Opinions on Altium Summer 08

Let's start talking about "Altium Summer 08", The main question in designer's community is what is new? What about old problems? We all love this tool, but we know its problems!

- Is it officially released? or just beta versions?
- I expect much faster tool, with better and high performance router.
As a designer what do you expect from Altium Summer 08?
- Is AS08 still unable to deal high-speed design with SI concern?
- Do we realy need to have a combinatin of ECAD and MCAD? Do we need 3D in PCB designs?
- If you have access to new version, tell us about your experiences

altium windows 64-bit

Johnson said:

Let's start talking about "@ltium Summer 08", The main question in designer's community is what is new? What about old problems? We all love this tool, but we know its problems!

- Is it officially released? or just beta versions?
- I expect much faster tool, with better and high performance router.
As a designer what do you expect from @ltium Summer 08?
- Is AS08 still unable to deal high-speed design with SI concern?
- Do we realy need to have a combinatin of ECAD and MCAD? Do we need 3D in PCB designs?
- If you have access to new version, tell us about your experiences

Click to expand...

-It is officially released
-Its not any faster, the interactive router is better, but no changes to the auto-router
-There aren't any changes as far as high-speed design is concerned except for the accordion feature in interactive routing.
-3D in PCB is nice, IMO I think 3D is much more important the the FPGA features in Altium. I would like it more if they focused more on the PCB end rather than the FPGA side.
-Overall, I expected a bit more for a major release. Bottom line, its still not comparable to PADS for dense/high speed designs.

altium summer 2008 en red

- What minimum system it needs?
- It seems that Altium's financial strategy is targeted to low level PCB design. Support for high speed/dense designs needs a great change in software.
- The FPGA support was not good, they used dedicated interface. Instead we expect same support with standard jtag interface. Another problem was leak of USB programming interface, they were just using old/low-speed parallel interface. Also DSP and IP design tools was not supported or support was very weak.
- What is your opinion about embedded tool line? TASKING, what is major change?
- The altium site claims for Allegro and DxDesigner support! Do you have any experiences with the new translator system? Does Allegro supported now in export direction?

alitum summer router

Johnson said:

- What minimum system it needs?
- It seems that @ltium's financial strategy is targeted to low level PCB design. Support for high speed/dense designs needs a great change in software.
- The FPGA support was not good, they used dedicated interface. Instead we expect same support with standard jtag interface. Another problem was leak of USB programming interface, they were just using old/low-speed parallel interface. Also DSP and IP design tools was not supported or support was very weak.
- What is your opinion about embedded tool line? TASKING, what is major change?
- The @ltium site claims for Allegro and DxDesigner support! Do you have any experiences with the new translator system? Does Allegro supported now in export direction?

Click to expand...

- The minimums would be 2Ghz processor, 1 Gig of Ram, so so video card.
I would recommend at a Core 2 Duo/Quad processor, 2 Gigs of Ram, and a good video card. Most important thing would be the video card, then ram, then processor. This is one of the bad things about Altium, you need a relatively powerful system to use the software efficiently.
- Yes I agree, thats not to say you can't do high speed and complex designs in Altium, but it does lack the SI tools necessary for high speed designs and may require you to use 3rd party software. I really wish they would up their game in the PCB side of the software to bring it up to par with PADS, CADSTAR ETC.
- I don't use the FPGA support in Altium, so I can't really comment. Their new nanoboard supports USB interface, so you are not stuck with the parallel interface anymore.
- Never used TASKING.
- No importer is perfect, but generally the ALtium importers are as good as it gets. I have not used the Allegro importing function yet, but judging by the other importers I would say that it is probably pretty good.

altium summer

One of major problems in schematic design was difficulty of off-sheet connector tracking. We need ability to assign target address automatically for each off-sheet connector, same as OrCad. Even more ability to click (with any key combination) on off-sheet connector and then opening the target point will be very useful.

altium run under 64bit

- One friend had an experiences to import an Allegro file to Altium, it take more than 1-hour! What is the use of this service?

- Is it possible to protect design file? We need sometimes to make our designed read-only. How we can do this on Altium?

altium summer software

The use of the Allegro import is to have access to old designs that NOBODY else can import as accurately as Altium. It doesn't matter if it takes an hour. When the job is done, you have an accurate translation in a format that is accurate, easily edited, and can be imported by other EDA software like PADS.

The time it takes to do a translation, or board analysis, or routing, is less important than the results. Sure, we would all like to have instant results - but get real!

No EDA software can protect a file from editing. If you have a copy of the editor, you can open the file and work on it regardless of what software you are talking about. If you want someone to be able to look at your file, there's no way to stop them from editing it unless you're on the same network and they only have read permission on the file. Once the file is on their system, you're out of luck.

Instead of spending a lot of time worrying about what the software COULD do and doesn't do, I suggest investing the time in finding out what it CAN do. I've spent a lot of years using almost every major PCB design software published, and I've never found a perfect package yet. I've just learned how to get the best out of what I was using at the time.

