Altium Circuit Studio Development???

shabaz  wrote:

 

In some respects, it's a self-inflicted wound by the purchasers. It's amazing people will spend hundreds of $$$ on software either without checking the release history or thinking "it's been many years since an update, I'll just keep ploughing money into it because I heard on the grapevine that a new release which will fix my problems might become available one day in a year or two".

If it's a business purchase there's no way it's justifiable. It makes no sense. Why do people do it?

Yes, but it's backed by two companies that are industry leaders and have an excellent reputation. Who'd expect this?

Hello Together,

Today 20.07.2020, I have got this information from Altium:

"Since you mentioned libraries, we'll soon be starting a Beta Program for the next major version of CircuitStudio. This has been in the works for a very long time and we're preparing it for beta soon in a few weeks."

So... it seems CS is not death. Let's cross fingers and hope few weeks is few weeks.

   Alexandre

That's great news! Thanks for sharing :-)

A friend of mine is looking for a package and I advised against circuit studio, due to lack of updates.

He did some digging and was advised that:

Circuit Studio is no longer supporting Altium, all support will be by Newark/Element 14.   

Support and development are two different things. I think Element14 has been the sole support for a while.

As far as development, I'm not holding my breath.

Trying to find out more myself.

My friend used the word ‘support’ not develop

Element14 has been the group that supports CircuitStudio for several years now.  This is not new.  However, mostly we support ourselves technically with the forum.  I have found CS to be useful for schematic entry and basic PCB design.

Right now I'm working on a more complex PCB with differential routing and 50 ohm RF signals.  We opted to send it out for PCB routing at an Altium Designer capable design house.  They are using AD20 and had no problem bringing in the schematic, libraries and my initial PCB floorplan from CS.  They were able to export out their interim work as a CS PCB doc file and I could read it back in and review.  It is all going very smoothly so far.

So, if you want to work with Altium Designer, now or in the future, CS seems like a reasonable path without having to buy a full seat of AD.

Hi,
Those of you who read some of my posts may know that I was skeptical that Circuit Studio has a future. So a little analysis follow.

It happen that I have now reasons to believe (there is a difference between belief and knowledge so don't misunderstand me) that there is (will be very soon) a Beta program for a new version of Altium CircuitStudio.

Now: is this a good news or just something we can pass over like the 1.5.2 version? That is to be seen.

What we know:

- the app development was on stand by for some years now (minor changes like in the v.1.5.1 or v.1.5.2 does not count as development).

- people who paid maintenance got screwed. That's the reality, I don't make it.

- reps promised us (the user base) a roadmap/"new big version" for some time now without an actual result. So the promises were empty (I'm not saying that the one(s) doing them did not believe them but as we know corporate bureaucracy can eat you alive).

- Altium will not create a competing product for their main product and CircuitStudio is already giving us almost unlimited PCB size while keeping the features to a minimum required.

- Altium is a revenue-driven company (who isn't?) and the way they will prioritize their work is where money come

So, up until now we've seen that CircuitStudio was an idea that they could not really fit into their planning. Some marketing guys probably decided to enter into another section of the ECAD market but they saw that it did not make a lot of money for them. I think that's why we've seen this arrhythmia in development. They could not justify the used man power.

I believe that the chance CircuitStudio might have is for the marketing guys to see a slow down in how Altium Designer is sold (like market saturation) and then for them to start looking for other ways to dazzle the investors.

What can we expect from a new version of CircuitStudio?

Perhaps a revamped GUI.

That is usually easy to do, you just take this and move it there. Perhaps a dark UI to be in sync with Altium Designer, that will serve also as a marketing tool: try the 'little' Altium Designer and then upgrade.

Yet, as already said, the best for them would have been to offer a cut-down version of Altium Designer, offering different tiers of features over a default platform so a user can buy what he needs.

This way they could sell AD at a bigger price without seeming to do it.

That may not be easy to do it from the point of view of the software developer, and require planning it in advance.

We may see increased compatibility with the new versions of Windows OS.

It's not very likely but some of the app modules (libraries) may start be imported from the new 64bit code base. What's the point in doing same work twice?

Altium need now to justify 'the wait'.

So I bet one or two of the most requested features will make it's way into the new version: maybe the Search similar / more shortcuts (since it is already easy to do that by editing some of the files) or the like.

That will be like a adrenaline shot into an almost dead body.

But as said they need also to create the illusion of a complete new app and that you do most easily by changing the GUI (look how Microsoft creates a whole new Windows 10 build but show people what?! ... a new Start Menu ). So a new look is most likely.

I renewed last year,  and nothing this year.  It’s simple wait for an update to come, then think about updating

Heads up!  Beta testing for a new CS release is about to start.