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Hackaday reports
Things are about to get interesting in the world of PCB design software for the open [...] hardware community. This week, Altium launched the open public beta for its new [CircuitMaker] software[1], and it's a major change from what we looked at previously. Everything is [gratis].
You heard that right, [gratis]. Unlimited board size and unlimited layers--all [gratis]. And this isn't some stripped-down, bare-bones software here. They've thrown in almost everything under the sun: a 3D viewer, team project collaboration, [Cadsoft EAGLE] and DFX import, integrated Octopart supplier and pricing information, no commercial usage limits, and project sharing. And if that isn't enough, the "engine" seems to be the exact same back-end that is used in the full $10,000 Altium Designer as well (with a bit easier to use user interface on top).
This is a major departure from the pre-beta we covered back in September. Altium was going [to] have board size and layer limits, with the ability to "upgrade" at a cost.
[...] there are a few gotchas[...]. The software uses cloud based storage for your project files and [it] is community based. It won't work without an Internet connection, there is no local storage, and it forces you to share your projects with the world. You do get two "Sandbox" designs that you can hide from the world before you generate your Gerber files, but after that, your project is online for the whole world to see.
[...] anyone with a doggy Internet connection is not going to enjoy using [CircuitMaker] (we're hoping they remove that limitation in the final product). [...]how many people will be willing to trust their designs to a free service that could be turned off on a whim?
[...] If you want to see in-depth review of [CircuitMaker], we highly recommend you watch the video[...]. Dave Jones of the eevblog, gives you a full rundown on the beta version. Dave's in a unique place to review this software: Not only has he been using Altium since the mid-80's as a professional engineer, he's also a former Altium employee.
[1] The CircuitMaker page contains a "Free" link, but it doesn't lead anywhere--especially not to source code (even after allowing the 8 scripts that the page wants to push at you). There is some vague gibberish about GPL at the bottom of the CircuitMaker page but, again, no mention of actual source code. It appears that although the Hackaday submitter used the term "open source", that is used incorrectly.
In addition, the Download link doesn't lead anywhere for me--again, even after allowing the 8 scripts. Justice_099 in the comments says "Downloading requires a CircuitMaker account and I don't see any way to create an account there." (This really looks like amateur night.)
There is also no mention of operating systems, so I'm assuming this is Windows-only. (imroy264 in the comments says that is so and Anonymous below him says it fails via WINE).
majost in the comments says "My biggest issue with CircuitMaker is you cannot import manufacturer or third-party supplied parts libraries, and the Ciiva Library is lacking quite a few parts."
The comments also contain numerous mentions of (GPL'd, zero-restriction) KiCAD.
Related: CERN is Getting Serious About Development of the KiCAD App for Designing Printed Circuits
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday June 21 2015, @11:32PM
If you start developing in a propietary software that requires a yearly license to work then your data is hostage to the good will of an external party. So the first one is free..
Just say no to have your data being hostage.
And this development would probably not happen unless the free alternative were getting a lot better. Guess what happens when they get you and others to take the propietary bait *money please..*.
Any development that would form a basis for a product can't be done with these offerings.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by NoMaster on Monday June 22 2015, @02:28AM
Particularly as Altium is notorious amongst professional EEs for suddenly chopping and changing features, dropping whole product lines, forcing upgrades, and generally faffing everyone around. Altium Studio is definitely the gold standard amongst EDA software - but it comes at the price of knowing that the longer you use it, the probability of Altium fucking you over approaches 1...
I've been trialling CircuitMaker, and while it is definitely nice and a huge improvement over the other free/cheap options (gEDA, Kicad, Diptrace, Eagle, etc), it sails waaaay to close to Circuit Studio (the also brand-new 'mid-priced' [$3k up-front + $500/yr] step between free CircuitMaker and expensive [$you_have_to_ask] Altium Studio) and Altium Studio itself. Everyone with any experience of Altium expects CircuitMaker to be either crippled beyond usability, jacked up in price, or dumped within a couple of years. Possibly all three...
Personally, despite the fact that many people are creaming themselves over the opportunity to pretend they're using Altium Studio, the Altium reputation, CircuitMaker's limitations (whatever they ultimately end up being), and the fact that there are no (and will never be any) Linux or OS X versions, will keep the sane hobbyists & makers away...
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mojo chan on Monday June 22 2015, @07:29AM
The only was for CircuitMaker to ever gain traction with the open source community is to get key companies like Sparkfun, Arduino and Adafruit on board, and get a large number of hobbyists on board. Their cloud system is going to ensure that never, ever happens. It seems to be GPL incompatible as well, since you can't distribute the source files and the only way to even download them from their cloud is to make an Altium account.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 22 2015, @04:14PM
What payware for EE design is good? without having an outrageous price tag either?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bequalsa on Sunday June 21 2015, @11:37PM
It's a little strange for Altium to give away something for free, but I guess they feel safe as long as the software's in their cloud. There's a big pool of hobbyists who won't pay, but still prefer the cachet of a "real" tool. Get people talking about your software, and while a tiny fraction of them will convert to paid users, they'll talk and raise the profile of the brand overall, and that'll lead to more sales.
But let's be clear, this industry is all about lock-in. You get them invested in your part library, file formats, DFM tools, etc. so they have little appetite to jump ship.
Most hobbyists can fulfill their needs with KiCAD.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @12:02AM
Amen. I call Altium "The M$ of the ECAD world".
They buy up competitors and kill those products (through neglect or simply with a dagger in the back).
Protel has long been noted for its import filters but NONE will -export- to another vendor's (proprietary) format.
.
