Altium plans to end the program for reactivating expired subscriptions in 2023. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: slothsd
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2022, 11:10:55 pm
content: https://www.altium.com/altium-designer/licensing/reactivate/"Customers with Altium Designer licenses off subscription will no longer be able to reactivate their subscription at a discounted rate. A full-price license will need to be purchased to get the latest version of Altium Designer.Customers can still use their Altium Designer perpetual license but will not be able to reactivate their subscription after this program ends*.To help with this transition Altium is offering a special pricing for multiyear subscriptions.*The Altium Designer subscription reactivation program will end for all customers in 2023."

author: Eternauta
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2022, 09:33:07 am
content: I got the same notice, the last date to reactivate my subscription is 31/12/2022. My licence expired about a year ago and I was planning to renew it every three years. This new obligation seems rather unfair to me

author: Pseudobyte
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2022, 01:37:00 pm
content: They want me to pay more for my license than I bought it for to begin with.

author: jc101
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2022, 01:57:57 pm
content: My maintenance sub runs out in 3 weeks time, renewing it would be quite a financial hit at the moment. This could be interesting when they get in touch....

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 23, 2022, 02:11:34 pm
content: Just tell them that your fine sticking with the version you have for the next ten years......by which time KiCAD will have given them a good thumping and Altium prices will way down on todays price

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2022, 02:16:51 pm
content: Got a call from a rep urging me to renew because of this.No. Just no.My guess is they'll change their minds again in a year or two. Or not. My current version suits my needs quite well, so I feel no pressure to shell out what they are asking for, now or in the future.

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2022, 04:49:13 pm
content: Solidworks has been doing this for years.And if you wait 2 years without a yearly subscription, it is cheaper to buy a new license with discount.

author: Analog
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2022, 03:44:53 am
content: It's as if Altium is trying to push away the most stable part of it's userbase.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2022, 08:14:57 pm
content: That's unfortunate.

author: ajawamnet
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2022, 10:42:02 pm
content: I'm guessing they mean "Harness Design" not "Harness Desgin"https://www.altium.com/altium-designer/licensing/reactivate/I'm guessing they don't mean the schematic harness feature that's already there - Are they trying to go after the Zuken E3 market? Wonder how well that'll go.

author: ajb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 28, 2022, 07:42:26 pm
content: Well, we need to add at least one more license pretty soon, so this is interesting news.Quote from: HighVoltage on November 23, 2022, 04:49:13 pmSolidworks, last I checked, only charges you the amount that subscription would have cost for the lapsed period plus the new subscription, up to the cost of a new license. Altium charges you a significant penalty (~$3k) for resubscription regardless of the length of lapse. Currently, a new one-year term license is less money than renewing a currently off-sub perpetual license, which is kinda dumb. Long term it's still cheaper to go perpetual+sub, but only if you plan to never let it lapse--which I guess is the idea.Also, it's kind of annoying how the entire sales flow funnels you into a Pro sub, without prompting for a selection. I don't care about anything Pro has but Standard doesn't, but you don't get to pick which level you're buying until it's already in your cart.Quote from: ajawamnet on November 25, 2022, 10:42:02 pmWell, presumably the functionality will show up the same way that Draftsman did: half-assed and 3/4 broken, before it slowly improves to being only 1/3 broken but still kinda half-assed after a couple of major versions. So I wouldn't hold my breathe for it to take the industry by storm any time soon. We're currently using Altium for basic harness design, mostly so we can leverage the BOM outputs for creating material prep lists, and it works okay. I've been considering moving harness design to Solidworks Electrical at some point, though, because the biggest thing I want that Altium currently can't do is the ability to present multiple views of the same harness assembly that reflect its physical construction. Currently I have to represent all of the key details manually, and multiple views require a lot of manual synchronization and checking. You can't easily do something like an overall view of the harness assembly with additional detail views, which is trivial in a real 3D design tool like Solidworks. Getting to the point where Altium *can* do that sort of thing with a reasonably good workflow seems like a pretty heavy lift, though. I wouldn't be surprised if "Harness Design" ends up more like the ECAD-MCAD connector thing, where Altium can synchronize connection data with an external tool that handles the actual design of the physical harness.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 28, 2022, 09:57:40 pm
content: Quote from: ajawamnet on November 25, 2022, 10:42:02 pmNo not the existing one, its a new feature for documenting physical cable harnesses, wire length, connectors, etc.My guess is its integrated somewhat, so the pinout will link back to your normal schematics, if done well.This one is cool although not quite the same:https://github.com/formatc1702/WireVizQuote