Altium Designer Pricing

On Thu, 03 Apr 2014 07:37:54 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

>Rich Webb wrote:
>> On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 18:51:43 -0500, Tim Wescott
>> <tim@seemywebsite.really> wrote:
>> 
>>> So, I've been looking over a few shoulders lately and seeing Altium on 
>>> screens, and thinking maybe I should move away from EagleCAD.
>>>
>>> I looked on the Altium web site for pricing, and they're one of those 
>>> "hand us one of your testicles and we'll tell you how much you need to 
>>> pay to buy our product" sort of companies.
>>>
>>> I just want a budgetary price for buying one seat in the US.
>>>
>>> Anyone use it?  Have a recent version?  Know how much it costs?
>>>
>>> I think I may stick with Eagle.
>> 
>> You've probably already seen the rumors that the Ver 7 release of
>> Eagle will have hierarchical sheets? No personal knowledge, just
>> something from one of the Eagle Usenet groups.
>> 
>
>*WHAT?*
>
><jumping up and down in excitement>
>
>Are you sure? I suggested this many times and gave up. The Cadsoft guys
>sometimes said "Yeah, great idea, we'll put it on the to-do list" and
>then dropped it anyhow. Which group carried that announcement?

Found it. This seems to be a link to the original posting:
<http://www.eaglecentral.ca/forums/index.php/m/154143/a10cc7a22a84874e5409bf125c9792ef/?srch=hierarchical#msg_154143>
About time 1:30 in the video.

>
>It is my firm belief that the lack of a hierarchy is what has cost
>Cadsoft a gazillion in lost revenue. Even among the existing client
>base. For example, I haven't upgraded since 4.16 because I simply found
>it ain't worth upgrading. If they really bring out a hierarchy and keep
>the prices reasonable I'll write a check.
>
>The other thing they should make sure is that V7 users can store in
>formats 2-3 releases back. It's a major problem with CAD. Everyone
>should learn from how it's done in word processing where to this day I
>store in MS-Word 97 compatible and then there never is a readability
>problem.
>
>
>> OTOH, Kicad's current snapshot lets one design and use a custom page
>> layout (frame and title block) in place of its old default. This is
>> not in the current "stable" release (that's still the July 2013) but
>> using https://launchpad.net/kicad-winbuilder it's very easy to build
>> an executable from the source tree. There's a page layout editor on
>> the main project manager toolbar.
>
>
>They need to put that in a stable release. Otherwise Kicad can't really
>be used professionally.

True. I'm Guessing (TM) that there will be a new stable release of
Kicad around mid-2014 as well, given that the previous was last July.

CERN is getting involved in Kicad development which should help
mitigate the "Cheetos-covered nerd in basement" perception. ;-)
http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki

On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 18:51:43 -0500, Tim Wescott wrote:

> So, I've been looking over a few shoulders lately and seeing Altium on
> screens, and thinking maybe I should move away from EagleCAD.
> 
> I looked on the Altium web site for pricing, and they're one of those
> "hand us one of your testicles and we'll tell you how much you need to
> pay to buy our product" sort of companies.
> 
> I just want a budgetary price for buying one seat in the US.
> 
> Anyone use it?  Have a recent version?  Know how much it costs?
> 
> I think I may stick with Eagle.

Schematic capture and layout will probably run you north of $6K.
My layout guy has the full suite, I just use schematic capture.
They doubled the capture price this year when they got rid of their
direct sales.  When I first got it I did a one time buy from
a distributor and the yearly renewals were a simple online
task directly with Altium.  Now you have to get everything through
a dealer with their associated markups and it seems the dealers
are regional.  Your dealer is based on your location.  I
could not find a way to pick and choose the dealer and price
shopping amongst them is probably close to impossible.

If you can afford it and deal with the learning curve, setting
up your parts library again,etc - it's a nice tool. 

But unless you are going to be doing very dense, high layer count,
high speed boards I would stay with what you have.  

