What changed in Altium during the past decade? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 06:20:26 pm
content: I'm thinking about getting a new CAD package for creating PCBs and doing simulation. The PCB package I'm using is no longer updated and has some annoying bugs. I know Altium is popular so I think it is wise to at least consider it. The last time I have used Altium is a decade ago and back then I found it hard to use because of the many options and some things where not possible/obvious (like changing the ugly&hard to read font in the symbols). I'm wondering how much has changed in the past decade to determine whether it is sensible to put time & effort into evaluating the current version of Altium.I know the question is very generic so I appreciate any input...

author: dave_k
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 12:28:56 pm
content: Well I never bothered upgrading from Altium 6 .. not sure if anything "useful" was ever added since then.

author: ajb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 02:49:25 pm
content: I haven't been using Altium for that long, but you can definitely change the symbol fonts and their defaults (under "default primitives" in preferences). The only things you can't change in schematics AFAIK are the power port symbols themselves. Speaking of symbols, database libraries are pretty great, and allow extremely easy and efficient reuse of common symbols and footprints.The native 3D is extremely helpful, and the new SolidWorks collaboration plugin looks interesting, if that's important to you (it's an additional paid license, though). Other than that, I'm not sure what else is actually new since 10 years ago

author: marshallh
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 06:14:55 pm
content: It's still 32bit singlethreaded. UI is very clean and organized, but routing can get laggy. I have a 4.6ghz AMD FX4350 w/ 16gb ram, AMD 7870 graphics.That's my main gripe, it's 2015 and the software still gets difficult/frustrating to use on moderately complex boards. I haven't used Allegro but I'd bet that at least scales better.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 07:07:23 pm
content: How do you mean 'routing can get laggy'? Does it respond slow when routing traces on complex boards?

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 09:11:11 pm
content: They finally revamped the pour rebuild code. Two years ago. Now it's a minor enough nuisance that you can leave "auto repour" turned on, except for large jobs. It's still nowhere near the speed and scaling of e.g. Ultiboard's...Tim

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 10:45:43 pm
content: @T3sl4co1l: IIRC you also use Allegro. If so then how does the drawing speed of Allegro compare to Altium?

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 11:30:51 pm
content: Nah, I use Altium primarily.I've used PADS before, if that's moderately related, but it's pretty crap at drawing, I suspect mainly because its pours are constructed from myriad traces, and it doesn't have a shortcut to draw (let alone construct) a proper fill as such. Also, being old and probably not using acceleration (e.g. DirectDraw), or even up-to-date GDI objects (which might be expected to be better optimized).Altium's drawing speed is highly adapter dependent. The machine I use at work has dual (Intel and Nvidia) graphics inside, selectable by program; Altium is sketchy until you switch it over, then it's quick as anything. My desktop (with a GTX550Ti) hardly notices a thing. I've seen it work well on Intel graphics sometimes, and poorly for other things too. Sadly, it's one thing that's really not made for anything else... but if you're going to the trouble of buying Altium, you can surely afford a $100 graphics card, so it shouldn't be a big deal.Tim

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 11:56:15 pm
content: Whatever I buy needs to run in a virtual machine (I'm not thinking I'd find anything decent which will run on Linux)...

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 11:58:51 pm
content: Hmm, haven't heard how well Altium does in VM. (I mean, if the VM is to spec, it should be fine, but you never know. And maybe it's slow for other reasons, too.)Is KiCAD on Linux? I forget.Tim

author: Christopher
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2015, 01:52:53 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on August 28, 2015, 11:58:51 pmOf course. The open source hippie nutjobs wouldn't have it any other way!

author: Spikee
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2015, 01:59:59 pm
content: It would be best to get a old licence from like 09 or something. Not much has changed in the 13/14 version.15 has some new features that are nice to have but this is not strictly needed.Just uses ctrl + S once every 5 minutes and the possible bugs are not really an issue.

author: Gribo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 30, 2015, 09:43:28 am
content: I use Altium 13, and compared to version 6.x it crashes less often, on the same machine. There were lots of minor issues fixed, but in my opinion, there are no 'must have' features to justify the upgrade price.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 30, 2015, 10:02:25 am
content: Crashes less often doesn't sound right to me. OK my current CAD package crashes as well but instead of fixing the causes they put in a lot of effort to prevent loss of work.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 01:53:42 am
content: Quote from: Spikee on August 29, 2015, 01:59:59 pmI do ctrl+s after every change!

