From KiCad to Altium: is it worth it?

[ppTRN]

Hy everyone.

Some times ago I made a topic on the KiCad section "From Eagle to KiCad: is it worth it?" and thanks to you I migrated to KiCad. It was a game changer for me and allowed me to work with much ease in respect of Eagle, that was really not even comparable to KiCad.

Now there is another question of which I think I already know the answare, but I will ask you anyway. KiCad ---> Altium?

You should know that I can use a student licence for a few years and when the time is up the company I work with will be more than happy to provide me a licence.

I already enrolled in a free educational program by Altium, but I think I will follow other tutorials in order to be familiar with the GUI and workflow. I already know that youtube Phill's Lab have a lot of videos. I already tried to watch also some videos by Robert Feranec, although I do not hide that many of his videos are quite hard to follow, not really for the complexity of the topic, but for the format itself.

So if you have any suggestions that can help me migrate, feel free to share.

PS. First thing i will try is the kicad importer tool

[thm_w]

Design a basic board, produce a BOM, gerbers, etc. and see if you prefer the workflow. Using the importer is good to try but would not be a normal workflow for a new project I would think.

I would only watch the basic tutorial videos for now. Don't get into the complex topics until you've decided which you prefer by actually using the software. As you said, Ferenacs videos tend to be very detailed.

Does the company have other employees using the software or existing PCB designs?

[jc101]

The KiCad importer in Altium only supports up to KiCad v6. It's been waiting to be updated for ages, but it hasn't received any TLC yet.

KiCad doesn't support exporting to previous versions, so if you use v7 or higher, you cannot import until it gets sorted.

[ppTRN]

Design a basic board, produce a BOM, gerbers, etc. and see if you prefer the workflow.
Does the company have other employees using the software or existing PCB designs?

Will do. Nope, It's only me.

The KiCad importer in Altium only supports up to KiCad v6.

Yes I noticed it. It still allowed me to import a design but it was pretty messed up tho.

[Doctorandus_P]

First, I am a KiCad fan myself, have not even used altium, so my answer is biased.

I have read quite a lot of complaints about altium. Both of their pricing policy, and how they treat their customers. Now Altium has been bought by Renesas for (it seems to me) much more then the company is worth, I do not see Altium prices getting lower any time soon.

I am wondering how the situation will be in 5 to 10 years. At the moment there are still quite a lot of functions in Altium that KiCad simply does not have (yet). But KiCad is improving at a quite rapid rate. Altium treats their customers as a way to extract money to give to share holders, while you can get personal attention and even custom development done in KiCad for less then the price of an altium license. I have already read posts from several people who ditched altium and switched to KiCad because they can't afford the altium licensing don't like the "cloud" stuff or are simply too harassed by altiums marketing department and are fed up with it. I have never ever heard a complaint about https://www.kipro-pcb.com/

When you have a job as a full time PCB designer, the cost of altium is probably not much of an issue, but even if KiCad has a "lower productivity", you may be able to hire a 2nd person, or occasionally use interns to do some work with KiCad, while in altium you'd have to pay for a second instance, and this may be cost prohibitive.

You write you can get a student license for altium. I'd say go for it, and use it. Having some experience in both programs makes it easier to compare, and if you're going to an employer (later?) it puts you in a better position to advise your boss on whether KiCad is "good enough" for them, or whether they need the "advanced" features of altium. But what if your student license expires over a few years and you can't even view or modify the (hobby) projects you made yourself?

[jc101]

The Altium viewer is free, so opening an old project shouldn't be an issue.

You don't need to use the Altium cloud side (A365), but it can make life easier. The biggest pain is the split between the Standard and Pro subscription levels, as many features are Pro only.

At a recent Altium-hosted event, they stated they want a broader user base, from small to large. I hope that once the Renesas purchase goes through, there could well be a push to get the smaller users into the Altium camp. The only way to do that is to make it affordable and not crippled like CircuitStudio was (is?).

It's a great tool, currently let down by the marketing and finance departments who seem hellbent on hacking off existing and potential customers.

[tooki]

Both programs have their strengths, weaknesses, and bugs, and you can produce advanced designs with either one. But IMHO Altium automates or simplifies a lot of things for you, such that it’s easier to get there. On a really small, simple design it’s not a big deal, but with anything vaguely complex, Altium’s rule-based design works better. The flip side to this is that if you don’t understand the rules and how they enforce things, you will get frustrated trying to outsmart them when you want to override them. So you really need to learn what the rules are and how to “debug” them. But once you do understand them, and start using them to support your design intent, they facilitate things enormously, by automating things for you, and by preventing mistakes.