-- 
Chisolm
Republic of Texas

Rich Webb wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Apr 2014 07:37:54 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
> wrote:
> 
>> Rich Webb wrote:
>>> On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 18:51:43 -0500, Tim Wescott
>>> <tim@seemywebsite.really> wrote:
>>>
>>>> So, I've been looking over a few shoulders lately and seeing Altium on 
>>>> screens, and thinking maybe I should move away from EagleCAD.
>>>>
>>>> I looked on the Altium web site for pricing, and they're one of those 
>>>> "hand us one of your testicles and we'll tell you how much you need to 
>>>> pay to buy our product" sort of companies.
>>>>
>>>> I just want a budgetary price for buying one seat in the US.
>>>>
>>>> Anyone use it?  Have a recent version?  Know how much it costs?
>>>>
>>>> I think I may stick with Eagle.
>>> You've probably already seen the rumors that the Ver 7 release of
>>> Eagle will have hierarchical sheets? No personal knowledge, just
>>> something from one of the Eagle Usenet groups.
>>>
>> *WHAT?*
>>
>> <jumping up and down in excitement>
>>
>> Are you sure? I suggested this many times and gave up. The Cadsoft guys
>> sometimes said "Yeah, great idea, we'll put it on the to-do list" and
>> then dropped it anyhow. Which group carried that announcement?
> 
> Found it. This seems to be a link to the original posting:
> <http://www.eaglecentral.ca/forums/index.php/m/154143/a10cc7a22a84874e5409bf125c9792ef/?srch=hierarchical#msg_154143>
> About time 1:30 in the video.
> 

Thanks. That is a solid promise this time. They should have handed him a
microphone to muffle the background din of the trade show. In this day
and age we have Bluetooth which should make it easy :-)


>> It is my firm belief that the lack of a hierarchy is what has cost
>> Cadsoft a gazillion in lost revenue. Even among the existing client
>> base. For example, I haven't upgraded since 4.16 because I simply found
>> it ain't worth upgrading. If they really bring out a hierarchy and keep
>> the prices reasonable I'll write a check.
>>
>> The other thing they should make sure is that V7 users can store in
>> formats 2-3 releases back. It's a major problem with CAD. Everyone
>> should learn from how it's done in word processing where to this day I
>> store in MS-Word 97 compatible and then there never is a readability
>> problem.
>>
>>
>>> OTOH, Kicad's current snapshot lets one design and use a custom page
>>> layout (frame and title block) in place of its old default. This is
>>> not in the current "stable" release (that's still the July 2013) but
>>> using https://launchpad.net/kicad-winbuilder it's very easy to build
>>> an executable from the source tree. There's a page layout editor on
>>> the main project manager toolbar.
>>
>> They need to put that in a stable release. Otherwise Kicad can't really
>> be used professionally.
> 
> True. I'm Guessing (TM) that there will be a new stable release of
> Kicad around mid-2014 as well, given that the previous was last July.
> 
> CERN is getting involved in Kicad development which should help
> mitigate the "Cheetos-covered nerd in basement" perception. ;-)
> http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki


Yep, happened a while ago. I believe they (or another big entity?)
decided against gEDA and for Kicad. Which was not a big surprise to me.