author: jd
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 08:42:20 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on August 28, 2015, 11:58:51 pmI tried fairly hard but could not get it to run on Virtualbox under linux. It requires "shader model 3" support which VB still does not provide. Same story with Wine, although the wine site application database indicates some successes I could not get it to work at all.(I would love to be proven wrong here.)QuoteYes it is on Linux, OS X and Windows. It is available in 32- and 64-bit. It is written in C++ (and graphics seems lightning fast compared to Altium).There is a new official release immanent. Looks like they have just revamped their site and there are now proper builds of the installers.http://kicad-pcb.org/

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 08:58:57 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 30, 2015, 10:02:25 amIt doesnt really crash for me, but it starts giving you "please wait a moment", "catastrophic failure", "error 0x7556443" and such messages, then it is time to save and restart.Overall there were only small, but noticeable changes in the last few years. The 3D is a big selling point, if you have to work with the mech. team.I had once a screwed up gerber file with version 15, so there they still need to improve, although the issue was smaller than with a previous version. It is still a potential for a huge loss of money.I'm not sure if I would ever run it on a VM though.

author: dave_k
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 09:02:24 am
content: Quote from: Gribo on August 30, 2015, 09:43:28 amInteresting .. have never experienced any crashes with my install of 6.x ..

author: Gribo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 11:16:48 am
content: It really depends on the graphic drivers, which got improved over the last decade.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 11:52:26 am
content: Quote from: jd on August 31, 2015, 08:42:20 amOK, so Altium is a no-go then. Screwing up Gerber files doesn't sound nice either. It happened to me too once but it was because I ignored a DRC error.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 03:25:31 pm
content: I had found a bug in Summer 09's (and several later versions, because, you know, they're "insanely busy" with things, and can't get to bugs immediately...right?) PDF output, where arcs and traces don't line up as they do on screen. I don't think I've ever seen a Gerber output bug. Just remember to repour polygons religiously, and include a full DRC in the OutJob list to double-check.Tim

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 03:52:20 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 31, 2015, 11:52:26 amIt included some random features from other layers to the top soldermask layer. We made number of boards (there were only minor changes from the previous revision). Good thing it didn't screw up an inner layer on a board or anything crucial, so the boards could be still used.Of course it was only after assembly we saw it.The moral of the story: check gerber every time with diligence (used to do it) and dont let management send a board into production without prototype.

author: Spikee
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 04:07:45 pm
content: AD15 with solid-works extension and octopart integration is a nice improvement tho.Makes weird pcb shapes easier to make

author: enz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 31, 2015, 08:58:13 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 31, 2015, 11:52:26 amI don't know about a linux host. But on a Windows 7 pro 64bit host with win8.1 guest via virtualbox altium runs, including 3d view.Regards,Martin

author: jd
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2015, 07:51:48 am
content: Thanks, that's good to know. I guess the guest is able to share the 3D graphics under windows. Has ANYONE got Altium working usably under linux?Under Windows host did you notice any performance issues compared to native? It might be nice to run AD in a VM, isolate it from getting messed up by other programs and one could easily roll back after changing something etc.ThanksJohn

author: enz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2015, 08:50:48 am
content: To be honest, the whole win8.1 system feels a lot slower than the native win7 install, which feels really "snappy".So Altium is also slower.But i don't think that this is a altium specific problem, because the whole win8.1 guest system is slow.But i didn't spend time to evaluate this. This is just a fresh untuned win8.1 guest install.My linux guest systems are much quicker.Martin

author: Omicron
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2015, 09:57:01 am
content: No experience here with Linux either, but Altium runs fine under VMWare Fusion on a Mac. I've used it like that for quite some time. Another thing that works very well is to run it via Microsoft's remote desktop. That's actually how I use it at the moment. I have it installed on a headless PC running Windows 10 and access it over the local network from a Macbook pro. Works fine, even the 3D stuff. Amazing really. I do have a gigabit lan so that may be a factor.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2015, 06:19:18 am
content: Many years passed and still no way to resize charts when in Simulation mode?

