Petition to make CS usable? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Superglob
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2025, 04:55:54 pm
content: Probably isn't going to go anywhere but...CS is a pile of crap at the moment. Vault is a disaster, stuff gets corrupted, crashes left and right, freezes for 20-30 seconds.... It's kinda unusable. I was happy to pay for it but for whatever reason it's become a digital paperweight. I shouldn't have to go in every so often to delete / replace files to get it to launch. Searching in the vault feels like a race between finding your part and it crashing before you find or place it.So... I'd be more than happy to payanother$500 if it meant that it would be as good as bug free and worked liked it should. For me it's the right blend between AD and KIKAD or other free (or paid) offers. No need to add more features, just make it stable.What does everybody think? Is this worth pursuing or is CS just done?

author: Jackster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2025, 08:08:35 pm
content: Probably better off learning KiCad and putting your money there as a donation.Altium clearly don't care about CM or CS. It is a shame as CM/CS was a really good bit of software only a few years ago.

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 06, 2025, 08:53:43 pm
content: I used CS commercially for a couple of years. I found it to be quite useable, but deliberately hobbled of course - no 'find similar objects' and other things that help get stuff done. It was quite stable for me, nothing like the issues you describe. In the end I moved on to AD, but am now marooned on the perpetual version I have because the new Altium licensing model (subs) and pricing are franklyunpalatable for meatrocious.IIUC some years ago Farnell said to Altium "here's some money to develop mini-Altium Designer, we can sell boatloads at £2k a pop", and so Farnell Altium was born as CS. They had miscalculated of course, quickly dispensed with the one (?) support guy at Farnell (he actually tried hard to help, thanks mate) then without any announcement or sense of decency really, just abandoned CS and the folks who had bought it. OK, FU Farnell, I prefer Digi-Key anyway. Altium are kinda left holding the can, but they are never gonna resurrect CS. It's a dead end. [These are my thoughts, maybe BS but itfeelstrue].Remember that Eagle had their own shit-show too.Instead of buying CS all those years ago, I should've learned KiCAD. It wasn't perfect then, and it isn't now, but it's pretty good and only getting better. And it's less likely to shaft you in the ass than some other commercial stuff.GO KICAD!

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2025, 09:08:02 am
content: Quote from: voltsandjolts on May 06, 2025, 08:53:43 pmBack then I can understand not liking KiCad much, but KiCad has improved very significantly over the last few years. Sure, it still is not perfect, but no software package is.Quote from: voltsandjolts on May 06, 2025, 08:53:43 pmNot only that, but the KiCad team actively listens to it customers, Bugs get fixed quickly (Especially minor and annoying bugs, larger issues take more time). Anyone can enter feature requests on gitlab. The bottleneck for KiCad clearly is the amount of developer hours available. Both from volunteers, and the budget for paid development. But development is a bit chaotic. There is some priority sorting to implement features that benefit a lot of users first, but other developers have their own pet projects in KiCad and work on them.Absolute worst case I can see for KiCad, is that all development would stop (And that's very unlikely) And even then, you can still fork the project and do some maintenance, or hire a developer to do that for you.As you may have guessed, I'm a (quite happy) KiCad user myself. And from what I've heard of altium...

author: Superglob
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 08, 2025, 12:30:11 am
content: There's a pretty big learning curve with KiCad.CS just seems to hit the right spot for me. It's missing a few things (like trace-matching, which is there but man it's a pain) but otherwise intuitive and easy to work with. If it doesn't crash. AD is completely out of the picture for me financially. The whole Altium 365 seems like another miserable attempt to get money from customers with multiple products but they don't care. They're a business.That said, flawed as CS is, I actually (yes, maybe I'm a moron) pay $150/year for the god-awful vault. Solidworks did it right. A $50/year version for Makers and non-commercial projects. And it's the full version (at least, so my son tells me).Anywho, I'll get off my soapbox and fire up KiCad again.