-- 
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Joe Chisolm wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Apr 2014 08:59:53 -0700, Joerg wrote:
> 
>> Tim Williams wrote:
>>> "Joerg" <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
>>> news:bq5a91F26ruU2@mid.individual.net...
>>>>> I use Altium though my client paid for it so I don't know the exact
>>>>> number. It was in the range that others have suggested.
>>>>>
>>>>> I also use Kicad, and to be honest I prefer a lot of things about
>>>>> Kicad.
>>>>> The first thing was all of the licence server shit that I had to go
>>>>> through just to use Altium, then it would nag me literally about
>>>>> every 20 seconds before locking me out if my internet connection went
>>>>> down whilst I was working with it.
>>>> Seriously? A lock-out if no Internet? That would instantly blacklist a
>>>> software for me.
>>> If you have the license file, you can download the Altium License
>>> Server so that your computer literally phones home to itself to check
>>> that the license is there.
>>>
>>> There are also check-out-able licenses that only have to phone home
>>> every day or a few, or whatever.
>>>
>>>
>> Personally I don't trust this kind of complicated stuff. I've had cases
>> where clients wanted me to (legally) use one of their licenses and it
>> didn't work across an ocean or whatever. Then the support staff came in,
>> lots of time was wasted and they could not fix it. No thanks.
>>
>> I like the Cadsoft concept where they ... simply trust their customers.
>> Once in a while there will be a bad apple and they have to block that
>> license as rogue but that only affects work created with pirated
>> software.
> 
> Altium has a couple of different models.  The floating license is the
> one where you need the net connection.  Floating is nice if you can
> over subscribe your folks usage.  The other nice thing is I dont have
> to setup a license server of any kind.  I can work anywhere as long
> as I have a net connection.
> 

That won't work at all for me. Even here in the office the Internet goes
down at times. I can't afford being dead in the water with my work
during those times.


> If I had 10+ people using Altium day in and day out I would just
> bite the bullet, and get full license and setup a license server.
> 

Well, with Eagle you don't need any license server. You just use the
license file that they send you after payment, plug it in, and that's
it. I can use the same license on my laptop and they trust me that I
won't disclose it or let a 2nd person use it simultaneously on my laptop
(nobody else ever gets to touch that anyhow).

-- 
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 21:01:09 -0400, Spehro Pefhany wrote:

> On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 18:51:43 -0500, the renowned Tim Wescott
> <tim@seemywebsite.really> wrote:
> 
>>So, I've been looking over a few shoulders lately and seeing Altium on
>>screens, and thinking maybe I should move away from EagleCAD.
>>
>>I looked on the Altium web site for pricing, and they're one of those
>>"hand us one of your testicles and we'll tell you how much you need to
>>pay to buy our product" sort of companies.
>>
>>I just want a budgetary price for buying one seat in the US.
>>
>>Anyone use it?  Have a recent version?  Know how much it costs?
>>
>>I think I may stick with Eagle.
> 
> I think you're going to have to call and find out.. I got a client to
> purchase a few seats, some schematic and some full package, and then
> another seat a year or two later and the second round was about half
> price.
> 
> Make sure you ask about a "perpetual license" rather than some
> subscription deal... unless you can live with a subscription.
> 
> I get the feeling their pricing is a bit.. situational.. so you may be
> able to work a good deal.

I'm cranky on this topic enough to be a bit of a crank, but the 
"situational pricing" that I want to have is that I ask for a price, they 
give me one, and I either say "yes" or "no".

If they come back with a different price the second time, then they were 
lying the first time and no matter how attractive the second price is 
I'll go buy from someone honest.

-- 

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

On Thu, 03 Apr 2014 15:10:14 +0000, Frank Miles wrote:

> On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 18:51:43 -0500, Tim Wescott wrote:
> 
>> So, I've been looking over a few shoulders lately and seeing Altium on
>> screens, and thinking maybe I should move away from EagleCAD.
>> 
>> I looked on the Altium web site for pricing, and they're one of those
>> "hand us one of your testicles and we'll tell you how much you need to
>> pay to buy our product" sort of companies.
>> 
>> I just want a budgetary price for buying one seat in the US.
>> 
>> Anyone use it?  Have a recent version?  Know how much it costs?
>> 
>> I think I may stick with Eagle.
> 
> I think they have an arrangement where you can try it for 30 days or
> somesuch without permanent financial commitment.  We did that.  It would
> have been a natural for us (you would think) since we currently use an
> antiquated Protel package (Altium was once Protel).  But getting the
> licensing mechanism to work was problematic, backward compatibility
> wasn't smooth, the program is very complex, and the whole guaranteed
> permanent licensing servitude makes me very nervous.
> 
> But if you need to do complex boards maybe you should evaluate it for
> yourself.  Just be sure you have significant time in the next X days
> because it will take serious time to get far enough along the learning
> curve to know if it will work for you or not.