The other thing that bugs me about KiCad is that there are still many things that cannot be edited on multiple items simultaneously, requiring you to repeat the edit individually for each item. It’s improved in recent versions, but not enough.

And I’m not thrilled by Altium’s embracing of cloud BS and subscription licensing. I just hope they don’t jump on the AI bandwagon…

[ppTRN]

Seems like that many of you do not find particularely attractive their commecial policies. Well, KiCad will always be available, so I will try Altium and then maybe I will find some application in which it may be more usefull than kicad. I am very interested in all the plugins and desing assistance, specially for high speed or power management. I will dive into altium and i will let you know

[ajb]

Re: importing, IMO the greatest strengths of an EDA tool like Altium is the end-to-end data management.  Meaning that once you have your libraries, templates, and outjobs set up to fit your needs, it takes very little time and effort to ensure that all of the required manufacturing data gets from your design library into your design outputs.  The dblib system in particular is really powerful for enabling reuse of schematic symbols and pcb footprints with very little time and effort, and seamlessly integrating arbitrary design or manufacturing data into the design files and from there into your BOM.  So you really need to do a project from start to finish to answer the question in the thread title.  Obviously importing is important for maintaining older designs if you choose to make the switch, but I wouldn't start off by importing a project. 

It's been a while since I used KiCad, but it's really that workflow automation and especially dblibs that have kept me from looking seriously at it.  I understand that KiCad has (or is about to?) release their own database library system, which is cool, but last I looked it still seemed to be missing a lot of related capability for handling custom component parameters, output automation, and design rules.  It's hard to say what Altium's trajectory will look like post-acquisition, but for the last few years Altium has become a worse and less predictable value proposition, while KiCad has kept improving.  At some point I expect those two lines to intersect, and then we'll have to decide if it's worth migrating our design library 

On the whole, I'd say Altium is fundamentally a powerful and productive tool, but it's incredibly complex, and has a lot of dark corners that are poorly maintained and apparently never fully tested.  That results in a kind of 'highway with speed bumps' effect, where you can get a lot of work done quite quickly, and then run into a weird limitation or a bug in some specific feature that suddenly eats a bunch of time and effort to deal with -- I've spent a lot more time than I'd like trying to figure out if something is a bug or I'm just doing something wrong in a poorly documented process.  While it's still a lot faster on net than many other options, that actually makes the problems more frustrating by comparison.  Or in the worse case, you come to rely on and trust an automated process, then run into a case where that automated process produces incorrect results, and you have to deal with those consequences (hopefully you catch it before it goes to fab/assembly!).

[nctnico]

Seems like that many of you do not find particularely attractive their commecial policies. Well, KiCad will always be available, so I will try Altium and then maybe I will find some application in which it may be more usefull than kicad. I am very interested in all the plugins and desing assistance, specially for high speed or power management. I will dive into altium and i will let you know

If this is a learning experience for you, I highly recommend to look at Orcad as well. It has a good parts library management workflow automation (if you buy the CIS module). I find it way more pleasant to use, more mature (less buggy) compared to Altium. I have some hands-on experience with Altium but I'm actively refusing any projects that would require me to use Altium. Somehow Altium has become a popular PCB design package but when you enter the higher end designs (high speed SoCs, DDR memory, etc) everybody is using Orcad.

[thm_w]

Somehow Altium has become a popular PCB design package but when you enter the higher end designs (high speed SoCs, DDR memory, etc) everybody is using Orcad.

Most small and mid size companies don't have resources or need to make high end designs. We are doing basic stuff that is not an issue to layout in altium.

[nctnico]

Somehow Altium has become a popular PCB design package but when you enter the higher end designs (high speed SoCs, DDR memory, etc) everybody is using Orcad.

Most small and mid size companies don't have resources or need to make high end designs. We are doing basic stuff that is not an issue to layout in altium.

True, but Orcad costs the same and is equally usefull for doing small designs. I only made the statement to highlight Orcad is really fast to use. I can edit a 10 layer SoC design on a 12 year old laptop with copper pours enabled. With Altium this is not doable even with copper pours disabled. The difference in speed is like night and day.