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 08, 2025, 08:40:56 am
content: I never used the vault with CS. It's more useful for team work but sounds like you are a team of one. Dump the vault. It might make CS more stable. I used to have the odd crash but generally stability was good.

author: krish2487
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 08, 2025, 11:50:58 am
content: Quote from: voltsandjolts on May 08, 2025, 08:40:56 amThats my experience as well. I tinkered with the vault as long as I had the subscription active in the first year.. but after that, I ditched the vault.Honestly, if you are working in a team, then CS is the wrong tool for you.All said and done, the tool is good vfm for its intended purpose. If you dont need the latest and greatest, work on simple to moderately complex designs, its a good tool.The one advantage, it has over Kicad is that a progression to AD is much easier since the workflows are similar and shortcuts are similar.

author: johnboxall
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 09, 2025, 05:28:05 am
content: CS is dead. Altium have admitted it. Cremated, dust in the wind.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2025, 06:18:05 am
content: Quote from: johnboxall on May 09, 2025, 05:28:05 amStill for sale for the low low price of $495https://www.altium.com/circuitstudio/how-buy

author: johnboxall
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 09, 2025, 06:20:03 am
content: Quote from: Smokey on May 09, 2025, 06:18:05 amWow... I stand corrected. Thanks

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 09, 2025, 07:07:31 am
content: CS is dead.The latest version 1.5 available for download was released in 2018.It's just abandonware, kept there for the poor folks (like me) who bought it years ago to reinstall if needed.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2025, 07:13:04 am
content: Quote from: johnboxall on May 09, 2025, 06:20:03 amaltium has always been happy to accept your money while doing the absolute minimum in return. My guess would be that USD500 software package has not been updated (or only marginal updates) for a bunch of years. If that is so, I still consider it dead.

author: krish2487
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2025, 08:32:38 am
content: Its dead.. no question about it..but, as I said.. if it serves the purpose then why look around for something else...There was some work a while ago.. when Altium was trying to rebrand it as "Circuit Maker Pro" ... with some incremental updates... but it was buried soon...I should have the offline installers (CS and CM Pro) somewhere...

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2025, 09:48:03 am
content: Adam was lonely in the paradise and asked God for a solution.God told him "If you give me an arm and a leg, I can make a perfect partner for you".Adam thought for a while, and then asked: "What can I get for a rib?"

author: Superglob
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2025, 04:04:34 pm
content: I bought CM for $500 a number of years back and despite all the issues with the Vault, $150/year is fine. Reason I'm always trying vault first is that if a component isn't in the vault I have to hop over to SnapEDA and create a new library, download component, etc. Not a big deal but it's annoying.And yeah, CS got stuck at version 15.2. For *AT LEAST* 5 years if not more.It's still super easy to use though.Tried Circuitmaker when it came out and had high hopes but it's basically an even more stripped down version of CS. Parts are hard to find and the whole 'online storage' stuff is bullshit.My 2 cents.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2025, 01:36:24 pm
content: QuoteYou're making a noose to hang yourself with.If you're new to this stuff that would be a fair approach, just to get going. But it's the wrong one to do useful work with, IMO.What you should be doing is creating your own components as you need them, populating your own libraries. There are many reasons why this is better that the Vault or (especially!) SnapEDA, some being:* You know the schematic symbol and footprint are correct.* The layers use for the footprint are the ones you've defined for various purposes, not random ones someone else decided would look good.* You know the schematic symbols and footprints aren't going change without notice and screw up your projects.* You'll have a decent set of libraries you can takes to other tools, and they will consist of only parts you use (or thought you'd use).Disadvantages:* You have to do your own price and availability lookup. But, OTOH, that's actually a good thing.If you've not created a component before it can seem daunting, but it's not. It is easy peasy, and if you can draw a schematic or lay out a PCB you're more that qualified to knock off components in your sleep. You just need to learn the process and have a go at a couple.One thing you probably don't want to do with components, though, is create the 3D model. For that, just download from the manufacturers website, Kicad sources, wherever you can find a .step file. That's actually a good move, since it will let you verify that the footprint you created, according to the datasheet, matches what someone else thought was the case. If you're all matching, chances are it's a good 'un.

author: rowifi
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2025, 02:04:31 pm
content: Rumour?? Told Altium sales I was NEVER EVER going to buy into a subscription model - certainly not at their prices. I was told under the radar that a new offering will be coming soon...

