Newbie from Expedition, Ultimate (Workbench) and Viewlogic/PADs - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: boxy123
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 19, 2018, 04:13:38 pm
content: Is CS really as bad as I think?I can't use Expedition at work because we're supposed to use the PCB 'team' for everything (this takes forever). Thus, a recently departed colleague purchased CS to do a small quantity development board.This has diff pairs, length matching and all sorts of stuff and I got lumbered with updating it. $#%&#;'>@:~~!!!!!!!!!Who is it designed for? Too expensive for hobbyists yet too crap for anybody serious. No software I have ever used has such non-existent manuals/support. Panelisation? Assembly drawings? Every damn google search comes up with AD related help instead of CS; either that or 'you can't do it'.I tried a 1 month demo of AD but at work we don't have time to sit around playing with demos all day. Needless to say no organisation I work for will have AD or CS unless they sort this shite out.The nearest analogy I can think of is MS office doing a version not allowing capital letters in Word or Excel being restricted to numbers below 73. Or, you can go above 73 by hacking the registry.Not impressed.

author: ahbushnell
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2018, 06:28:34 pm
content: Works fine for me.Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

author: Relaxe
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2018, 06:35:31 pm
content: Works for me, too.Going from AD to CS is pretty seamless. You hit the limitations, or know of ways to go around them from experience.Going from any other EDA to CS must be much more painfull...I was tempted to try out KiCAD.Please, feel free to tell us what other software you end up using.I really do want to know.

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 20, 2018, 07:35:37 am
content: Works for me, too.It has rough spots but so does any CAD software I've tried. All of them need a little patience.Even at the current Farnell price of 800GBP I think it is still a contender but you need to check out other options too and see which youhate leastlike best.

author: jmarkwolf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2018, 12:29:55 pm
content: Works fine for me.The more I use it, the less I miss Altium Designer.

author: mars01
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2018, 06:34:22 pm
content: Quote from: jmarkwolf on April 20, 2018, 12:29:55 pmI find myself in the same spot. I have the opportunity to use the Altium Designer work license for whatever I do as hobby but once I bought CS I started to use it first because 'I gave money for it".After a while I assigned a lot of shortcuts to my liking including for some capabilities for which there is no GUI in CS and found that I'm comfortable using it. Especially turning off and on the polygons (for that I have 2 shortcut keys as there is no way to make a toggle).There are rough spots, e.g it's annoying me like hell that when adding components in schematic, they put the component name column the last, and I move it in the right position (first) the software move it back when adding the next component ... and others but overall it's an okeish software.

author: DIPLover
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 29, 2018, 12:33:56 am
content: It’s AD lite, and yes it’s a pity it does not have it’s own documentation.But so far I’ve been able to figure out anything I wanted to do from the AD results to my googling. Stuff is a bit shuffled around but once you figure out how to launch the panel you need, it’s the same AD panel 99% of the time and you can just follow the AD docs.For $500, it’s a nice tool on my bench and cheaper than most instruments. And it will work forever in it’s own little Win7 VM.It could be great if it got some love from Altium and it’s a bit sad but c’est la vie...