You can open/change/save the libs and the schematics of an Altium Designer Project but the PCB has an other format. So you can use this as schematic frontend for the altium designer.
I dont think that there will be an option to open the Circuit Studio PCB files in the Altium Designer.
Effectively, I have not been able to import Altium designer PCB files into Circuit Studio, nor from CircuitStudio to Altium Designer. I hope Altium will isue a translator of some kind, since this uncompatibility seriously reduces the interest people may have in this product. Considering the cost of altium Designer support licenses, I would not be surprised if a lot of users dropped the support, still use an older version and would now choose a lighter version more suited to their needs. Importing Altium Designer files would certainly be a strong asset.
I'm one of those users, I gave up after Altium Designer 10, too much money for support compared to the level of low cost alternatives. I still use 10, it's a great program and when Altium arrives in the new reality (i.e. charge reasonable prices for upgrades), I may sign up again. But this would be a great alternative since I don't use the fancy FPGA features of Altium anyway. That is... if/when this becomes compatible.
I was able to successfully export my Altium Designer 14.3 PcbDoc file to a P-CAD ASCII format, open it in Eagle and save it to brd format, then import it into CS. The schematics and libraries all opened directly in CS. After resetting up all the design rules to match, I was able successfully generate clean outputs.
We have been paying very close attention to the feedback from the evaluators, our initial customers, feedback via e14 support personnel, and these forums. It is with this feedback that developed v1.1 of CircuitStudio and you can expect to see this released in mid-May.
Along with the typical maintenance one should expect for this product, we are adding the capabilities I’ve listed below to the toolset. Please know that your participation in these forums greatly assists us in getting the product fine tuned.
Here is what’s coming in May to CircuitStudio:
- - Importers Updated – Altium Designer 10 and Older PCB files, Protel, and PCAD (these are in addition to Eagle/PADs/OrCAD/and current Altium Designer Support)
I work with other designers who use various versions of Altium Designer back to about 2010. I cannot export PCB (layout) documents to them, though schematics transfer fine. Why did Altium decide to use a different file format for Circuit Studio and why are there no exporters to PCB Binary 5.0 or similar?
Really old thread - I know the answers are explained somewhere - maybe in the FAQ? I have a layout person that uses AD18 and he was able to import my CS PCB files without issue. I did notice that the component 3D step files didn't always quite survive the import in to AD but as we didn't care about that we were happy. We did not try the reverse path of AD ->CS.
