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CircuitStudio

hansd56

Hi,

I have contacted Altium Australia to get an idea about the cost of Designer. The reply was AUD10,000. Unfortunately, there are no other licenses available and I was redirected to element14 for Circuit Studio. Circuit Studio would be an option for me if the product was actually actively maintained. I have researched, had the evaluation license but cannot get myself to spend money on it unless there will be a commitment of development from Altium and element 14. Unfortunately, Altium Designer is widely used and it would be good to get some experience with one of their products. My question is:

 

Is Circuit Studio going to be supported or is it dying a slow death? I think element 14 should not sell this buggy software any longer as is. Altium had lots of time to fix the bugs at least.

 

I am currently using Kicad 5.0.(2). After getting used to the interface I think it is quite usable and certainly it is actively developed. I think 5.1 next year will have some further improvements to the work flow. Would it not be better for element 14 to support Kicad?

 

I would appreciate some feedback.

  • 0

    Hi. CircuitStudio is certainly much cheaper than Altium Designer and provides sufficient capabilities to design most types of board. It may be missing the high end features of Designer but then they are not charging high end prices for CircuitStudio. Underneath the different interface the core concepts are the same and familiarity with CS will help towards using AD. If you are just pursuing PCB design as a hobby then I expect free software to make more sense as you have no income from design work to pay for professional tools. Your assert the product is buggy and should not be sold does not really carry much weight given you have not used it in anger for real work. There are thousands of happy users out there and most just get on with producing designs, only a very small minority of users actually post to forums so you get a biased view but this is really the same for any product.

  • 0 in reply to e14softwareuk

    Hi Peter,

     

    Thank you for your reply. I agree that I don't have the full picture and I have not used it long in half for real projects. I would not mind to spend the money for a license if I could be sure that it will be around for the long term.

    The part you haven't answered: Is Circuit Studio going to be supported into the future and when is the next version coming out?

  • 0 in reply to hansd56

    There isn't a lot I can reveal publicly at this time but I do believe CircuitStudio will be around for some time. Altium are aware they are behind on publishing a product roadmap and the next software update but to the best of our knowledge these things will be coming next year. One good thing about CS is that it is a perpetual license so you can continue running the software as long as you want and the fact Altium Designer can read all the CircuitStudio design files means you work is protected into the future.