4 ms·

Anybody who needs real PCB features isn't using Alitum. They're using Mentor Xpedition or Cadence Allegro.

by bsder 3y ago

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
A company down the road from me building automotive electronics including for Formula 1, would beg to differ.
- OJFord 3y ago
  By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. No doubt there's a lot of complexity in F1 electronics, but they certainly have more space, cooling, reasonable environment, etc. to work with than some industries. (Not to disagree that it was dismissive and a lot of serious work gets done with Altium Designer, and for that matter Kicad, of course.)
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. I duuno man, at a startup I worked at, the graybeard EE was doing 2.4GHz RF design on software cheaper and more rudimentary than Altium, let alone Cadence. So I'm always rolling my eyes when someone uses the world "real" as some sort of macho flex with vague meaning like "real men", "real work", "real engineering", "real software development", as if only their particular example makes the world go round and scoff at everything else like it's unimportant child's play.
    - vanchor3 3y ago
      Sure, you can do 2.4GHz on a 2 layer board with even the simplest programs, or even Inkscape really. The hard part is arguably knowing the write math involved to design with signal integrity in mind. When you start working with very high speed things like DDR4/DDR5 on 14 layer boards you could do it with simpler software, but I don't see why you would. The time saved with the design tools and signal integrity simulations would likely be worth much more than the licensing cost, especially if you're bigger than a small hobby shop. Not to mention the money saved on having software that can identify mistakes early on when the PCBs alone can cost thousands. And then there's all the other bits like conforming to standards, providing deliverables in a format that the next place down the line deems "acceptable" (or they're just picky), as interoperability with other teams, because sometimes you're just one small part of the design process.
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    > By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. Altium has good support for high speed design features. (Source: Have done many high-speed designs in Altium and Allegro) Altium is quite common at tech companies. I think maybe the parent commenter was being sarcastic?
    - OJFord 3y ago
      Oh I know. I was just trying to offer an interpretation. > I think maybe the parent commenter was being sarcastic? Yeah, see my direct reply to them (before my comment above), I honestly don't know.
    - bsder 3y ago
      Not being sarcastic. Altium doesn't even remotely compare to something like Xpedition or Allegro. Mostly I was refuting: > There’s a reason professionals and organizations are paying huge amounts of money for Altium licenses still. Uh, no. They're not actually paying huge amounts--that's part of the reason Altium got bought. Professionals use professional tools--Altium doesn't qualify. I really do not understand what Renesas thinks they are going to get from this. The autorouter is terrible. The constraint mechanisms suck. Co-design with mechanical CAD is poor. Large designs slow it to a crawl. Design sharing is incredibly weak. Source control and database integrations are laughably bad. I can go on and on and on. There are solid reasons why professionals pay an order of magnitude more money for Xpedition and Allegro over Altium. Sure, I have designed high-speed digital as well as high-GHz RF designs in weak PCB products (including both Altium and KiCad)--that's not a badge of honor, though. When time and efficiency actually matters, you put on your big boy boots, suck it up and cough up real money for real tools. > Altium is quite common at tech companies. This is fine. As is using KiCad. 99% of companies are not doing anything complex enough for it to matter.
      - javawizard 3y ago
        It's awfully rich saying: > Anybody who needs real PCB features isn't using Alitum and: > 99% of companies are not doing anything complex enough for it to matter in the same breath - it really doesn't do your argument any favors. I can't see a world in which only 1% and "anybody who needs real PCB features" are congruent statements.
OJFord 3y ago
I honestly couldn't tell if you're being serious or doing Real Programmers, but after a quick search Mentor Xpedition seems to be a Siemens product, and I know (just from YouTube videos of people using Fusion360 or Solidworks) their 3D CAD package is the 'big boy' one for mech engineers, so I'm leaning to the former? I'm just surprised I haven't even heard of them before (I've heard of Cadence but not confident about Allegro) - though I did manage my quasi-EE degree I think without ever touching PCB design! (I've done so before and since, but just Eagle, Kicad, and.. I think it was called CircuitWizard at school.) As a massive tangent, I've repeatedly since thought that CircuitWizard or something like it (or whatever it's called) would actually be great for the sort of Arduino hobbyist/newcomer - it had a really good built-in component library, but quite small, and (crucially for that audience IMO) no or little choice, so really simplified. Like I need a mux of this size, or I need 4 NAND gates or whatever, and you just place that part and it lists the BOM - you're not bogged down with an overwhelming choice where to a newcomer it probably doesn't matter, or at least there's an obvious non-specialised choice.
- tverbeure 3y ago
  All the PCB designs that I’ve been exposed to professionally, both in-house and at customers in Taiwan (think ODMs for Acer, Asus, …), were designed with Cadence Allegro. These are all complex designs with high-speed interfaces (PCIe, DDR5, …), 12+ layers etc. Ironically, It’s only when I started doing hobby electronics that I learned about the existence of Altium. (That’s not a value judgement of Altium, I honestly don’t know how they compare.)
- delfinom 3y ago
  Mentor used to be independent but got bought by Siemens. In general, Mentor and Cadence packages are where the serious electrical engineering happens where you are talking about routing gigahertz signals and simulating it. Even thermal simulations are a big deal in those suites.
- vrinsd 3y ago
  1 point by vrinsd 14 minutes ago | root | parent | next | edit | delete [–] I won't be as snide as bsder, but I will say Expedition and Allegro let you handle some crazy complex designs, which are much more of a challenge with Altium. Things like DDR3/4/5, 10+ layer PCBs, complex design rules, etc. Personally I think Expedition is much much easier to use than Allegro ; for the curious it was actually created by a company called 'Veribest' that Mentor later acquired. Having using Altium (all the way back to when it was Protel 98/99SE) it's gained a lot of impressive capability but it never shed a number of weird UI oddities. I'm really happy to see the direction KiCad is going, having used it circa v3 era, it's MUCH more usable.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Always42 3y ago
"real PCB" meaning massive boards with ton of layers. Personally I think this is a bad take, as there are many 4-8 layer boards that can be made fine with allium and those pcb's probably feel pretty "real".
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  Yep. If you were a gaming PC motherboard PCB manufacturer needing 8 layers, blind micro vias, and G-code output for drilling, good luck with that using anything but those enterprise EDA suites mentioned. EDA users exist along multiple dimensions including level of detail, subassembly/mechanical/BOM management, customizability, system/signal simulation/verification, automation, learning curve, and cost.
1letterunixname 3y ago
Once upon a time c. 2002, I used OrCAD (since folded into Allegro?) for industrial analog and mixed signal boards. It was relatively easy and usable compared to the alternatives. I'm wondering if Allegro is usable today or has a steep learning curve for prosumer individual EEs.
- vrinsd 3y ago
  Cadence bought OrCAD and kept the schematic editor but the layout is Allegro, not the layout tool that historically was part of OrCAD. Allegro IMO does have a pretty steep learning curve, I think it's UI is quite archaic, it really hasn't see any serious improvements in over 20-years. I'd suggest Kicad if you wanted to do anything personal.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Anybody who needs real PCB features isn't using Alitum. They're using Mentor Xpedition or Cadence Allegro.

