Renesas to buy Altium

[tom66]

Still. Could be worse.  Could be Mentor PADS... I had to use that for the last 3 years.  I don't think you could deliberately make software that bad if you tried.

I used PADS for around 14 years, in the pre-Mentor through Mentor era. Around 8 years ago, I switched to using KiCad both at business and work. Late last year, I had to use PADS again briefly to make some modifications to another engineer's design. The only changes I could see were 1) simple 3D viewing was added, and 2) they put masking tape over "Mentor" and wrote "Siemens" on it. It felt so very clunky compared to KiCad, which has grown tremendously since I started using it in the version 4.x era.

PADS genuinely feels like someone wrote software for MS-DOS or Windows 95 and slowly ported it up to the modern day but for some reason they still feel like they can charge £3k for the software.  All of that cruft and crap is left behind, so it still uses Windows GDI to do all of the rendering, which means that big PCBs take a long time to load layers.  Then you have the random errors, like "Application exception, your work if any has been saved to <X>."  Great idea in theory, except, it points to a directory in Program Files where it doesn't have write permissions, so the write obviously fails, but no it doesn't try and put it anywhere else, that's just work gone... So you better get used to Ctrl+S every 5-10 minutes.
 
It's also incredibly slow if you try to put symbols on a network drive because it seems to open and close the database file all the time instead of just downloading the few MB for that file and working from a local copy in RAM.  Because it does open and close the symbols file, it becomes impossible to safely have more than one person editing the database at once, but it doesn't warn you about that.  You will just end up corrupting the database and asking the IT guy if he can restore yesterday's backup.

Oh, and its mechanical integration is crap, which was a major reason for ditching it.

There's also a hilarious bug with multiple monitors where if you detach the menu bar from the active window, it will disappear forever (even between program invocations!) if you do not move the PADS software onto the monitor you first started the program on, force-kill the software and then re-open it on that monitor. That's the kind of bug that existed back in 2005 when people first started using more than one monitor on a PC, it just shouldn't exist these days.

[NF6X]

I am grandfathered in at a $350/year subscription to Fusion 360. I think it's up to at least $500/year now for the standard tier? I do like the tool a lot except for the cloud BS, but it will still be satisfying when I can break free from paying the subscription and do my mechanical CAD work in a FOSS tool. I think FreeCad can probably do most of what I need, but I have not yet reached activation energy to learn how to use it.

[delfinom]

Still. Could be worse.  Could be Mentor PADS... I had to use that for the last 3 years.  I don't think you could deliberately make software that bad if you tried.

I used PADS for around 14 years, in the pre-Mentor through Mentor era. Around 8 years ago, I switched to using KiCad both at business and work. Late last year, I had to use PADS again briefly to make some modifications to another engineer's design. The only changes I could see were 1) simple 3D viewing was added, and 2) they put masking tape over "Mentor" and wrote "Siemens" on it. It felt so very clunky compared to KiCad, which has grown tremendously since I started using it in the version 4.x era.

 All of that cruft and crap is left behind, so it still uses Windows GDI to do all of the rendering,

Funny thing, in MCAD land, Solidworks also uses Windows GDI somehow so heavily that it regularly hits the Windows GDI object limit and tells you about it.

Meanwhile they also have scareware to make you buy high-end workstation GPUs for some reason.

[EEVblog]

Adafruit’s designs are also all Eagle, last time I checked.

I'm surprised given their militant passion for complete open source.

[NF6X]

I hope you'll make an EEVblab about this one before long. But maybe you need to learn more details before you have much to say?

[EEVblog]

I hope you'll make an EEVblab about this one before long. But maybe you need to learn more details before you have much to say?

Chris an I are recording a special Amp Hour about it on Monday.

[pointhi]

Also the initial board stackup and differential pairs where setup using Allegro's field solver as Altium's results (which likely use formulas) for the differential pairs where way off.

Altium uses a field solver.

And I don’t see how KiCad will displace Altium until it fills in the gaps on very basic missing features, like the ability to edit more than a single object at a time. (The current workaround of batch-editing files in a text editor is laughable.) KiCad is impressive in many ways, and you can absolutely produce top-quality output with it, but Altium supports you far more in doing so.

100% agreed.