The biggest board I've done to date is four size B pages, and they're not 
crowded.

Since my strengths are primarily systems, and then software, and since 
I'm mostly at the "jack of all trades" level for circuit design*, if I 
were working on something bigger I'd hire a guy to do layout and maintain 
the PCB design (which, in fact, is what I did with the four-page board, 
to the advantage of me, my board guy, and my customer).

* Except I think I'm better than average at analog circuits that require 
a knowledge of feedback loops -- 'cuz the feedback loop part of things 
stands square in the middle of my real expertise.

-- 

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Tim Wescott wrote:

> So, I've been looking over a few shoulders lately and seeing Altium on
> screens, and thinking maybe I should move away from EagleCAD.
> 
> I looked on the Altium web site for pricing, and they're one of those
> "hand us one of your testicles and we'll tell you how much you need to
> pay to buy our product" sort of companies.
> 
> I just want a budgetary price for buying one seat in the US.
> 
> Anyone use it?  Have a recent version?  Know how much it costs?
> 
> I think I may stick with Eagle.
> 
Well, I use Protel 99SE, the previous generation of the Altium
software.  The only major thing I think Altium Designer adds
is better support of channelized designs.  I have some schemes of
global editing that make these not TOO painful with P99.
I got my version for $2K by buying an old license from a guy
in the Netherlands and then buying the upgrade to P99SE.
Altium seems to BE really flexible on pricing, and you may be
able to wheedle a discount.  Or, you might be able to buy a license
that is not being used, and was not used as the basis for an
upgrade.  P99SE runs well on Win2K and XP, and I run it under those
OS's using VMware under a Linux host OS.  P99SE is about the only
Windows software I still use.

But, even P99SE is light years ahead of the hobby-level board/schematic
packages.  The global editing is VERY powerful, and the design rule
checking is somthing I truly trust!

Jon

On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:08:34 PM UTC+2, Joerg wrote:
> Joe Chisolm wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 03 Apr 2014 08:59:53 -0700, Joerg wrote:
> 
> > 
> 
> >> Tim Williams wrote:
> 
> >>> "Joerg" <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
> 
> >>> news:bq5a91F26ruU2@mid.individual.net...
> 
> >>>>> I use Altium though my client paid for it so I don't know the exact
> 
> >>>>> number. It was in the range that others have suggested.
> 
> >>>>>
> 
> >>>>> I also use Kicad, and to be honest I prefer a lot of things about
> 
> >>>>> Kicad.
> 
> >>>>> The first thing was all of the licence server shit that I had to go
> 
> >>>>> through just to use Altium, then it would nag me literally about
> 
> >>>>> every 20 seconds before locking me out if my internet connection went
> 
> >>>>> down whilst I was working with it.
> 
> >>>> Seriously? A lock-out if no Internet? That would instantly blacklist a
> 
> >>>> software for me.
> 
> >>> If you have the license file, you can download the Altium License
> 
> >>> Server so that your computer literally phones home to itself to check
> 
> >>> that the license is there.
> 
> >>>
> 
> >>> There are also check-out-able licenses that only have to phone home
> 
> >>> every day or a few, or whatever.
> 
> >>>
> 
> >>>
> 
> >> Personally I don't trust this kind of complicated stuff. I've had cases
> 
> >> where clients wanted me to (legally) use one of their licenses and it
> 
> >> didn't work across an ocean or whatever. Then the support staff came in,
> 
> >> lots of time was wasted and they could not fix it. No thanks.
> 
> >>
> 
> >> I like the Cadsoft concept where they ... simply trust their customers.
> 
> >> Once in a while there will be a bad apple and they have to block that
> 
> >> license as rogue but that only affects work created with pirated
> 
> >> software.
> 
> > 
> 
> > Altium has a couple of different models.  The floating license is the
> 
> > one where you need the net connection.  Floating is nice if you can
> 
> > over subscribe your folks usage.  The other nice thing is I dont have
> 
> > to setup a license server of any kind.  I can work anywhere as long
> 
> > as I have a net connection.
> 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> That won't work at all for me. Even here in the office the Internet goes
> 
> down at times. I can't afford being dead in the water with my work
> 
> during those times.
> 

