How good is Altium Designer?

[difflvl]

Re: How good is @ltium Designer?

Ok, I've took a short look on AD6.7 website:
http://www.@ltium.com/Products/AltiumDesigner/

It recommends a 3GHz/1Gb RAM but minimum requirement is 1.8Ghz/1Gb RAM.
How long it takes the autorouting process for say 5000 pads or so (assuming is performed in steps on various net classes) ? There is a visible difference on various computers with the same graphic card ? On Pads 2005 there is no visible difference between computers above on autorouting process.

thank you,

For me the situs router in Altium is very slow when doing anything more than 2 or 4 layers. Altium has a PCB routing benchmark in their example folder. I have tried routing that board in altium, it was over 2 and a half hours and only 80% completed (on 3.46ghz, 1.5gig ram P4). Ran the same board in Electra and took 25mins to route the whole board. The only issue I have with Altium is the router I wish it were more like Pads' router.


BTW housecat, I would love to see a 9 gighertz board or a 20 layer board done it Altium. Can you share a "smartPDF"?

 

[House_Cat]

difflvl - I design boards for a living. Once the board is designed and paid for, I don't own it anymore. I cannot post a board or picture of one of my designs without written consent from the customer who owns it.

The 20 layer board (10 signal, 10 planes), was not the largest I've done. I also did a 24 layer board a few years ago. The thickest board I've ever done was 250mils (FR4), the thinest was a flex circuit. The 9GHz board was only 10 layers (6 signal, 4 planes) - the 9GHz signals were all on the top layer. The high frequency outside layers were on Rogers 4350B, the core was FR4.

 

[buenos]

How good is @ltium Designer?

so, do you have a one person company, who designs for other companies?
how do you advertise your service?
please tell us more about it.

 

[VSMVDD]

this question your asking
is only relevent to the speed of the graphics sub frame your main board supports
the faster the better pci express or agp time X

stick to the faster graphics cards in 3d & 2d is best
look for boxed ones that quote these speeds
buy a decent motherboard and mpu
the memory you use is important
it should be fast enought to stop bottle necks
but not too fast as to cause them {parity ram only fully}

the speed of the mpu is irrelevent as is the mainboard
over and above what i said

the graphics is best as fast as possible for both realms 2d and 3d

simple....!

youll also find most oem graphics cards
can be tweaked and reflashed to workstation cards
at a fration of a workstation cards costs.,...


.....

above all using design tools like this in 3d or 2d
takes patence and also its a bit like crytical music apps
you must turn off and disable windows bells and whistles
and maximise the system performances first

then install your tools for eda and re-tweak

there is heeps of tweaks to windows to fix this and that

best look to gamers sites to get good info max your system
as a minimal windows install
{or add a second windows just for this task on another platter}

its simple to be fast a tool has to have a chance to work fast

if you leave all the fancy bits in windows switched on windows and your machine will task on this and not your app

three simple tweaks are

go to

control panel >> system >> advanced system settings >> performance >> settings>> adjust for best performance

next go to the virtual memory >> advanced
in the same tab

choose programs for both settings
then adjust for a swap file on a separate disk drive
if you dont have a second platter add one and setup the swap file on this
{page file}

as a system managed one

and also allow twice your system ram on the main drive as a fixed size swap file
no others
and reboot

problems solved
your apps will now run 70% faster in real time

.....

and dont forget to turn OFF auto insert notification
on all removable media

otherwise the o/s will task on drives every few hundred miliseconds
to see if a disk or new media is there



the rule is if its not needed specificaly
turn it off or disable etc
as it just blages resorces otherwise

if you have more than 1gb system ram and use windows xp or less {advised}
turn the swap file off completely
you dont need it

 

[House_Cat]

Re: How good is @ltium Designer?

so, do you have a one person company, who designs for other companies?
how do you advertise your service?
please tell us more about it.

I work for a small company as a design engineer. Most of my work is done from a home office (telecommuting). Sales are done by a contract salesman.