking
you and one of our support teams up to show you the differences and
get you spun up on the benefits (this assumes of course that we
haven't already
capabilities into AD. Again, I'm not going to try and sell you on it,
but may be worth contacting our support centers (specific to each
region) and get some face time with an Apps Engineer / the tool.
AD and we used it for a few PCBs at the time, and I still have one of the
2009 releases installed here (summer I think). However for our purposes
(for our purposes being important) it was not great for a number of
reasons. Firstly, it tried to be all things for all men, integrating
schematic capture, PCB layout, FPGA design, software and even I think
mechanical design in the later releases (can't remember) and it did
none of the things we used PCad for well. I only want schemtic capture
and PCB layout, ie exactly what PCad does, and nothing else. The PCB
layout capabilities of PCad were, even by summer 2009, far in advance
of anything that AD could do, it was just so much easier to use (all
manual routing here, nothing particularly complicated, max 4 tracked layer
double sided designs). Schematic capture wasn't as smooth, either, but
there was nothing much in it between the two in real terms. ADs library,
and some of the more advanced features of component building was better
than PCad's once you got used to it though.
However we just didn't use or want 80% of the features of the package.
We have no need for FPGA integration, the FPGA tools we use from the
manufacturer do everything we want them to do. We don't want source code
integration, our coding methedologies are way ahead of anything it
actually supported and anyway it's the wrong platform. I don't need
thermal analysis or mechanical integration or any of the other bells and
whistles. PCad does absolutely everything we need, and by 2006 SP2 it
did it well.
As others have said, we also don't want to pay through the nose for a
constant stream of updates, either. It was just far too expensive,
and the perception (and I think the reality) is that we were paying for
ongoing development of a product 80% of which we would never ever use.
So, we paid it for a year or two, and then happily returned to PCad and
free forever use.
PCad was a good, mid-range product, and in my view there is still a
need for something like that, particularly for small outfits like
ours. We might consider AD again, assuming it really has improved,
if we could get a version that did schematic capture and PCB layout
only (and other necessary things like library management of course)
but it would have to be significantly less expensive both in terms
of startup cost and ongoing costs than AD is at the moment (or was
in the 2009 era anyway).
Nobby
S
slight_return
Guest
On Apr 13, 3:19 pm, Nobby Anderson <no...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Good feedback! Thank you. Again, I'm trying to avoid hijacking this
thread and turning it into a sales pitch however... I know at one
stage our pricing had risen to something dangerously close to the old
Accel a'la cart pricing model for PCAD (AD rose to almost $15K where
at one point even Accel/PCAD ran ~$20K). This found us creeping
closer and closer to the price of our competitor's tools (if you can
get clear pricing from them). And it was at this point that we
pressed the proverbial reset button and decided this ran counter to
our core mission of providing a comprehensive range of technologies
priced at a point that would put them in the reach for every
engineer. This resulted in a >60% drop in pricing and a moving to
total pricing transparency by putting the pricing out there on the
website.
Now others (competitors) have somewhat followed suit however the
difference we found was when we mentioned our price, we were talking
about pricing for every aspect of the tool (an out-of-the-box-you-get-
everything price), where others were still holding back and reserving
additional features for sale as add-ons. So where you found that you
might not use 80% of Altium Designer, that to us is perfectly fine, if
that suits your needs. The pricing is low enough now to make that 20%
you *do* use, still *very* competitively priced, relatively speaking.
And as time goes on, you might use more areas of the software
*however* the difference is that those areas of the software are
already installed on your desktop and there's no additional add-ons to
buy (for example, where others proffer things like pin swapping tools
as an add-on starting at ~$10K and up...for us, this seems silly.
Though you might not need it today, you may someday and it should just
be there, in the box for when you do need it).
To the differences in performance and usability, this is somewhat more
difficult to discuss the specifics on a forum such as this but I'd
welcome a chance to chat about it as I feel like if there are weak
points or points where you feel PCAD was faster or easier to use, then
we want to be sure to capture these. I was on the team that evaluated
the transition from PCAD to Altium Designer and though the workflow
was different (and indeed there were some additional features that
both packages had that the other did not) I'd suspect we pretty much
closed the gap on these over the years. Afterall, we still have a
large percentage of the team that developed PCAD 2006 in our R&D org,
working on Altium Designer today. All friends and colleagues of mine
for many years and all still infusing the software with the best-in-
class sorts of capabilities that made PCAD PCB so strong.