Well, it's a misconception. If you are using Altium and not sharing it, it's a matter of a few clicks to lock the license to the PC which then works with or without internet connection

Cheers

Klaus

frederikhultmann@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:08:34 PM UTC+2, Joerg wrote:
>> Joe Chisolm wrote:
>> 
>>> On Thu, 03 Apr 2014 08:59:53 -0700, Joerg wrote:
>>>> Tim Williams wrote:
>>>>> "Joerg" <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote in message 
>>>>> news:bq5a91F26ruU2@mid.individual.net...
>>>>>>> I use Altium though my client paid for it so I don't know
>>>>>>> the exact number. It was in the range that others have
>>>>>>> suggested. I also use Kicad, and to be honest I prefer a
>>>>>>> lot of things about Kicad. The first thing was all of the
>>>>>>> licence server shit that I had to go through just to use
>>>>>>> Altium, then it would nag me literally about every 20
>>>>>>> seconds before locking me out if my internet connection
>>>>>>> went down whilst I was working with it.
>>>>>> Seriously? A lock-out if no Internet? That would instantly
>>>>>> blacklist a software for me.
>>>>> If you have the license file, you can download the Altium
>>>>> License Server so that your computer literally phones home to
>>>>> itself to check that the license is there. There are also
>>>>> check-out-able licenses that only have to phone home every
>>>>> day or a few, or whatever.
>>>> Personally I don't trust this kind of complicated stuff. I've
>>>> had cases where clients wanted me to (legally) use one of their
>>>> licenses and it didn't work across an ocean or whatever. Then
>>>> the support staff came in, lots of time was wasted and they
>>>> could not fix it. No thanks. I like the Cadsoft concept where
>>>> they ... simply trust their customers. Once in a while there
>>>> will be a bad apple and they have to block that license as
>>>> rogue but that only affects work created with pirated software.
>>>> 
>>> Altium has a couple of different models.  The floating license is
>>> the one where you need the net connection.  Floating is nice if
>>> you can over subscribe your folks usage.  The other nice thing is
>>> I dont have to setup a license server of any kind.  I can work
>>> anywhere as long as I have a net connection.
>> 
>> 
>> That won't work at all for me. Even here in the office the Internet
>> goes
>> 
>> down at times. I can't afford being dead in the water with my work
>> 
>> during those times.
>> 
> 
> Well, it's a misconception. If you are using Altium and not sharing
> it, it's a matter of a few clicks to lock the license to the PC which
> then works with or without internet connection
> 

Is it easy to port that license to another PC without Internet connection?

-- 
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 03/04/2014 00:51, Tim Wescott wrote:
> So, I've been looking over a few shoulders lately and seeing Altium on
> screens, and thinking maybe I should move away from EagleCAD.
>
> I looked on the Altium web site for pricing, and they're one of those
> "hand us one of your testicles and we'll tell you how much you need to
> pay to buy our product" sort of companies.
>
> I just want a budgetary price for buying one seat in the US.
>
> Anyone use it?  Have a recent version?  Know how much it costs?
>
> I think I may stick with Eagle.
>

Unless you're doing 18 layer boards etc, try DIPTRACE... cheap, simple 
effective. Licence free for 200/300 pins so easy to get going and see if 
you like it. I use Client 3.2 ( predecessor of Altium) but it won't run 
on win7.I tried Altium... what a nightmare... but I suppose if you 
persevere it would get easier.