E14 SOFTWARE TEAM

The only person suggesting it is dead is you..

More proof that CS is a dead duck    

It's a product that is still for sale, according to the Altium website.

If you want a newer release, check the dates on the release notes. It is clear that releases are infrequent. If you purchased without checking the release notes, that's a risk for any product, if you expect more frequent releases.

if you checked the release notes and purchased anyway, then I think you're getting what you expected?

I'm curious as to why you seem eager to defend Altium when they more than clearly dropped the ball with circuit studio. I also noticed in another forum post, where you were helping someone with licensing issues (which was nice of you), and you mentioned that you don't even use circuit studio... So, no, he's not the only one suggesting CS is dead, or on life support, or whatever - many people are frustrated with the state of things, including myself.

Everyone in the community has been been extremely patient with Altium. As of several months ago, we had one official person who posted on this forum who was a direct voice for Altium, and would help people, respond to emails, discuss work around for bugs, etc. That person was liquidated, and made a forum post saying goodbye to the community. Since then, no one has taken his place. If you go back in the last 3-4 months worth of posts, it's been forum users helping other users with problems. The fact that the community has had to become more or less self sufficient is inexcusable for a paid product from a major competitor in the CAD market. This is regardless of how much it costs, a paid product is a paid product, and promises were made in exchange for money. Furthermore, the fact that the company offers a yearly maintenance plan, and has released few and pitifully lightweight updates is nothing short of insulting to anyone who's paid for their product. There is no defending this behavior, period.

Some of us have been with circuit studio since very early on, and it wasn't this bad at first. Admittedly, it wasn't great to begin with, but at the very least the customer base was promised more frequent updates, with more substantive content. As it stands now, there are still plenty of bugs that people have been reporting for over a year. Worse yet, because no one seems to be monitoring the situation with circuit studio, they've allowed their bug reporting server to go down. This means you can't even report bugs, when they happen, and they do happen frequently.

kylew  wrote:

 

I'm curious as to why you seem eager to defend Altium

Sorry, you've got it completely wrong. I'm uninterested in using _any_ Altium software even if it was free!

Circuit Studio is pretty much community-supported from what I've seen. I didn't need to have used Circuit Studio to offer some help to that user on the thread that you mention.

I'm just speaking my mind - if the history of updates is so infrequent, why will it change now?

That's the rub though, it is NOT a community supported. As well as the perpetural licence, you also have to buy a yearly maintenance fee. We are getting NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER from E14 or Altium despite paying the fees.

Also, when the software tries to report a fault, the back end server is not there. It seems the infrastructure behind CS has been shutdown.

I don't think you're going to see the level of updates or the types of non-community responses that you hope to see - just based on history of updates you can see that new software has not been issued for a while now. If you have a technical issue, you'll have to rely on the community for support whether you want to or not.

Regarding the tech issue, you'd need to provide more detail so that users can help you. The error you were getting was a 500 error - that means some or all of the infrastructure is still alive, but could be faulty or be under maintenance temporarily. Does the error still occur? Other information that would be useful, such as what did you do at the time to cause the error - maybe someone is aware of a way to work around that. You might prefer a software fix and a new release, but I can't see how the community can help you with _that_.

shabaz   wrote:

 

Sorry, you've got it completely wrong. I'm uninterested in using _any_ Altium software even if it was free!

After using Circuit studio I can say the same - the workflow is awful. At its core, it has some nice features, but they're mired in a garbage UI, that just comes across as a clumsy attempt to make the program more user friendly.

shabaz  wrote:

 

I don't think you're going to see the level of updates or the types of non-community responses that you hope to see - just based on history of updates you can see that new software has not been issued for a while now. If you have a technical issue, you'll have to rely on the community for support whether you want to or not.

 

Regarding the tech issue, you'd need to provide more detail so that users can help you. The error you were getting was a 500 error - that means some or all of the infrastructure is still alive, but could be faulty or be under maintenance temporarily. Does the error still occur? Other information that would be useful, such as what did you do at the time to cause the error - maybe someone is aware of a way to work around that. You might prefer a software fix and a new release, but I can't see how the community can help you with _that_.

He's not the only one, I get the same error. As of mid January, it became impossible to report bugs through the program itself. It's unlikely the fault of the user, as it's being experienced by more than one person, with likely different run time conditions and different operator behavior when crashes/bugs occurred.

It's not just that the updates are infrequent, it's that they've come to a grinding halt and Altium has gone radio silent, so people are getting antsy (myself included). No one likes to find out something they paid for is being disconnected and will no longer be updated. But, what makes this situation worse is that Altium don't seem to be coming out and saying yes or no to circuit studio being discontinued. It's just really sloppy, and disappointing coming from a professional company like Altium, considering their brand name recognition. I mean, I know they're not getting a ton of money from their CS user base, but they could at least pretend to care. Ultimately, you're right though, the community will have to solve their own problems, as it seems Altium doesn't care, or worse doesn't know about the state of things.

The only thing I'd like to see at this point is for Altium to come forward, act like a professional company, and release some information as to the planned road map of CS (assuming one exists). At the very least give the community a yes/no for future bug fixes. Either way, I guess I'll just be transitioning to KiCAD until I find another CAD ponzi-scheme to buy into, because I'm sure not giving altium any money ever again.

Please get in touch with your regional support or Altium support.