Anytime you feel like chatting, drop me a note. As I'd said, I'd love
to know your concerns and issues that you experienced at the time. My
email is simply first name . last name at altium dot com.
Cheers,
Matt Berggren
Altium
Hi Nobby,slight_return <matthew.bergg...@altium.com> wrote:
On Apr 13, 7:29 am, Nobby Anderson <no...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
As far as I'm concerned the sky started falling on on Altium when they
abandoned PCad. But then I'm still bitter and twisted about that ;-)
Nobby
A happy PCad 2006 user.
Hi Nobby,
Having come from the Accel / PCAD camp myself I can appreciate the
sense of loyalty toward PCAD as it was and in some ways continues to
be a fantastic product. Without steering this thread off course (and
without making this a sales pitch) I know we've transitioned a number
of customers (willingly) over the altium designer, with great
success. It may be that we need to spend some time with you, hooking
you and one of our support teams up to show you the differences and
get you spun up on the benefits (this assumes of course that we
haven't already
capabilities into AD. Again, I'm not going to try and sell you on it,
but may be worth contacting our support centers (specific to each
region) and get some face time with an Apps Engineer / the tool.
WE (well, I, as it's mostly me that uses it) did make the transition to
AD and we used it for a few PCBs at the time, and I still have one of the
2009 releases installed here (summer I think). However for our purposes
(for our purposes being important) it was not great for a number of
reasons. Firstly, it tried to be all things for all men, integrating
schematic capture, PCB layout, FPGA design, software and even I think
mechanical design in the later releases (can't remember) and it did
none of the things we used PCad for well. I only want schemtic capture
and PCB layout, ie exactly what PCad does, and nothing else. The PCB
layout capabilities of PCad were, even by summer 2009, far in advance
of anything that AD could do, it was just so much easier to use (all
manual routing here, nothing particularly complicated, max 4 tracked layer
double sided designs). Schematic capture wasn't as smooth, either, but
there was nothing much in it between the two in real terms. ADs library,
and some of the more advanced features of component building was better
than PCad's once you got used to it though.
However we just didn't use or want 80% of the features of the package.
We have no need for FPGA integration, the FPGA tools we use from the
manufacturer do everything we want them to do. We don't want source code
integration, our coding methedologies are way ahead of anything it
actually supported and anyway it's the wrong platform. I don't need
thermal analysis or mechanical integration or any of the other bells and
whistles. PCad does absolutely everything we need, and by 2006 SP2 it
did it well.
As others have said, we also don't want to pay through the nose for a
constant stream of updates, either. It was just far too expensive,
and the perception (and I think the reality) is that we were paying for
ongoing development of a product 80% of which we would never ever use.
So, we paid it for a year or two, and then happily returned to PCad and
free forever use.
PCad was a good, mid-range product, and in my view there is still a
need for something like that, particularly for small outfits like
ours. We might consider AD again, assuming it really has improved,
if we could get a version that did schematic capture and PCB layout
only (and other necessary things like library management of course)
but it would have to be significantly less expensive both in terms
of startup cost and ongoing costs than AD is at the moment (or was
in the 2009 era anyway).
Nobby
Good feedback! Thank you. Again, I'm trying to avoid hijacking this
thread and turning it into a sales pitch however...
I know at onestage our pricing had risen to something dangerously close to the old
Accel a'la cart pricing model for PCAD (AD rose to almost $15K where
at one point even Accel/PCAD ran ~$20K). This found us creeping
closer and closer to the price of our competitor's tools (if you can
get clear pricing from them). And it was at this point that we
pressed the proverbial reset button and decided this ran counter to
our core mission of providing a comprehensive range of technologies
priced at a point that would put them in the reach for every
engineer. This resulted in a >60% drop in pricing and a moving to
total pricing transparency by putting the pricing out there on the
website.
Now others (competitors) have somewhat followed suit however the
difference we found was when we mentioned our price, we were talking
about pricing for every aspect of the tool (an out-of-the-box-you-get-
everything price), where others were still holding back and reserving
additional features for sale as add-ons. So where you found that you
might not use 80% of Altium Designer, that to us is perfectly fine, if
that suits your needs. The pricing is low enough now to make that 20%
you *do* use, still *very* competitively priced, relatively speaking.
