Re: Question about Altium

Doug,
If you are seriously interested, try gaining access to their Altium
support forum. I have the new tools but we haven't deployed them yet and
even then we don't do use their simulation tools (I do not know historically
why that is, but probably an issue going back to the day that the decision
was made).

If you can't easily gain access, contact them via email and I am sure
they will allow you access as a potential customer wanting to research the
state of the package. The forum can be searched and the other tool you could
try would be searching their "Knowledge Base" for relevant information. I
would also go through their user guides (there are a large number of them on
the website), their multimedia demos and even their white papers.

I used PADs for years and found it very usable in it's day. However that
day was back in the early to mid 90s and the package is still stuck there. I
agree that for today's market it is very "clunky". It can also get very
expensive when you start wanting any advanced features because you end up
having to buy so many additional high end modules in order to get the
features you actually want.

--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

"pcbdoug" <doug.hunter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1142527261.157427.65140@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I am trying to evaluate some of the lower-end PCB design packages to
select
one for use in my workplace. So far, Altium is looking pretty good.
From what
I see on their website, they seem heavily oriented toward FPGA issues,
whereas
we are doing much simpler schematic/simulation/PCB design. Would it
still be
good for this, or expensive overkill?


.