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Altium Circuit Studio Development???

engineereddownunder

My license for Circuit Studio has just come up for renewal, and after just double checking there has been next to no activity in the development world around Circuit Studio - is it worth renewing the license or is this product a dead duck? The last version release was in May last year with apologies for how little it contained and promises of a more major release later in the year - which never came, and which has been followed up by silence (as far as I can tell) from Altium... Thoughts? Anyone seen a recent roadmap for this software? I actually really like the software but don't want to pour money into something that is not being actively developed.

  • This same story has been going on for years. I renewed once a few years ago, not again. Does that mean CS is terrible, no. You can do a design with it. Try the demo, if it works for you, fine, just never expect it to change from what you have. If there is an update someday great but I am not holding my breath. I've heard too many promises and excuses.

  • Also bumping the thread...

     

    I am one of the many Eagle users who jumped ship when Eagle was taken over by Autocad and they started their new license model. It's not only cost, I don't accept depending on other people's good wil to be able to use my tools, and to access my own work of the past.

     

    So, during the last 2 weeks I evaluated the CS trial, and like what I see. My decision now is, buy or not. For that it would be helpful to know if Altium is committed to maintain a mid level product that fulfills the requirements and fits into the budget of customers somewhere between advanced hobbyist, small business, freelancer, etc. So, Altium and Element14: a fact - based word of encouragement would be highly appreciated.

     

    regards, Georg

  • in reply to ghieber

    Hearing that Peter Bernard is gone, I have zero confidence there is any future for CS.

    My only reason was for a way of working with my customers who had Altium.

    Be it so humble, I just re-upped my trusty Easy-PC tool which I am very comfortable with.

    (As a RF engineer, I route and layout everything manually anyways.)

  • in reply to ghieber

    In terms of fulfilling the requirement and fitting into the budget, yes CS is a good product, but all that's come from Altium over many months has been a deafening silence.  At Jay says, Peter's departure has more or less marked the end of support for CS.  While it would be the work of a moment for somebody at E14 or Altium to post at least a few words of encouragement, there's been nothing.

  • in reply to frog

    With Autodesk's announcement & video showing Fusion360 & Eagle integration (bloody hell it looks good seeing Eagle with a ribbon)......so surely, but surely Altium will step up the process of developing CS.

     

    Come on Altium......as others have said the "deafening silence" is too much!

     

    Ian.

  • Well... Just saw Autodesk have built in ECAD to Fusion 360... for free! I already use Fusion 360 to model components for CS, and at a first glance it looks like a great start. Coupled with the great online support community and the rate at which Autodesk are turning our updates and improvements this might well be the last nail in the coffin for CS in my view. I'd be interested to hear what anyone else thinks and I'll be giving it a test drive over the next few weeks.

  • in reply to engineereddownunder

    Since E14/Farnell/AvNet is the only place you can buy CS, and since there has been absolute silence on updates, bug fixes, and roadmaps, one can assume that CS is a dead duck.

    They won't be able to open-source it and release it to the community either, because it shares so much code with AD.

     

    I'm sad to say, it looks like we have all wasted our money.

    Lets all leave reviews on the product sales sites telling new customers about our experiences. Although, in my experience, any attempt to leave a negative review for a product (even a genuine honest negative review) gets moderated away. Still, if we all leave our honest reviews then the mods will notice, and maybe they will bump our concerns up one flight of stairs.

  • in reply to joel_l

    I disagree a bit with you, I'm afraid.

    If they are charging annual maintenace, then there should be a road map, and there shoudl CERTAINLY be someway to ask the developers about upcoming updates.

    It's not a free product, and although you initially purchase a perpetual licence, many of us are also paying for an annual maintenace licence, but we are not getting any maintenance releases!

  • in reply to KennyMillar

    Not sure how anything I said is contrary to what you allude to. Unless you need some of the services that are tied to the subscription, stop buying it.

  • in reply to engineereddownunder

    Curious if you had an opinion yet on ECAD?  Can it import Altium (CS or the normal AD ) design files and libraries?  Even if it was just an "OK" import of schematic and PCB  that took some cleanup that might be reasonable for what I would want to accomplish.

     

    Even if I had to do designs from scratch that would be OK, but the libraries are not something I would want to recreate from scratch and/or have to go through every part.

     

    I don't want to give up on Altium but every new design I do looks like it's becoming a stranded asset.

     

    Thanks for any experience you can share.

     

    Regards,

    Brewster