You can dig a ditch with a sharp stick, a shovel, or a bulldozer. The only difference is your personal strength and the time it takes.

parallel port driver,altium

I Totaly agree with House_cat it does not matter about the lenth of the time you spend on it has it's the final out come you need more I use ALtium and think it's one of the best well the best in my opinion anyway

I did a converison for some one from Gerber files and this took me 16 hours to complete but the end result was perfect, and yes I could of just redesinged the board but this could of took me longer has it was quite a complex design.

I have done it a few times now on other stuff and just by playing around I can do it a lot quicker now you know the saying the more times you do it the more you learn and become quicker and better at.

Re: Altium Summer 08

You can email Altium any feature requests that you may have. It would probably help if a competing software has the feature you are requesting as that would make it more likely for them to implement the feature.

As far as the translator taking a long time, it must have been a big and dense board and/or a slow computer as the translations are generally pretty snappy. However in any case I don't think it should matter too much since you only have to translate it once anyway.

@ltium Summer 08

I tested it again on P4-3.2G with 1G RAM. Apparently ADS08 needs more than 1G, 2G is better.

I am wondering how much 1-year 1-user license of this tool may cost. Do you have any suggestion?

Re: Altium Summer 08

Yes 2GB or more is good. I believe you would probably be looking at $5-15k depending on the options you get. Contact their sales, they will give you a more accurate price.

@ltium Summer 08

Any experinces of using this tool with Vista 64bit? It have some bugs!

Re: @ltium Summer 08

Johnson said:

Any experinces of using this tool with Vista 64bit? It have some bugs!

Click to expand...

64 bit Vista causes problems for many 32 bit programs such as ADS08. To run a 32bit program, Vista64 runs what Microsoft calls WOW64 (Windows on Windows 64). It runs a 32 bit virtual machine in memory with a maximum of 3GB of ram available to the program (4GB with 1GB for the OS and 3GB for the application), and has to translate the 32bit device driver interfaces to the 64 bit hardware interfaces.

For ADS08, the biggest problem for users has been the graphics drivers. Nvidia has several 64bit driver problems they've only partially fixed, and ATI has some cards with 64bit drivers so bad they crash with almost everything that puts any real load on graphics. Additionally, you cannot run parallel port drivers at all from AD under a 64bit OS. Which means you can't run an NB1 when you use Vista64.

Having said the above, there are many people running ADS08 under Vista64 without major problems - they just happen to have the right combination of hardware. The bottom line is that the software wasn't written to run under a 64bit operating system, and if you choose to do that you're on your own.

Re: @ltium Summer 08

Johnson said:

Let's start talking about "@ltium Summer 08", The main question in designer's community is what is new? What about old problems? We all love this tool, but we know its problems!

- Is it officially released? or just beta versions?
- I expect much faster tool, with better and high performance router.
As a designer what do you expect from @ltium Summer 08?
- Is AS08 still unable to deal high-speed design with SI concern?
- Do we realy need to have a combinatin of ECAD and MCAD? Do we need 3D in PCB designs?
- If you have access to new version, tell us about your experiences

Click to expand...

Hi all

1. anybody explain what is the old problems ?
2. what features or tools have pads that AD08 not have for high speed dense boards ?

Re: @ltium Summer 08

House_Cat said:

Johnson said:

Any experinces of using this tool with Vista 64bit? It have some bugs!

Click to expand...

... Having said the above, there are many people running ADS08 under Vista64 without major problems - they just happen to have the right combination of hardware. The bottom line is that the software wasn't written to run under a 64bit operating system, and if you choose to do that you're on your own.

Click to expand...

House_Cat:
Do you mean that I have to chnage my OS?

- ADS08 can create a customized instrument which is able to connect a third-party board and exchange data! Can we expect ADS08 to export this program and make it a stand alone program? By that ADS will give embeded and industrial system designer a great oppertunity, to build thire own board and develope instrumenting tool quickly.

@ltium Summer 08

Any suggestion?

Re: @ltium Summer 08

Johnson said:

Do you mean that I have to chnage my OS?

- ADS08 can create a customized instrument which is able to connect a third-party board and exchange data! Can we expect ADS08 to export this program and make it a stand alone program? By that ADS will give embeded and industrial system designer a great oppertunity, to build thire own board and develope instrumenting tool quickly.

Click to expand...

No, that's not what I said. I said that the software wasn't written for a 64bit operating system. And if you choose to use it with a "thunk", you're on your own. There is a LOT of 32bit design software out there that won't work with a 64bit OS. A 64bit OS doesn't add anything for 32bit software except a little RAM. If you have 16GB of RAM in your 64bit system, a 32bit program running under WOW64 still can only use 3GB. Additionally, the 32bit hardware drivers have to be "thunked". Many of them don't work right. In short, a 64bit OS is a bad idea unless your software was written to work with it. There are very few 64bit applications available.

I don't understand your second comment. Are you talking about FPGA? AD integrates third party development software, but it doesn't export to thrid party development software. You do your FPGA design in AD, and download it into your FPGA either through a JTAG connected third party development board, or Altium's Nanoboard.