by bsder 3y ago

Anybody who needs real PCB features isn't using Alitum. They're using Mentor Xpedition or Cadence Allegro.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

A company down the road from me building automotive electronics including for Formula 1, would beg to differ.

OJFord 3y ago
By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. No doubt there's a lot of complexity in F1 electronics, but they certainly have more space, cooling, reasonable environment, etc. to work with than some industries. (Not to disagree that it was dismissive and a lot of serious work gets done with Altium Designer, and for that matter Kicad, of course.)
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. I duuno man, at a startup I worked at, the graybeard EE was doing 2.4GHz RF design on software cheaper and more rudimentary than Altium, let alone Cadence. So I'm always rolling my eyes when someone uses the world "real" as some sort of macho flex with vague meaning like "real men", "real work", "real engineering", "real software development", as if only their particular example makes the world go round and scoff at everything else like it's unimportant child's play.
  - vanchor3 3y ago
    Sure, you can do 2.4GHz on a 2 layer board with even the simplest programs, or even Inkscape really. The hard part is arguably knowing the write math involved to design with signal integrity in mind. When you start working with very high speed things like DDR4/DDR5 on 14 layer boards you could do it with simpler software, but I don't see why you would. The time saved with the design tools and signal integrity simulations would likely be worth much more than the licensing cost, especially if you're bigger than a small hobby shop. Not to mention the money saved on having software that can identify mistakes early on when the PCBs alone can cost thousands. And then there's all the other bits like conforming to standards, providing deliverables in a format that the next place down the line deems "acceptable" (or they're just picky), as interoperability with other teams, because sometimes you're just one small part of the design process.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. Altium has good support for high speed design features. (Source: Have done many high-speed designs in Altium and Allegro) Altium is quite common at tech companies. I think maybe the parent commenter was being sarcastic?
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Oh I know. I was just trying to offer an interpretation. > I think maybe the parent commenter was being sarcastic? Yeah, see my direct reply to them (before my comment above), I honestly don't know.
  - bsder 3y ago
    Not being sarcastic. Altium doesn't even remotely compare to something like Xpedition or Allegro. Mostly I was refuting: > There’s a reason professionals and organizations are paying huge amounts of money for Altium licenses still. Uh, no. They're not actually paying huge amounts--that's part of the reason Altium got bought. Professionals use professional tools--Altium doesn't qualify. I really do not understand what Renesas thinks they are going to get from this. The autorouter is terrible. The constraint mechanisms suck. Co-design with mechanical CAD is poor. Large designs slow it to a crawl. Design sharing is incredibly weak. Source control and database integrations are laughably bad. I can go on and on and on. There are solid reasons why professionals pay an order of magnitude more money for Xpedition and Allegro over Altium. Sure, I have designed high-speed digital as well as high-GHz RF designs in weak PCB products (including both Altium and KiCad)--that's not a badge of honor, though. When time and efficiency actually matters, you put on your big boy boots, suck it up and cough up real money for real tools. > Altium is quite common at tech companies. This is fine. As is using KiCad. 99% of companies are not doing anything complex enough for it to matter.
    - javawizard 3y ago
      It's awfully rich saying: > Anybody who needs real PCB features isn't using Alitum and: > 99% of companies are not doing anything complex enough for it to matter in the same breath - it really doesn't do your argument any favors. I can't see a world in which only 1% and "anybody who needs real PCB features" are congruent statements.

