Altium CircuitStudio 1.1

[dspurell]

I just purchased CircuitStudio after evaluating it for a month as well as CircuitMaker. I decided on CS due to being able to save locally as well as other features. I work as a contractor and Altium Designer Summer 09 is used at my customer. To enable me to collaborate at home, CircuitStudio had export import configurations for Protel as well as others. I understood that I could export the CS PCB to a Protel format and bring it into Altium summer 09. Unfortunately the export capability for this seems to be missing within CircuitStudio. I hope this purchase and time spent in this pursuit is not a waste of time. Any advice would be appreciated.

[robertferanec]

To enable me to collaborate at home, CircuitStudio had export import configurations for Protel as well as others. I understood that I could export the CS PCB to a Protel format and bring it into Altium summer 09. Unfortunately the export capability for this seems to be missing within CircuitStudio

dspurell please, could you clarify your question? I am not really sure what do you mean by "CircuitStudio had export import configurations for Protel ... Unfortunately the export capability for this seems to be missing within CircuitStudio"

[dspurell]

Hi Robert, Under the Importers\Exporters of the Configure Platform in Extensions and Updates is where the check boxes are for Altium, Eagle, P-CAD, etc. The Protel checkbox says "Schematic and PCB import and Export of Protel design files". So this is supposed to enable an export capability for schematic and PCB to Protel format. However I cannot find any export menu feature other than exporting a STEP file.

[robertferanec]

I asked Altium to help you as I do not know background about their compatibility philosophy. Originally the compatibility between Altium products such CircutMaker - CircuitStudio - Altium Designer was very limited, based on user feedback they do sometimes changes.

When I was trying to import my board from Altium Designer to Circuit Maker, schematic was not a problem. For PCB, I exported it to Protel PCB format and opened it in Circuit Maker - there were some problems, but I think it would be possible to fix them. I guess, for Circuit Studio it may work the same/similar way. However, I have not tried import from Circuit Studio to Altium Designer nor Protel.

Maybe you could also ask your Altium provider and let us know.

[dspurell]

Super and thanks Robert for asking Altium to help. I sent them a similar message as here and indicated that I would pay a few hundred dollars more to have this included. It seems that the fact that it works in CircuitMaker, maybe it is an oversight in CircuitStudio that they can release a fix for it. I really appreciate you interceding with Altium on my behalf and hopefully this will help with sales of CircuitStudio for Element 14 / Newark. I will attempt to post feedback on your forum if Altium can resolve this. Oh by the way, I had really fabulous Altium support when getting CircuitStudio installed here at home. The gentlemen's name is William Markey in technical support in California. His email address is [email protected] and he is one of the best engineering support people I have dealt with at any company in my career.

[robertferanec]

I am curious what they will answer to you - I have not got any email back. One of the biggest things what put me off from using Circuit Maker or Circuit Studio is compatibility between them. But I understand that - Altium must be very careful about it, as they don't want to drive their Altium Designer customers away.

[dspurell]

So far Robert I have heard nothing back as of 2:20 am, September 9 as I write this. In the 4 product offerings that Altium now have, it seems that the overall market share increase, due mostly to Circuit Maker and Circuit Studio will soar. Having an aggressive mass marketing partner like Newark will, in my opinion, dominate the low cost PCB tool market. Altium Designer, by itself, does not address this vast segment. The ease of use of CircuitStudio will make it a winner, once they fix this item I identified for them and probably a few others, that will probably come up as it gains more user exposure. My exposure to CS so far is as follows as well as how I transitioned into it. At work, our software is Altium Designer and I had completed some earlier projects in KiCAD which has no translation to Altium. I follow EEVBlog quite closely and Dave Jones has excellent insight into Altium as well as most things related to electronics engineering. Myself, not being in a position to pay the 10K Altium Designer price tag, I desperately required compatibility to AD when I work at my home office. Your courses that you offer on your website are a fabulous means to get up to speed with Altium. I generalize, saying Altium, due to, apart from the ribbon interface structure, your course content is equally applicable to Designer, CS, and CM. Thank you for making these videos. In work for my customer, I do design work, manufacturing engineering, and quality control. I use whatever tools I need to get these jobs done and these include, SolidWorks, ECAD tools such as simulation, and PCB design. So for CircuitStudio, it's ribbon interface is intuitively structured for such as myself to pick up and use. Given that most tools are going this way, I don't spend time upfront, although, the keyboard shortcuts will take a while (View Fit) sticks in my brain from Protel 99 SE. I can understand that my friends in industry that use AD all the time do not have any problem with the menu system. The one thing I have been told so far as to limitations is that panelizing is not included in CS which for me is ok as I can either do it in AD or with a STEP export and import into SW. As far as the cost of CS, I would encourage everyone to negotiate with E14 / Newark. As soon as I get a reply from Altium / CS regarding my initial issue, I will be in touch.

[robertferanec]

Myself, not being in a position to pay the 10K Altium Designer price tag, I desperately required compatibility to AD when I work at my home office.

That may be exactly what Altium is worried about - companies buy only one Altium Designer and use CS for other engineers - that may be the reason for intentional incompatibility.

[robertferanec]

Here is the explanation from Altium. I hope it helps:

Since the CSPcbDoc file format was developed after AD Summer 09, AD S09 cannot recognize it. If the customer's work partner had AD15.1 or later they have an importer for CSPcbDoc files.

CircuitStudio does not export the AD files, rather AD imports the CS files. Schematics and Libraries are identical formats, with CS supporting SchLib, PcbLib and IntLib files, and can also place components from the Altium Content Vault.

CircuitStudio also has an importer for Altium Designer files older than AD10/12.

[dspurell]

Interesting answer from Altium Robert and thank you very much for the effort on my behalf.