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2015, 09:54:50 am
content: Quote from: Bud on September 02, 2015, 06:19:18 amDoes Altium have a simulation mode?I mean something worth mentioning.I really wonder how they will handle GUI scaling with all the 4K screens and stuff though.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2015, 10:56:04 am
content: I run Altium 13 on Server 2003SP2 under a linux kvm VM with a SPICE networked graphic display and it goes like a rocket. I've not tried any of the 3D stuff, but the basic schematic and PCB work is fine.I use the same VM to run AutoCAD and Revit. It does not do host rendered 3d, but for what I use it for it's as fast as on the bare metal.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2015, 02:47:55 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on September 02, 2015, 06:19:18 amSadly, simulation is probably the least maintained part of the platform... (perhaps besides the FPGA stuff, though that's likely leastusedrather than maintained...). I'd love to have the usability of Multisim (freaking Multisim! Come on!) with the postprocessor/grapher of Multisim or PSpice.Tim

author: jd
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2015, 05:25:14 pm
content: Quote from: BradC on September 02, 2015, 10:56:04 amCool, thanks.As far as I know in AD14 and 15 even basic PCB editing requires "shader model 3", and this does not work under Virtualbox with linux host. (Just schematic editing is OK). I think at some point Altium changed it so that all PCB operations have this requirement, perhaps 13 predates this? I have no experience with KVM but would love to try it if anyone knows current Altium works....? But 13 is not that old so it seems there is hope.I had been using linux as my primary OS for 15 years and it is very sad to have it relegated to a VM on Windows now.ThanksJohn

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2015, 07:34:23 am
content: Quote from: jd on September 02, 2015, 05:25:14 pmIf it wasn't such a pain in the arse getting a demo of the latest Altium and having to deal with the constant badgering from their sales drones I'd get a copy and try it for you.KVM is not that hard to work with once you get your head around it. It uses qemu as the machine emulator. Here's the command line I use to fire up S2k3 & Win7 VM's. They live on a partitioned Samsung SSD with part5 being swap.This gives me a 2 head remote virtual machine that works for a pair of 2560x1440 heads, 3 cores & 24G of ram. Use spice-gtk or virt-viewer to access it remotely. If you don't want to use SPICE, you can just use an SDL or GTK console.Code:qemu -enable-kvm\-m 24576\-rtc base=localtime\-vga qxl\-device qxl\-net nic,model=virtio\-net tap,ifname=tap0,script=/etc/qemu-ifup,vhost=on\-usbdevice tablet\-spice port=5930,disable-ticketing\-drive file=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Samsung_SSD_850_PRO_256GB_S1SUNSAGXXXXXXJ-part1,if=virtio,cache=none,aio=native,format=raw -boot c \-drive file=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Samsung_SSD_850_PRO_256GB_S1SUNSAGXXXXXXJ-part5,if=virtio,cache=none,aio=native,format=raw \-device virtio-serial\-chardev spicevmc,id=vdagent,name=vdagent\-device virtserialport,chardev=vdagent,name=com.redhat.spice.0\-smp 3,maxcpus=3,cores=3,threads=1,sockets=1\-cpu host\

author: jd
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2015, 05:14:44 pm
content: Quote from: BradC on September 03, 2015, 07:34:23 amThanks I really should learn about KVM anyway. For Altium the "SPICE" documentation is not encouraging, with 3D support still on the wishlist as far as I can see.John

author: mrpackethead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2015, 08:20:46 am
content: FYI, I have got a baby Intel NUC, that is sitting on my DIMA FP600, which i use for hand placing prototypes.. I have some visual assist software on it, which helps placement. Its running windows10. I tried installing AD 14.3 and it actually runs pretty well. Was kind of suprized. ALways handy to have it nearby, when you have those " is that what i really meant " moment.s

