[sdiy] Altrium Designer/Protel

[Tom Arnold]

So, I've gotten several responces on Protel/Altium, and they all seem to fit
what I got from 4 hours with the Eval last night.  Its big, its expensive, its
sometimes not terribly stable, and you either like it or you don't.

It felt kinda like driving a VW Van full of bags of cement, up a hill, in high
wind to use the Used Car analogy...

I have a small set of personal criteria that I use for seeing how much time I'm
going to spend testing a package.

1. Quick look at depth of parts library.  How many?  Analog depth?
2. Quick look at existing devices.  Are multi-part devices broken up into
multiple parts?  Several packages I looked at packaged TL074's into large
multipin blobs.
3. Assuming multipart parts are multipart, how well does placing them work?
Does it automatically place PartA then B then C or do you place a bunch of A's
and then go back and unify them into a single part?
4. Place a few components ( 555 timer circuit ) and connect them.  Does it
"feel" right.  Do things snap to grid cleanly?
5. Create a new schematic symbol.  Judge painfulness.  Make it multipart.
6. Export netlist into PCB design.  
7. Create footprint for custom part.  Pain?
8. Do quick board layout for 555 timer circuit.  Rip up a track, does the
ratsnest reappear? ( yes, I like using ratsnests )
9. Can I arbitrarily create PCB features like copper pours and the like and
electrically link them, or do I have to do something non-intutive involving
tweaking the netlist?

There are of course other things I can't quite define that are on the mental
version of this list.  As short as this list is, its surprising how many things
fail it in some annoying way or another.  In fact, I looked at 20 some EDA
packages this weekend including a couple from my distant past, and they all
failed except, sofar, Proteus.  My "short list" right now in fact is just Eagle
and Proteus.  Eagle is far from ideal, but it has other advantages that might
offset its annoyances.

I'd be interested in hearing other persons pet peeves with EDA packages too,
might just remind me of something I've forgotten I hated.  One amusing thing
I've noted...  
In all cases ( PADS/Designworks/Orcad ) of the packages I used years ago,
they all annoy the heck out of me now.  Sadly.

-- 
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 - Tom Arnold       -  Free Synth DIY webspace http://www.sdiy.org 
 - SynthGeek        -
 - BBD Fanatic      -  "...is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" 
 - echo evho wjxo   -    Juanita Shrugs. "What's the difference?" 
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