author: temperance
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2025, 04:07:29 pm
content: QuoteAnd then you end up with a board with ten different footprints for the same component size with the same amount of different layer assignments... Been there done that, wasting days to correct all the shit produced by another lazy engineer. In Altium / CS only the user interface is what they call uniform. The remainder is just a bunch of cow manure in disguise.QuoteI wonder what the next move is going to be... You now also have to rent the computer onto which Altium is installed and everything you develop belongs to them? Or you don't install Altium at all. It runs on their own servers... and if you are allowed to sign in depends on the day of the week and if the colour of your underpants matches with the licence colour.I switched to Kicad and will probably never look back. The money saved on Altium is going straight to Kicad.

author: H.O
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2025, 06:04:37 am
content: Yeah, I regret spending money on CS. I did it in anger when Autodesk fucked up Eagle with subscription license.Altium saw an opportunity with their "special price only for you, expires soon offer" and took it - I fell for it. Good on them but I've learnt my lesson.

author: jc101
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2025, 10:10:22 am
content: The new offering could be Renesas365, squarely aimed at large enterprise users. Looking at the early presentations they are full of keywords and phrases that would appeal to management, not sure how the engineers would take to it. It would nicely lock any user into using it for, well, ever. As it neatly locks all your work into their cloud infrastructure.Some info herehttps://www.renesas.com/en/renesas365/softwareThe more cloud Altium goes, the further away from it I want to be. In the last couple of years those who I work with have moving away from cloud and SaaS where ever they can. This is for many reasons, though one big driver is an ever increasing demand on revenue budgets.I used CS as a stepping stone to an Altium perpetual licence some years ago now. Even back then CS wasn't reliable, and it's received zero updates over the years. I still have maintenance on my Altium licence until the end of 2026. I won't be giving Altium any more money after that.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2025, 10:17:15 am
content: I took a look at that link and couldn't work out wtf the AI headcount thing had to do with PCB design.

author: jc101
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2025, 10:26:08 am
content: Well, that's the thing, the new system is for everything. You create your requirements, it looks at that and offers solutions. Even writes some of the code for you, linking bits of code to the schematics and PCB - for the complete end to end view. From one demo video it could even push firmware out to your devices, assuming that are connected to the internet. That would imply a whole back end that devices would link to for such updated.I think the Altium 365 elements are meant to link into it. Somehow the back end turns the requirements into schematics, then (hopefully), a person gets to do the layout within A365. It could be that chunks of design will be pre-canned in the system, with the guise of speeding up development and cutting costs.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2025, 11:28:32 am
content: Sounds like it's a management tool to replace those annoying engineers.

author: jc101
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2025, 11:59:12 am
content: This is more of an overview of what they are aiming for.https://www.renesas.com/en/video/renesas-365-demo-embedded-world-2025My immediate reaction was this is a management dream, able to get products out faster with less resources to do it. The money will have to come from somewhere to pay for it. It isn't going to be cheap. Just think of all the potential parts of that which could have individual time limited licences attached to them. With all the clients IP buried in a cloud backend that tries to links together various separate entities. Would there ever be an exit plan from using something like that?

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2025, 03:42:33 am
content: So they want to make "professional Arduino"?

author: VEGETA
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2025, 08:22:16 am
content: I was excited for CS to level over 9000 back in the day but i didn't do a thing and thought i should wait to see... only to find out Altium ditched it despite being so nice and promising. Like 500$ one time payment to use a very good software compared to 10x that.Thus, I learned KiCAD and I do not regret it! I even started teaching course on youtube for KiCAD 9. I used KiCAD to make my products that I sell online, so there is no going back for me. I love it.

author: temperance
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2025, 11:40:00 am
content: QuoteI did the same, ditched Altium and started supporting Kicad financially.

author: negativ3
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2025, 11:10:21 pm
content: I've tried Kicad numerous times and hit the 'i just need to get this project done' wall for which CS has satisfied the itch for me, except for schematic editor when creating new objects. I really need a cheat sheet for getting units, pin spacings and origins right first time

author: VEGETA
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2025, 05:22:23 am
content: Quote from: negativ3 on August 02, 2025, 11:10:21 pmcheck my kicad 9 tutorials in my signature which will teach you how to use it from scratch.