author: David Spicer
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2015, 05:50:18 am
content: The pcb layout copes better with hi speed design diff routing, controlled z etc. and it's possible to have more than one engineer working on something at once. The diff routing is a nice feature. auto routing still sux badly. None of which IMHO justifies the price. As a pro user for 30 odd years I think the last version of Dxp was their best product. As a pro the cost wasn't my concern, only the speed and time to market. I did a custom Pentium 3 board with Dxp a few years back and it was an almost pleasant experience. I much prefer orcad for schem and it's now quite reasonably priced. Allegro is a vastly better routing tool, but cost prohibitive to me.I rather feel it's like ms word. They simply ran out of useful "improvements" and cluttered it all up with useless junk which is more confusing than helpful. If you can't do the math for hi speed diff or controlled z then buy Howard Roberts book and learn.Now I am pretty well retired and out of the loop I still use my ten year old version of DXP. It runs perfectly under WINE and there is no irritating node locking or need to be online. Since I only entrust my designs to a Linux box anyway then for me at least DXP is a good choice.One last thing: the support in Australia is worse than useless now. They are also very unfriendly about trial versions and so on. After a 30 year relationship mostly good, i rang to get a 30 day trial. They put me off a couple of times then eventually I got a very mosey gentleman whose English speaking skills were quite inadequate.Pity. It was a great product once. Now it's like adobe flash or air any other big platform software. They only want massive license sales to huge companies. Joe hacker in Sydney is not apparently welcomeOh dear I'm raving again. Blame it on old age sorry guys and girls. To get back on topic, nothing has got much better since DXP, and the recent versions are just plain confusing and a case of unchecked feature creep. DXP will get you up to 100mhz easy. And get Howard's book so you can do the impedance calculations yourself. Besides with the usual Linux install obstacle course it works with a real OSSorry for the rant. It's such a shame when a much loved product gets trashed by th marketing guys. Visual c anyone? Ugh

author: DerekG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2015, 11:19:31 pm
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on August 31, 2015, 08:58:57 amRemember, if you are serious about using Altium, you haveNOchoice but to use a GPU (added for clarity) Intel processor. Altium are quite clear about this. They doalltheir testing using Intel processors & do no official testing using AMD processors.Often there can be clashes with certain video cards. Make sure you have the latest drivers for it.If your boards are going to be smaller than 300mm x 300mm & are of average density, running an i7 processor with 8GB RAM & integrated Intel HD4000 (or better) graphics will perform very admirably for you.I plug a 24" monitor (1920 x 1200dpi), a mouse & a full size keyboard into my Samsung i7-3610QM laptop running integrated Intel HD4000 graphics, Windows 7 Pro 64 bit & 8GB of RAM and boards of the above size just run fine.This laptop is over 2 years old ............. so you don't need to spend an arm & a leg buying really fast hardware unless you are designing really large boards. I often have 3 or 4 boards open & the speed is fine.My laptop also contains a AMD Radeon HD 7600M with 1GB RAM. This is the mobile version of the 7600 & so runs slower as it uses less power, yet Altium runs just fine with it too.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2015, 12:55:57 am
content: GPU, not CPU, to be specific. I don't have any problems with my AMD CPU, but I've seen firsthand it goes quite slow on Intel graphics (although occasionally one is seen that works fine -- go figure). When they say they only support NVidia/ATI, they mean it..(I have no problems with my 5 year old workstation with Quadro FX, nor my current desktop with GTX550Ti. Curiously, Altium 15 runs in XP on the workstation, and used to work on the desktop, but something about buggy DirectX, I think, prevented it until finally migrating to Win7. Works as well or better now.)Also, works great with an SSD, not nearly as intensive for HD access as something like SolidWorks, but completely removes the bothersome delay during autosaves or what have you. (I've worked out of online (VPN, cross-country connection) network folders before. Oh man, the saving sucks. But hey, if you're just doing a touch-up..)Tim

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2015, 08:34:25 am
content: Quote from: DerekG on September 28, 2015, 11:19:31 pmI have a i5 at work with an AMD M7500, 12GB RAM. I've asked for an i7 and quadro, but the sysadmin (the fool) probably haven't even heard about the quadro, and bullshit company politics, that managers have to have a better Laptop for the excel.In any case, I dont think it is a video card issue. It happens when I have Altium open for long time, and I have a dozen project open (yes, that is how I work) with like 50+ documents. Must be memory handling issues.

author: DerekG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2015, 11:11:33 am
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on September 29, 2015, 08:34:25 amActually it could be a power down after a period of inactivity type problem. Try turning off all power saving options to see if the problem is rectified.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2015, 03:50:55 pm
content: Ew... I've had Altium crash with as little as 1.1 GB memory consumption (in DXP.EXE). Usually that happens after doing some hours of work, then running a lengthy OutJob (STEP or AutoCAD output seems to be the fatal step, usually).It definitely leaks memory, and doesn't free it completely or promptly (or does its own allocation and garbage collection separately, who knows). Think the most I ever had was a lengthy simulation, in Summer 09, that grew over 3GB (fine timestep, long runtime, recording all nodes) before giving in.Tim