OJFord 3y ago

I honestly couldn't tell if you're being serious or doing Real Programmers, but after a quick search Mentor Xpedition seems to be a Siemens product, and I know (just from YouTube videos of people using Fusion360 or Solidworks) their 3D CAD package is the 'big boy' one for mech engineers, so I'm leaning to the former? I'm just surprised I haven't even heard of them before (I've heard of Cadence but not confident about Allegro) - though I did manage my quasi-EE degree I think without ever touching PCB design! (I've done so before and since, but just Eagle, Kicad, and.. I think it was called CircuitWizard at school.) As a massive tangent, I've repeatedly since thought that CircuitWizard or something like it (or whatever it's called) would actually be great for the sort of Arduino hobbyist/newcomer - it had a really good built-in component library, but quite small, and (crucially for that audience IMO) no or little choice, so really simplified. Like I need a mux of this size, or I need 4 NAND gates or whatever, and you just place that part and it lists the BOM - you're not bogged down with an overwhelming choice where to a newcomer it probably doesn't matter, or at least there's an obvious non-specialised choice.

tverbeure 3y ago
All the PCB designs that I’ve been exposed to professionally, both in-house and at customers in Taiwan (think ODMs for Acer, Asus, …), were designed with Cadence Allegro. These are all complex designs with high-speed interfaces (PCIe, DDR5, …), 12+ layers etc. Ironically, It’s only when I started doing hobby electronics that I learned about the existence of Altium. (That’s not a value judgement of Altium, I honestly don’t know how they compare.)
delfinom 3y ago
Mentor used to be independent but got bought by Siemens. In general, Mentor and Cadence packages are where the serious electrical engineering happens where you are talking about routing gigahertz signals and simulating it. Even thermal simulations are a big deal in those suites.
vrinsd 3y ago
1 point by vrinsd 14 minutes ago | root | parent | next | edit | delete [–] I won't be as snide as bsder, but I will say Expedition and Allegro let you handle some crazy complex designs, which are much more of a challenge with Altium. Things like DDR3/4/5, 10+ layer PCBs, complex design rules, etc. Personally I think Expedition is much much easier to use than Allegro ; for the curious it was actually created by a company called 'Veribest' that Mentor later acquired. Having using Altium (all the way back to when it was Protel 98/99SE) it's gained a lot of impressive capability but it never shed a number of weird UI oddities. I'm really happy to see the direction KiCad is going, having used it circa v3 era, it's MUCH more usable.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Always42 3y ago

"real PCB" meaning massive boards with ton of layers. Personally I think this is a bad take, as there are many 4-8 layer boards that can be made fine with allium and those pcb's probably feel pretty "real".

1letterunixname 3y ago
Yep. If you were a gaming PC motherboard PCB manufacturer needing 8 layers, blind micro vias, and G-code output for drilling, good luck with that using anything but those enterprise EDA suites mentioned. EDA users exist along multiple dimensions including level of detail, subassembly/mechanical/BOM management, customizability, system/signal simulation/verification, automation, learning curve, and cost.

1letterunixname 3y ago

Once upon a time c. 2002, I used OrCAD (since folded into Allegro?) for industrial analog and mixed signal boards. It was relatively easy and usable compared to the alternatives. I'm wondering if Allegro is usable today or has a steep learning curve for prosumer individual EEs.

vrinsd 3y ago
Cadence bought OrCAD and kept the schematic editor but the layout is Allegro, not the layout tool that historically was part of OrCAD. Allegro IMO does have a pretty steep learning curve, I think it's UI is quite archaic, it really hasn't see any serious improvements in over 20-years. I'd suggest Kicad if you wanted to do anything personal.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]