Why can't I use double quote marks in the Subject line any more?
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Informative) by anubi on Monday June 22 2015, @12:45AM
Reminds me of "Free" CircuitLAB spice simulator that /. got me started on.
I toyed around with it for a while... even put up about a dozen circuits public... unusual circuits I had used before and knew they worked.
Then one day I signed on and discovered it was no longer "free". It was now subscription based, and all the effort I had done training myself to use their system was now held as an encouragement for me to open a paid account. Problem is I do not have all that much money, but I do have time - which I used to create content for their site ( as I do here ). I kinda hate to pay, as well as leave personal and banking information on yet another site, when I already have several versions of SPICE, dating back to a C++ rewrite of the original Berkeley 2G5/Fortran ( which was done by one of my colleagues at the aerospace company I used to work for. )
I figured they would have grandfathered me in due to the public circuits I had left... ( the only private ones I had were ones that were experimental for me and usually had very serious bugs ). I knew better than put anything on this that was confidential to my customer. I use LTSpice for those.
Main thing I was looking for was when I am at the local community college, I sometimes help out and show students how to use tools that I am free to share. I had found CircuitLAB handy for showing another student what circuit simulation was all about without involving loading a program into the College's PC's ( which they frown on - for good reason too ). No big thing though... I know the college administration well enough they will let me install LTSpice.
I did not go back and wipe out all my files at CircuitLAB, but I have not been back to leave any new ones either. I can't leave any new ones. That was a Managerial Decision.
The main thing I use CircuitLAB any more for is showing my other clients why they should not trust the "cloud" for anything more than ephemeral data. Do not leave your jewels in the cloud. They may not be there when you come back. Or your jewels may be held hostage to enforce your compliance with someone else's demands.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 22 2015, @09:48PM
Yep, the only cloud storage you can count on is on your own servers. Then you have only to hope that you don't turn into a dick when you put your sysadmin hat on and deny yourself access to the files.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday June 22 2015, @07:33AM
They are hoping for three things:
1. People learn Altium software, skills which can be transferred to their non-free CS and AS software.
2. They can convert people who were pirating Altium Studio into legitimate users and possibly sell them services via their cloud (expect PCB manufacturing tie-ups soon).
3. They can take some of Eagle's and Kicad's market share.
The problem is that they crippled it in just the wrong way, ensuring it will never ever gain any traction in the open source space.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @12:20AM
I guess I'll have to stick with geda/gschem on Linux
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 22 2015, @12:46AM
There's no Linux/BSD version of Altium CircuitMaker ?
Guess that kind of limits their reach and KiCad/geda will not be threatened.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @01:21AM
gEDA
The GPL'd Electronics Design Automation suite is the opposite story:
At one time, Ales was building Windoze-compatible binaries (4 releases by my count).
The mailing list got so full of tech neophytes asking question about how to run Windoze that he decided that wasn't such a great idea.
These days, they supply a build script for that bunch; if you can't get it installed under Windoze, it shows you're not techie enough to be one of the crowd.
Did you know that part of that suite started out on the Atari ST? [wikipedia.org]
Just goofing around to show how versatile gEDA is, DJ Delorie once configured a spin of it so it would accommodate a 64-layer 64ft x 64ft board. 8-)
.
(GPL'd) FreePCB is mentioned several times in the Hackaday comments.
The schematic capture chores can be done with (GPL'd) TinyCAD or (proprietary) LTspice.
All 3 of those are native Windoze apps but they will all run via WINE.
.
KiCAD has already gotten a bunch of ink/bytes on this topic.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @03:56AM
_gewg? windoze? Really? Are you 12? The rest of what you wrote is fine. But dont be a child.
I did not expect to see your name at the end of this. You can do better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @05:51AM
Hundreds of words there and you obsess over 1.
Do -all- small shiny objects captivate you?
In my experience, Redmond's stuff is crap.
Get over it.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:02AM
There was a time you could try out gEDA and KiCAD without installing anything on your box.
There were two[1] gratis and libre boot-to-a-desktop CDs.
Sadly, the one based on Ubuntu [google.com] didn't continue to receive support after its initial release.
The one based on Fedora [google.com] didn't receive any updates either.
The good news is that they are trying to get a Kickstarter [fedoraproject.org] going for Fedora 23. [fedoraproject.org]
[1] Even before that, there were a few other CDs put together by various folks.
As I recall, you had to actually install those earlier distro respin efforts.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by novak on Monday June 22 2015, @06:40AM
I used to work at a consulting/outsourcing place where we forked over a lot of money to proprietary software vendors. Now that I have my own place, I use gEDA. The combination of open source and extendability is way more valuable than having built in capability right by built in vendor lock in. Sure it's slower than altium, but time I can afford, and it does nearly everything well enough for the designs I primarily work on. Like most, I won't even bother trying this out because I don't like or trust proprietary tools.
It's probably worth pointing out that even if this was open source I wouldn't check this out, though. I don't use any engineering tools that require the cloud, ever. That's a built in handicap that no one needs and no one wants (Right guys? Right?). I'm not willing to give up control like that, especially given internet reliability around here and the sorry state of network security these days.
novak
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @02:33PM
And this editorial commentary comes to you [gratis].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @07:05PM
It must be incredibly dull in the world where you live--a place where no one has an opinion.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 22 2015, @09:53PM
This is why I really appreciate Soylent. When I read the summary I thought, "Cool!" The comments by cognoscenti have quite turned me around.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 23 2015, @12:03AM
Oy, some of your submissions don't include links! Please include them next time.
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=7922 [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=7926 [soylentnews.org]
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