Special Promotion for EAGLE PCB Users

It is tempting.

I have a full Eagle license and probably will be okay for about a year. The big question for me is which package will be the next highly popular package? The ability to share designs with a large user base is important.

Eagle has a huge user base compared to other packages. What will happen to this user base?

I expect their user base to erode substantially due to the new license scheme, but will they hang on to enough market share to make it a market leader in terms of seats?

The door is open for others to take some of the user base, but are any other packages attractive enough to take a really significant share?

I think it will still be a tough decision in a year when I will be considering choices as I am not keen on the subscription model.

I have other concerns but also concerns ... It's tempting but for now it is not the worth. There are some easy questions that I will see how can be answered and how easy it is to do.

How to convert Eagle previous projects to Altium?

How to reuse the custom libraries already designed?

How is possible to generate a g-code for milling prototypes with Altium? This is my typical pre-prototyping PCB phase to avoid making many PCB circuits prototyping outside and this save an incredible amount of fime.

These are just the most important concerns I have. I have just downloaded now the free trial to have time at least to make a test before consciously deciding what to do.

Last but not least, Eagle has both Mac and Windows versions, and Altium ?

A reply by the author of this post is also welcome.

Enrico

Enrico Miglino wrote:

 

Last but not least, Eagle has both Mac and Windows versions, and Altium ?

Altium is Windows only as far as I am aware. This alone makes it worthless to me.

Enrico Miglino wrote:

 

Last but not least, Eagle has both Mac and Windows versions, and Altium ?

Altium is Windows only as far as I am aware. This alone makes it worthless to me.

I have used Eagle on Windows for some years, it is not so blocking for me as I am working on Mac as well as you do, but I used too a number of VM on it. Managing with projects involving hardware and firmware development it is almost impossible. As far as I know, just to mention few, Rhino for 3D printing design, AVR Studio, Cypress PSoC programming, Mill Machine control etc. etc. needs windows. Last but not least as I develop on a multiplatform environment on both VisualStudio native applications and drivers and Qt I am almost used to work on Windows, Mac and Ubuntu at least together

Remain the fact that this is a minus point to the Altium circuit designer software. Anyway I deserve further considerations on ergonomy and usability after I have installed the trial version and used it for a while (hopefully before the end of this month to decide about their offer )

Enrico

Hi Enrico,

Enrico Miglino wrote:

 

I have used Eagle on Windows for some years, it is not so blocking for me as I am working on Mac as well as you do, but I used too a number of VM on it. Managing with projects involving hardware and firmware development it is almost impossible. As far as I know, just to mention few, Rhino for 3D printing design, AVR Studio, Cypress PSoC programming, Mill Machine control etc. etc. needs windows.

Yes there are still tools that require windows but I have managed to largely purge it from my workflow .... except when I need to use DxDesigner (my employer has this) and have to manage our Active Directory

From your list:

Rhino is available for Mac (https://www.rhino3d.com/mac) as are Slic3r and Cura (not on your list but 3D printing related).

Yes AVR studio doesn't work but use avrdude (install from homebrew) and any other decent IDE on Mac works just fine.

Cypress PSoC, yep it looks like their tools are Windows only.... I'll avoid this then....

I don't know about your specific milling machine and what software you use but there are Mac tools e.g. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ricecnc/id555340658?mt=12 or http://www.cnccookbook.com/CCMeshCamEasyCAMSoftware.html

Other types of tools that I use are FPGA tools and Xilinx, Altera and Microsemi (Actel) toolsets are all available under Linux as is the ModelSim simulator. They work better under Linux IMHO.

Arduino Studio is available for Mac/Linux as well as Windows as is MPLAB for PIC's. Now Microchip own Atmel I wonder if they might help facilitate AVR studio being migrated to the other platforms too.

There are just loads of tools now available that don't require Windows that it is now largely possible to avoid Windows for hardware/firmware/software design. If EAGLE went away though my only option for board design would be KiCAD and I am not happy that this is mature enough of fully featured enough to be a viable option for professional work. I think Mentor Graphics might do a Linux version of one of their most horrendously expensive PCB tools but that's about it and I couldn't justify the cost there at all.

Best Regards,

Rachael

I really like how this debate has remained cordial and respectful, despite differing points of view.

I created a poll to try and capture the spectrum of opinions:

Which CAD Licensing Model Is Preferred?