Altium Circuit Studio Development???

That's an interesting idea but I doubt that there would be much traction - the idea of having a 25% share in a software package that I use every day for my business isn't very reassuring, regardless of any licensing issues.  Perhaps others have different ideas though.

Sorry there was no plan.

Completely understand. It’s an unconvential model. Maybe another way to phase it would be weekend warriors paying for time on a license that corporations wouldn't be utilizing anyways in an 8-5 Monday-Friday.

We’d have to have  some guys better at math than me to figure out how many licenses and users it takes before it would make financial sense to have AD on demand. Ex $ 30 for 8 hours.

This might work for some but for many of us we need fairly big chunks of time on the software, CS works well because it's relatively unlimited and fills all the requirements for designing relatively simple boards.

I think a better solution would be a limited version of AD which has a similar level of features to CS, I know that's probably not a simple change to make but Altium will need to keep in mind many of the CS users currently are part of small start-ups without the capital to invest in AD at this point. Dropping support for CS now is more likely to cause us to move to a completely different product and invest in that rather than reaching a point where it makes sense to fully invest in AD, migrating to a cut down version of AD would give us the continuation we need and would benefit Altium in that moving from a basic version to the full version is a logical step once the need arises and the budget is available.

Still hopeful of some word from Altium...

I think that's what CS was supposed to be.

Was doing my weekly poke-around the discussion forums as I yell and curse Altium for not providing a way to automatically generate *useable* pick and place files in CS...

Got a computer generated form email from the local Altium sales office about there special du jour on AD,  though in this case it had a from address from an actual person (well I assume there's an actual person at the address) in the local sales office.

So I figure what the heck, I sent a short reply saying that while I'm an Altium CUSTOMER (at least in that I gave them money, Altium clearly doesn't see that as a threshold for being a customer) AD's feature set and price don't fit with current needs, but maybe some day down the road, etc.  I also mentioned the experience with CS has started to turn me off to considering Altium as a viable company for future CAD tools.

I guess I expected at least a quick email back with at least a "thanks for letting me know"  - I certainly wasn't expecting a lowly sales person trying to make this month's quota to solve Altium's abandonment of CS customers.  But alas, just like this thread, I got nothing back...except a few days later another automated email "reminding me" of Altium's wonderfulness.  err, NO.

Gone from shooting themselves in the foot to shooting up the rest of their body parts...

<shrug>

(ok, I really just wanted to bubble this thread up to the top again)

That's funny I had the same experience last month, was asked if I'd like to attend a local AD roadshow - I asked is there would be anything related to CS at the roadshow and got a reply saying "unfortunately not this time around". Struck up a short conversation with the sales person who was very pleasant - until I asked about CS road map... Silence, no reply. That's pretty crappy Altium are currently very successfully upsetting and frustrating a lot of small business and start-ups which are potential future AD buyers. I'm about to renew my CS license, though that seems like it will be a waste of money at this point - maybe putting some money in will help get some information out...

I guess the problem for Altium is that CS is in danger of becoming such a toxic product that even a massive investment won't be enough to turn the tide and it's better just to walk away.  I'd like to think that we haven't quite reached that point yet but I suspect that Altium have different ideas.

Curious, engineereddownunder what you did about renewal of license if you do not mind saying.

I haven't renewed just yet, though I've got the license renewal in my element14 cart, have just tried one last ditch effort to get some feedback from element14 or Altium on what their plans are with the product. I think software support is necessary but would be pretty annoyed if I pay the $200 odd and find there are no further updates.