I've used Kicad with satisfaction on several occassions, but it were handpicked designs which wouldn't go beyond QFP-100 or so, on small PCBs. The productivity tools just aren't there yet. The GUI's still feel clunky (ever noticed how non-intuitive the footprint picker for a complete SCH looks?), and simply lacking for grouping, selecting, filtering and mass editting tools. "Scripting" is not the solution for this. I shouldn't need to write a script to change the value/footprint of 5 caps "in bulk" in my design.

Now I must admit that KiCad can probably be fixed relatively easy for that, its not doing a whole things wrong per-se, rather it's not doing them yet. In contrast, Altium has grown out to be a beast with half a dozen ways to accomplish the same thing.. or 3 different ways to open the same GUI panels. I also don't like their newer UI design where all the panels fold in the sides and are arranged vertically. Some of the old panels had a great overview and information density.
It's all horrondously complex, and speaking of poor UI design, Altium can also get some rewards!

But.. its all nothing compared to Eagle or whatever it is now called. I started using it in 2010 as an upgrade to Multisim we used in school.. but man, looking back, what a piece of trash that was.

I suggest to look at the KiCad 8 release candidate. For example, the property panel was added to the remaining tools which allow bulk editing. However, there are already bulk editing tools for schematic symbols in KiCad 7 which work across sheets so scripting shouldn't be neccessary there. There are also improvements for selection and filtering but it is always hard to tell from a single post what use-cases you have exactly and where they are not met yet.

[tooki]

Adafruit’s designs are also all Eagle, last time I checked.

I'm surprised given their militant passion for complete open source.

Yup. On the bright side, everything else seems to be able to import Eagle files competently, so there’s no vendor lock-in in practice.

P.S. I just checked, and even their newest design — initial GitHub upload 3 days ago — is done in Eagle.

[tooki]

I suggest to look at the KiCad 8 release candidate. For example, the property panel was added to the remaining tools which allow bulk editing. However, there are already bulk editing tools for schematic symbols in KiCad 7 which work across sheets so scripting shouldn't be neccessary there. There are also improvements for selection and filtering but it is always hard to tell from a single post what use-cases you have exactly and where they are not met yet.

FYI, real-world examples for me would be things like changing the part number of a resistor or cap used multiple times, to reflect current availability or a design change. Or changing them all to a different footprint (so changing both part number and footprint and metadata).

[NF6X]

FYI, real-world examples for me would be things like changing the part number of a resistor or cap used multiple times, to reflect current availability or a design change. Or changing them all to a different footprint (so changing both part number and footprint and metadata).

Yeah, there's bulk editing for that even in the KiCad 7.x series stable releases.

[tooki]

FYI, real-world examples for me would be things like changing the part number of a resistor or cap used multiple times, to reflect current availability or a design change. Or changing them all to a different footprint (so changing both part number and footprint and metadata).

Yeah, there's bulk editing for that even in the KiCad 7.x series stable releases.

Whatever meager bulk editing is possible in 7.x is well-hidden and only very selectively available. (I just tried. Again. The manual makes mention of a “bulk edit” feature, but that section of the manual hasn’t been written yet.) You can change symbols on multiple items. But there is no facility at all to bulk edit parameters in the schematic editor, and in the PCB editor the properties panel shows only a small handful of an object’s properties. The rest remain hidden behind selecting an individual one and pressing E.

One of the things I think Altium really does right is that, with very, very rare exceptions, any property you can edit on a single item can be edited on multiple items using the identical process, simply by having more than one selected at the time.

KiCad is still light-years away from this. I also can’t stress enough that even if a feature technically is present, if it’s not self-explanatory, it’s functionally nonexistent. For all its complexity, I found learning Altium to be largely self-explanatory. I have not found that to be the case with KiCad.

[nctnico]

FYI, real-world examples for me would be things like changing the part number of a resistor or cap used multiple times, to reflect current availability or a design change. Or changing them all to a different footprint (so changing both part number and footprint and metadata).

Yeah, there's bulk editing for that even in the KiCad 7.x series stable releases.

Whatever meager bulk editing is possible in 7.x is well-hidden and only very selectively available. (I just tried. Again. The manual makes mention of a “bulk edit” feature, but that section of the manual hasn’t been written yet.) You can change symbols on multiple items. But there is no facility at all to bulk edit parameters in the schematic editor, and in the PCB editor the properties panel shows only a small handful of an object’s properties. The rest remain hidden behind selecting an individual one and pressing E.