And as time goes on, you might use more areas of the software
*however* the difference is that those areas of the software are
already installed on your desktop and there's no additional add-ons to
buy (for example, where others proffer things like pin swapping tools
as an add-on starting at ~$10K and up...for us, this seems silly.
Though you might not need it today, you may someday and it should just
be there, in the box for when you do need it).
To the differences in performance and usability, this is somewhat more
difficult to discuss the specifics on a forum such as this but I'd
welcome a chance to chat about it as I feel like if there are weak
points or points where you feel PCAD was faster or easier to use, then
we want to be sure to capture these. I was on the team that evaluated
the transition from PCAD to Altium Designer and though the workflow
was different (and indeed there were some additional features that
both packages had that the other did not) I'd suspect we pretty much
closed the gap on these over the years. Afterall, we still have a
large percentage of the team that developed PCAD 2006 in our R&D org,
working on Altium Designer today. All friends and colleagues of mine
for many years and all still infusing the software with the best-in-
class sorts of capabilities that made PCAD PCB so strong.
Anytime you feel like chatting, drop me a note. As I'd said, I'd love
to know your concerns and issues that you experienced at the time. My
email is simply first name . last name at altium dot com.
Cheers,
Matt Berggren
Altium
N
Nobby Anderson
Guest
slight_return <matthew.berggren@altium.com> wrote:
sometime need it" though. I'd prefer to pay 20% now for the 20% I use
(OK, I might pay 40% for the first 20%) and the remainder if I ever
do decide to use the other stuff. We've been doing this for a long
time now and we're pretty sure we won't need to do the other stuff in
the forseeable future.
I accept that I haven't looked at your pricing here in the UK in a few
years and it's possible you're much more competitive although of course
it's hard to compete against a product that does everything we need at
the moment, still works, and costs us nothing. There is just no reason
for us to upgrade, and nothing that AD does currently will persuade us
to do so so long as PCad continues to work on whatever version of
Windows we currently use. To make you feel better, though, if I had
to upgrade for whatever reason I'd almost certainly go the AD route,
especially if it had inherited the better features of PCad in the
meantime.
Now if you were to develop a linux port I'd be there tomorrow. Well,
AutoDesk might have to do the same with AutoCAD too, I guess, to make
it a viable move.
Nobby
I will. However I don't buy the "might not need it today, you mayOn Apr 13, 3:19 pm, Nobby Anderson <no...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
slight_return <matthew.bergg...@altium.com> wrote:
On Apr 13, 7:29 am, Nobby Anderson <no...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
As far as I'm concerned the sky started falling on on Altium when they
abandoned PCad. But then I'm still bitter and twisted about that ;-)
Nobby
A happy PCad 2006 user.
Hi Nobby,
Having come from the Accel / PCAD camp myself I can appreciate the
sense of loyalty toward PCAD as it was and in some ways continues to
be a fantastic product. Without steering this thread off course (and
without making this a sales pitch) I know we've transitioned a number
of customers (willingly) over the altium designer, with great
success. It may be that we need to spend some time with you, hooking
you and one of our support teams up to show you the differences and
get you spun up on the benefits (this assumes of course that we
haven't already
capabilities into AD. Again, I'm not going to try and sell you on it,
but may be worth contacting our support centers (specific to each
region) and get some face time with an Apps Engineer / the tool.
WE (well, I, as it's mostly me that uses it) did make the transition to
AD and we used it for a few PCBs at the time, and I still have one of the
2009 releases installed here (summer I think). However for our purposes
(for our purposes being important) it was not great for a number of
reasons. Firstly, it tried to be all things for all men, integrating
schematic capture, PCB layout, FPGA design, software and even I think
mechanical design in the later releases (can't remember) and it did
none of the things we used PCad for well. I only want schemtic capture
and PCB layout, ie exactly what PCad does, and nothing else. The PCB
layout capabilities of PCad were, even by summer 2009, far in advance
of anything that AD could do, it was just so much easier to use (all
manual routing here, nothing particularly complicated, max 4 tracked layer
double sided designs). Schematic capture wasn't as smooth, either, but
there was nothing much in it between the two in real terms. ADs library,
and some of the more advanced features of component building was better
than PCad's once you got used to it though.
However we just didn't use or want 80% of the features of the package.
