Blog » Altium Designer Posted on 1254387211|%a %b %d, %Y|agohover by manton
I picked up a full suite of Altium Designer today, as I was offered a deal that was too good to pass up. They recently lowered the pricing of their products, so that even the full price is actually quite reasonable, especially when one considers the extensive feature set.
I've used PCAD for doing PCB layouts for many years, but it was discontinued in 2008, to be replaced with Altium Designer. PCAD 2006, which is the last release, is a very powerful layout tool, with very few issues. I would have considered it, if I could have purchased a copy.
For schematics, I have always used OrCAD, which has served my needs well. It has been somewhat problematic using two different packages, in that not all of the design data transfers between the two seamlessly. Altium Designer, I hope will solve this, and it imports both the schematic and PCB file formats from these two packages, so it should allow me to edit older designs as well, and bring them together under a unified environment.
I am hoping that this is a good move for me, but only time will tell. Unfortunately, I did not have time to try out the eval version prior to purchasing, as I just found out about the offer this morning, and it expired at the end of today. Now I am facing a big learning curve before I will be proficient again.