One of the things I think Altium really does right is that, with very, very rare exceptions, any property you can edit on a single item can be edited on multiple items using the identical process, simply by having more than one selected at the time.

The problem with that approach is that you have very poor control over what you are selecting and whether you are actually sure you have selected all or even too much. I have a board -designed using Altium- on my desk right now where some of the mounting holes have solder mask on them and some not. Likely some holes got a different settings along the way so they don't match the selection criteria and got solder mask added or removed.

Personally I never ever change properties of parts in a schematic and everything is a part (including mounting holes) which comes from a database. So when I change the database, all the parts in the schematic get updated accordingly. The database is leading. This workflow saves a ton of work where it comes to selecting/editing part properties and tracing BOM errors due to parts not being updated. I'm not sure whether Kicad supports this workflow fully already but it is coming. In Altium I've found it hit & miss because it doesn't always seem to update the part properties even though it is told to do a database refresh.

[NF6X]

I don't understand the complaint. In KiCad 7.x schematic editor, you click one button and get a spreadsheet where you can change all of the footprints and metadata for the entire schematic. What am I missing?

Edit: Added a screenshot, with arrow pointing at the button to click for bulk editing.

[tooki]

You’re missing that you still have to edit the values one by one. You can, for example, select three capacitors’ values. But when you type a new value and press enter, it gets applied only to the first one in the selection. The other two remain unchanged. It does look like that dialog will paste the same data into multiple cells using Ctrl+V, so I guess that’s a workaround. But clearly it’s a half-baked feature, and it does not contain all the parameters. If you select a single component and press E, there are way more things to configure than in the table dialog.

[NF6X]

Ah, I see what you mean. I just tried it to understand better: If I edit a field for a collapsed group, it changes the value for the whole group. But then if I expand a group, select a subset of the group, and edit a field, it only changes the first component as you say. Yes, that's a valid criticism.

[tooki]

The problem with that approach is that you have very poor control over what you are selecting and whether you are actually sure you have selected all or even too much. I have a board -designed using Altium- on my desk right now where some of the mounting holes have solder mask on them and some not. Likely some holes got a different settings along the way so they don't match the selection criteria and got solder mask added or removed.

Huh? Altium has extremely good, fine-grained control over selection.

Personally I never ever change properties of parts in a schematic and everything is a part (including mounting holes) which comes from a database. So when I change the database, all the parts in the schematic get updated accordingly. The database is leading. This workflow saves a ton of work where it comes to selecting/editing part properties and tracing BOM errors due to parts not being updated.

I don’t use the database approach, but I do make a library for the project and a library component for each thing.

But not everything can be a component: vias and tracks, for example. And it wouldn’t make sense to make components for, say, one-off silkscreen text.

Regardless, I never said one should always modify everything right in the PCB or schematic editor. But I really, really appreciate that Altium is extremely flexible in allowing batch editing, so that it’s available whenever it’s sensible to use — and I’ll point out that one of the biggest uses I’ve found for it is actually for getting rid of inconsistencies that crept in one way or another.

[mikehoopes]

30-year+ Protel/Altium user here - started with Protel 2, coming from Tango and Orcad just before the latter ported to Windows. I recall the non-optional FPGA IDE effort in the late 2000s; new licenses jumped from $2K to $4K, and I don’t recall anyone asking for that feature, given that the chip producers were all giving away their own IDEs.

I don’t know what the Renesas influence will look like for them. They’re saying the leadership and roadmap are being left intact, but we’ll see. Renesas isn’t really known for maintaining cozy relationships with smaller customers. Meanwhile, I’m not hearing any mention of Orcad X in this thread, which looks like it’s morphing into an Altium-like UX. AD itself in 2018 appeared to be taking cues from Adobe’s aesthetic. New Standard licenses are likely pushing $15K nowadays (with subscription/maintenance fees hovering in the 17-25% range, depending on your baseline) and the shareholders couldn’t be happier.

Altium has added a lot of web-based collab tools in A365, mostly servicing non-designer teammates, excepting MCAD CoDesigner, which isn’t web-based, but primarily executes on their servers. I’d like to see more automation and built-in best practices as the path of least resistance in the basic design toolset. Fabricator EQs should really mostly become a result only of willful deviations on the part of designers.

[Warhawk]

Still. Could be worse.  Could be Mentor PADS... I had to use that for the last 3 years.  I don't think you could deliberately make software that bad if you tried.

