Altium and Element14 - ATTENTION - time for maintenance is arriving soon ... where is Circuit Maker Pro ? ?

My Volvo maintenance tool also uses DXP.  I think it's just a viewing tool.

But thanks for the reminder.  I forget that they have the AD/CS forums.

DXP.exe is their 15+ year-old main codebase executable, inherited from the ancient DXP PCB CAD product, it used to crash a lot back then. The current product looks recognisably similar to the old DXP.

One option for us is that Erix sell us his copy of the beta program, then move to a far away island.

But then there's the license ...

I don't use Altium... I don't see the point. I used EAGLE, but now have moved to KiCad 6. Any large org is unlikely to use Altium anyway, they will be using Mentor or Cadence, so I don't subscribe to the idea that learning these lower-cost Altium tools will help me in my career.

Personally I think Circuit Studio has just been a failure for Altium/E14. It must have seemed like a sweet deal for Altium at the time, handballing all of the sales/support off to E14, but it has turned out to be a poor seller (my guess looking at the forum activity, E14's general lack of enthusiasm) and not worth the hassle. Just enough users to make support an effort, but not enough to make it profitable.

From memory I think it was originally priced at $995 (USD), but it was quickly discounted to around half that (probably due to poor sales), where it remains today. They just can't seem to get the right price point between the free and the $6k+ alternatives. I would love to see the sales numbers of CS vs Eagle.

The Altium Live summit starts next week. If they were going to make any announcements regarding the future of Circuit Studio and Circuit Maker Pro that would be the place to do it.

Idea I think is good, execution was poor. They have too many code bases and different PCB file formats. As I understand it CircuitMaker 2 is now based on the newer AD code base, and the next version of CicruitStudio (in Beta) will be too. This is smart.

But it appears a lot of the bugs in CircuitMaker 2 were strange issues with primitives, and you have to wonder, if it was based on what should have been the robust AD code base, why? I suspect it turns out to be the different PCB file formats.

What they should have done was modified AD to create different license types and offered an AD lite version.  One code base to manage, one PCB file format.

I tend to agree with your closing statement.  In theory, the new CM Pro is closer to that. as the CS replacement, (not CircuitMaker) and being closer to the AD code base, should be a shorter distance away for bug fixes and enhancements.  And an easier step for those in academia to move up to the full AD.

Yes, poor execution. The first example I saw of that was trying to import an Altium PCB 6.0 file. Says it right there in the import selection menu, but turns out it doesn't do it 'yet'. That alone reduced it's value to me by 50%.

Well, if it doesn't do it, then don't pretend it does; it just looks careless, unfinished.

The annoying thing is I like the core of it - the schematic capture and PCB layout - much more than Eagle.

Altium beeing purchased By Dasault. I suspected as much 8 month ago when Altuim stopped seasonal saving offers Put up the price and selfhosting license option when from cheaper option from on demand to costing Extra £3,000.- This is exactly the price For Solidwork licensing server. It is shame that a good product became again victim of the greed of some ****. We can expect biger prices and less quality over time.

-pp-

Again, is this fact or just conjecture?

If fact, then hopefully Dasault keeps CS / CM Pro or whatever, alive.

Whatever they do to the product, I WANT MY PERPETUAL LICENSE ! ! !

If conjecture, then ... nevermind