by mattegan | 2025-04-24 18:27:39+00:00
While this all is super cool, and I don't want to downplay TFAs efforts - I'm kind of at my wit's end here. You've gotten me at a bad time.

I use a computer every day to do electrical (and sometimes, poorly) mechanical CAD. Getting frustrated with/at software is a daily occurrence, but CAD software is some of the worst.

Egg on my face, maybe, but for MCAD I use Fusion360. It's constantly bugging out - and I'm not even talking about the actual modeling workflow or tools! I'll get windows disappearing and floating above other windows. It won't work if you don't install updates within a few days of their release. If I go offline it pops banners in my face. Sometimes, duplicate copies of itself open up, presumably because the updater put a new binary somewhere on my machine that spotlight indexed while I had the previous version running... Sometimes you can't delete files in the cloud because they're referenced by... other deleted files?? A few weeks ago I installed an update like a good boy, and it literally broke the functionality of _being able to click on things_ in the model tree.

On the ECAD side, I use KiCAD for most personal/professional projects these days - very, very few complaints there, actually. However, a new client is using Altium, so here we go... My primary machine is a M3 Max MBP, and I know it's running through the ARM translation layer inside Parallels, but Altium was completely unusable! Opening the component library or moving the explorer window took multiple seconds.

I dusted off an X1 Carbon, which admittedly is 6-ish years old, but it was even worse there! You must understand, for schematic editing, this software's primary use is to drag rectangles around and connect them with lines. How difficult can this be? I had to get a new Windows machine just to be able to navigate around Altium without constant stuttering. Honestly, even on this new machine it's still slower than I'd like. This software is upwards of $5k a year for a single seat license! [1]

I grew up using Macromedia Studio 8, which I installed from a box of CDs, watching my father use his Pentium 4 machine to make complex block diagrams in Visio 2002. In the mid 2000s he was laying out PCBs in PADS without any issues on a laptop! Now a single tab of Lucidchart takes more memory than my old PC could even address, I can't resize the godforsaken library viewer window in Altium on a machine with 16 cores, and if I want to change the settings on my mouse I have to sit through Logitech asking me if I want to log in and join the mouse community to share usage tips? What the hell is going on!?

So, forgive me, and not to go full Casey Muratori, but when I see companies like AdamCAD trying to push this new paradigm, I just can't handle it. Can we please, please, please, just go back to making decent software that enables me to do my work without constant hassle? I don't give a single damn about the AI features if I can't count on the software opening and being usable day in and day out. I lose actual time each and every week to dealing with software issues and I'm so so over it.

[1] $5k for a single site license, of which to attain, you'll have to sit in a sales meeting for a half hour, during which the sales rep tells you that - technically the EULA establishes a 0.5 mile radius for your "single site" but - don't worry - using it at home 3.5 miles away is totally okay, he's not going to make you buy two $5k licenses - thank god!