I used PADS for around 14 years, in the pre-Mentor through Mentor era. Around 8 years ago, I switched to using KiCad both at business and work. Late last year, I had to use PADS again briefly to make some modifications to another engineer's design. The only changes I could see were 1) simple 3D viewing was added, and 2) they put masking tape over "Mentor" and wrote "Siemens" on it. It felt so very clunky compared to KiCad, which has grown tremendously since I started using it in the version 4.x era.

I've only had a tiny bit of exposure to Altium. I'd like to see KiCad add some features that Altium has, particularly rigid/flex and multi-board support. I'm satisfied with KiCad's mechanical CAD support, but maybe I would change my mind about that if I tried Altium+Solidworks integration? I haven't had a good opportunity to learn SolidWorks because the MEs at work are usually fighting over the SolidWorks licenses.

The context where I briefly touched Altium is in a defense contractor where we are absolutely forbidden to use any cloud features; we even had to set up a local license server to satisfy the company policy. That limited the Altium features I could use somewhat. It's funny that I was on board with standardizing the company on Altium and I was the guy who managed the purchase and roll-out mid last year... but then I never really learned to use it because 1) constant schedule pressure and I know KiCad so well plus 2) we have only 2 seats of Altium and a lot more than 2 EEs. Well, it made some of the other EEs happy to be able to use Altium, at least.

I'm most comfortable with a KiCad + Fusion 360 environment. I'd like to switch to KiCad + FreeCad at home to get entirely away from the cloud, but I've had a hard time unlearning Fusion 360 enough to grok FreeCad so far.

Consider switching to SolidEdge instead of Freecad. The version 2021 SE is still BS free. Perpetual license. Forever. ...

[NF6X]

I don't like Windows, so I probably won't consider SolidEdge. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

[ajawamnet]

I'm not sure how Altium can compete with Kicad within a few years. Looking forward: Kicad version 8 or 9 can do everything a small business needs for PCB design & the logistics side of assembling boards.

And Kicad now has their version of Redhat...  https://www.kipro-pcb.com/about-us/

[ajawamnet]

Maybe all Renesas wants is the 365 portal tech.   

[EEVblog]

Adafruit’s designs are also all Eagle, last time I checked.

I'm surprised given their militant passion for complete open source.

Yup. On the bright side, everything else seems to be able to import Eagle files competently, so there’s no vendor lock-in in practice.
P.S. I just checked, and even their newest design — initial GitHub upload 3 days ago — is done in Eagle.

Is there even a free version of Eagle still available for small boards?

[EEVblog]

30-year+ Protel/Altium user here - started with Protel 2, coming from Tango and Orcad just before the latter ported to Windows. I recall the non-optional FPGA IDE effort in the late 2000s; new licenses jumped from $2K to $4K, and I don’t recall anyone asking for that feature, given that the chip producers were all giving away their own IDEs.

They didn't, it was Nick Martins future vision of electronics design, everything would be FPGA. Hence the entire company shift to focus on FPGA and modual electronics and the infamous making of the PCB tool optional extra, because, well, only advanced users would need to design their own boards. They bet the farm on that concept and lost.

[nctnico]

30-year+ Protel/Altium user here - started with Protel 2, coming from Tango and Orcad just before the latter ported to Windows. I recall the non-optional FPGA IDE effort in the late 2000s; new licenses jumped from $2K to $4K, and I don’t recall anyone asking for that feature, given that the chip producers were all giving away their own IDEs.

They didn't, it was Nick Martins future vision of electronics design, everything would be FPGA. Hence the entire company shift to focus on FPGA and modual electronics and the infamous making of the PCB tool optional extra, because, well, only advanced users would need to design their own boards. They bet the farm on that concept and lost.

No surprise there. How was he planning on getting around the ultra secret & proprietary routing & placing algorithms? Without those, you might be able to setup a fancy HDL editing and simulation system but certainly not an all-in-one development platform like the FPGA vendors typically provide.

[harerod]

Quote from: EEVblog on Today at 22:10:42

...Is there even a free version of Eagle still available for small boards?

Well, any old installation file, up to V7.7, will yield an unlimited viewer AND a limited layout tool (AFAIR 160mm x 100mm, 2 layers).

EAGLE V7 isn't too bad, below a certain project size. It surely beats ink and paper.