Altium then got brassed out
To be expected.
As I've written in the Altium threads a few times, many of us use Altium as it is quite powerful & has become a de facto standard for many medium & large corporations. However many of us actually dislike the software (it has many, many areas that could/need to be improved) & many of us dislike Altium the Company.
Even Dave (who worked for Altium) has voiced his views in these threads relating to where Altium went wrong & what they should concentrate on to improve their software.
We all hoped that things would improve a lot when the founder CEO Nick Martin was booted from the board. I actually believe that things have improved since his departure, just that the improvements have been too little, too late.
I have also noted that the code was well written (as it not bloated) in version 6.9, however using AD14 I note that the code has become much more bloated. Looking at the few new features that have been added, I believe that the code has become more bloated (& subsequently runs much slower) mainly due to poor programming.
The move to China was not a good decision. Hopefully the recent decision to move (back) to the USA will go a long way to improving Altium's coding skills.
I have a belief that as software progresses eventually the 'technical debt' becomes so overwhelming that ‘critical mass’ is reached and it is almost impossible to add stuff without breaking it.
The first step on the road to the big bang is the initial development team jumping ship or what appears to be in Altium’s case, made to ‘walk the plank’.
So having a new team in a foreign country who speaks a different language can only make things worse.
This is when somebody comes up with the idea to
re-write the software.
I must admit, that’s what I did when I went from AutoTRAX EDA, written in C++/MFC to AutoTRAX DEX, written in C#, C++, C++/CLI. However, I did this because I thought using C++/MFC was slowing things down and .NET offers huge advantages. Also EDA was designed in the classic schematic/pcb split program mode. I did this as I was learning the trade. But I soon realized that this split is all wrong, so I did some ‘blue sky’ thinking and came up with DEX. I unified data.
I have spent a lot of time designing and documenting DEX. Even though it’s just me I use Microsoft Team Foundation Server, Source Control and the Agile scrum method: but no daily stand-up meeting – I would look stupid standing by myself. I don’t want to reach ‘critical mass’.
The problem with writing a program that does it all for everyone is impossible. You need to pick a solution that fits your needs. It's no point buying a Ferrari to do the school run. Horses for courses.
So there really is no simple answer to 'If you could only use one CAD suite for PCB design, what would it be?' You need to decide what you want to make and then pick the tool.
Having worked in 3D for the last 18 years, I see that all animation studios use many different tools. Each one fit for purpose. However in the 3D industry they do not have the obsessive secrecy for the file formats and working with other. Eagle is a rare exception in the PCB industry. The aim is to lock you in. (the Trojan horse - appears free at first but something comes out to bite ya later on ). DEX is open XML for all files.
I have not used Altium’s designer much but the brochures are large and glossy. The online videos seem more like video brochures than actual tutorials.
P.S. What is Nick Martin doing now; rewriting Altium?
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