Using Circuit Studio

Hi Jean B,

I've use Altium Designer (a long time ago when they first introduced DXP), and from screenshots (I have not tried it yet) Circuit Studio looks very similar although with a different menu system perhaps, which looks good. How did you find it?

I'm wondering if Circuit Studio is like a bleeding-edge version of Altium Designer, i.e. will get certain innovations first which will then be incorporated and matured/enhanced in Altium Designer.

This is just a guess though : (  - wondering if you knew about the different products since you say you used Designer in the past too.

How good is productivity with Circuit Studio for you? Is it fast to create custom components?

Hi Jean B,

I've use Altium Designer (a long time ago when they first introduced DXP), and from screenshots (I have not tried it yet) Circuit Studio looks very similar although with a different menu system perhaps, which looks good. How did you find it?

I'm wondering if Circuit Studio is like a bleeding-edge version of Altium Designer, i.e. will get certain innovations first which will then be incorporated and matured/enhanced in Altium Designer.

This is just a guess though : (  - wondering if you knew about the different products since you say you used Designer in the past too.

How good is productivity with Circuit Studio for you? Is it fast to create custom components?

Hi Clem, Shabaz,

Yes, circuit Studio is very similar to AD with some limitations (no FPGA nor simulation). Productivity seems good after the mandatory learning curve, which was longer for me, being a previous PADS user. I have started two PCBoards since 2 months using CS and have not gone through major issues. The library management is easy and creating custom components can be done using templates, or from modifying existing parts, or from scratch. I think Altium really wanted to get into the market of small-business users with an affordable solution which "does the job".

Actually I started a PCB with PADS DxDesigner+PCB suite, got fed up and did not renew the licence, I re-did the same board with CS, managed to import some libraries from PADS and I can tell that CS compares very favorably with PADS.

I must say that there are still some improvements to be done in CS, but I hope this will be covered in further releases.

Thanks for comparing the two.

Hi Jean, This is Lawrence Romine with Altium. I am responsible for the care and feeding of this product. Firstly, thanks very much for your business and your return to the Altium brand! Secondarily, I wanted to publicly acknowledge your comments, and everyone's comments on this and other forums for that matter. We are now in Beta Test with v1.1 of CircuitStudio. Of course, this will contain the expected maintenance of the tool that you should expect, but also some great new capabilities that I've listed below. Please also know that we are paying very close attention to our customers feedback, the evaluators feedback, the feedback we are getting from e14 support staff, and social media outlets. These channels are extremely important to us and directly impact the future development of the product. So, please keep it coming. Here is what you can expect in 1.1 scheduled for mid-May:

- Importers Updated - AD10 and older, Protel, PCAD (these are in addition to the Eagle/OrCAD/PADs importers in there now), and yes, that includes AD10 Board files

- Mixed Mode Simulation

- .STEP Export

- DXF Import

Lawrence,

Is the import function from AD10 available now?

Will (and when) Circuit Studio be able to directly export to Designer?

Or, will Designer be able to import directly from Circuit Studio?

Without Designer import/export capability the product has nothing to offer justifying the huge change from what I am using now.

Thanks,

Jay Zebryk

Jay,

CircuitStudio V1.1 which includes the AD10 PCBDOC support was released last night. As well, the update to Altium Designer that includes support for CircuitStudio file formats was released last week. So, as long as you update to the most recent build of both products, you should be able to move bidirectionally. Thanks!

Hello Lawrence,

I was an AD14 user at my previous employer and was glad to find this CS as it is more in line with my new employer's budget. However I am having a few issues. I am running v 1.1.0 (build 44421) on the 30-day trial.

1. The dialog boxes are gigantic! I have dual monitors running 1920x1080 resolution. I can't go any higher. Some dialog boxes are exactly 1080 high but some others are higher and I can't move them enough to hit the OK or Cancel buttons. One example is the "3D Body" tool when you are in a PcbLib document. Whenever I get one of these boxes I have to hard-stop the application with Ctrl+Alt+Del and I lose all my previous work. I have no way of knowing which box will do this to me until it happens - very aggravating.

2. Because of the above I can't create 3d parts. Fortunately I can import previous libraries from AD14 but...

3. I cannot open or import PcbDoc files from AD14. Is this planned for the future?

I can live without importing newer AD files but the enormous dialog boxes are a major problem. Is there a setting to use smaller AD-style boxes that I'm missing?

Thanks for any help!

Hi Eric

More of a short-term fix than a long-term solution, but you could try pressing 'Enter' for ok and 'ESC' for cancel on the keyboard. This may dismiss the dialogs.

A lot of Windows programs suffer from this : ( The solution is this:

Thanks for everyone's help. It was a silly Windows setting.

I've pulled the pin and purchased CS. While I (inexplicably) wait for my license file to arrive I've been setting up my workspace with templates.

I've managed to make a decent schematic template with my company's logo and, through the system preferences dialog box, pointed all new schematics to use this file.

The PCB template is another matter. It looks like I must create the logo from traces - that is how the CS logo on their template is made anyway. Does anyone know a tool to do this or is it all trial and error?

Secondly, how to tell CS to use this file as a template for new PCBs? There is no corresponding drop down in the system preferences dialog box.