We have no need for FPGA integration, the FPGA tools we use from the
manufacturer do everything we want them to do. We don't want source code
integration, our coding methedologies are way ahead of anything it
actually supported and anyway it's the wrong platform. I don't need
thermal analysis or mechanical integration or any of the other bells and
whistles. PCad does absolutely everything we need, and by 2006 SP2 it
did it well.
As others have said, we also don't want to pay through the nose for a
constant stream of updates, either. It was just far too expensive,
and the perception (and I think the reality) is that we were paying for
ongoing development of a product 80% of which we would never ever use.
So, we paid it for a year or two, and then happily returned to PCad and
free forever use.
PCad was a good, mid-range product, and in my view there is still a
need for something like that, particularly for small outfits like
ours. We might consider AD again, assuming it really has improved,
if we could get a version that did schematic capture and PCB layout
only (and other necessary things like library management of course)
but it would have to be significantly less expensive both in terms
of startup cost and ongoing costs than AD is at the moment (or was
in the 2009 era anyway).
Nobby
Hi Nobby,
Good feedback! Thank you. Again, I'm trying to avoid hijacking this
thread and turning it into a sales pitch however...
stage our pricing had risen to something dangerously close to the old
Accel a'la cart pricing model for PCAD (AD rose to almost $15K where
at one point even Accel/PCAD ran ~$20K). This found us creeping
closer and closer to the price of our competitor's tools (if you can
get clear pricing from them). And it was at this point that we
pressed the proverbial reset button and decided this ran counter to
our core mission of providing a comprehensive range of technologies
priced at a point that would put them in the reach for every
engineer. This resulted in a >60% drop in pricing and a moving to
total pricing transparency by putting the pricing out there on the
website.
Now others (competitors) have somewhat followed suit however the
difference we found was when we mentioned our price, we were talking
about pricing for every aspect of the tool (an out-of-the-box-you-get-
everything price), where others were still holding back and reserving
additional features for sale as add-ons. So where you found that you
might not use 80% of Altium Designer, that to us is perfectly fine, if
that suits your needs. The pricing is low enough now to make that 20%
you *do* use, still *very* competitively priced, relatively speaking.
And as time goes on, you might use more areas of the software
*however* the difference is that those areas of the software are
already installed on your desktop and there's no additional add-ons to
buy (for example, where others proffer things like pin swapping tools
as an add-on starting at ~$10K and up...for us, this seems silly.
Though you might not need it today, you may someday and it should just
be there, in the box for when you do need it).
To the differences in performance and usability, this is somewhat more
difficult to discuss the specifics on a forum such as this but I'd
welcome a chance to chat about it as I feel like if there are weak
points or points where you feel PCAD was faster or easier to use, then
we want to be sure to capture these. I was on the team that evaluated
the transition from PCAD to Altium Designer and though the workflow
was different (and indeed there were some additional features that
both packages had that the other did not) I'd suspect we pretty much
closed the gap on these over the years. Afterall, we still have a
large percentage of the team that developed PCAD 2006 in our R&D org,
working on Altium Designer today. All friends and colleagues of mine
for many years and all still infusing the software with the best-in-
class sorts of capabilities that made PCAD PCB so strong.
Anytime you feel like chatting, drop me a note. As I'd said, I'd love
to know your concerns and issues that you experienced at the time. My
email is simply first name . last name at altium dot com.
sometime need it" though. I'd prefer to pay 20% now for the 20% I use
(OK, I might pay 40% for the first 20%) and the remainder if I ever
do decide to use the other stuff. We've been doing this for a long
time now and we're pretty sure we won't need to do the other stuff in
the forseeable future.
I accept that I haven't looked at your pricing here in the UK in a few
years and it's possible you're much more competitive although of course
it's hard to compete against a product that does everything we need at
the moment, still works, and costs us nothing. There is just no reason
for us to upgrade, and nothing that AD does currently will persuade us
to do so so long as PCad continues to work on whatever version of
Windows we currently use. To make you feel better, though, if I had
to upgrade for whatever reason I'd almost certainly go the AD route,
especially if it had inherited the better features of PCad in the
meantime.
Now if you were to develop a linux port I'd be there tomorrow. Well,
AutoDesk might have to do the same with AutoCAD too, I guess, to make
it a viable move.
Nobby