I was misled into buying the DXP upgrade back a couple of years ago. In
these two years I have tried DXP and DXP/2004 several times and was
disgusted every time. I have done a couple of complete designs with
them and mentored a few people that are using it. I have not tried SP3,
but DXP/2004 with SP2 was still not worth the upgrade. I started using
it for a project last month and after wasting 4 days, started from
scratch with 99SE and was done in less than 4 days.
If you want any of the new functionality, then maybe the upgrade is
worthwhile. If all you do is Schematic & PCB like I do, it is just not
worth it. The whole interface is severely degraded. Everyone would
agree that it is different and to me it is worse, hence the
classification of degraded.
The new schematic interface is especially annoying. When I put down a
connection I want it to go where I tell it to go, not where some geek in
a cubicle hanging upside down from the bottom of the globe decided it
ought to go.
The whole selection/focus thing in PCB is inefficient. Yes, it is now
"Windows Compliant" but the old way made more sense for the PCB and was
faster and more efficient. It is the difference between having a
"Windows Standard" knife that you need to use with your steak, your
bread, your vegetables and your butter, or having specialized bread,
butter, steak and boning knives plus a cleaver.
The whole interface has a look which makes things harder to read. If
you double click on a via for example, the hole and diameter are there,
but they are no longer in a box but rather printed as standard text on a
standard background and hence do not stand out. Your eyes have to
search for them and focus on the numbers. Plus they are not next to
each other, so there is more eye effort and refocusing. Yes we are
taking fractions of seconds for eye movement and refocusing, but if you
are doing something thousands and thousands of times a day, fractions of
seconds add up to hours. And if you happen to be using anything other
than standard size fonts, the numbers spill their spaces overwriting
other text and become completely illegible. Obviously no one has tested
the product under any conditions other than whatever the developers
happen to develop it under. The same "text blending into the
background" problem exists in virtually all dialogues.
Enough people have written enough about the query language that I will
not bead that horse again. That horse should be dead by now :) The
problem with it is that it is not really documented and simple everyday
global tasks take more keystrokes, more mouse movement and more eye
focusing. Actually that is the case with most commonly used things,
resulting in lower productivity and higher eye strain. The increased
eyes strain further limits both your productivity and limits the number
of productive hours you can work at a time or in a day. Obviously no
one at Altium that designed the user interface either used the system or
was familiar enough with these issues to pay any attention to them.
Last, but not the least, the software runs slower -- a LOT slower.
Maybe the real bottom line is this: If you are a "lite" user, you may
not find much of a slowdown, you may even find a gail. But if you are a
"power user" you will severely degrade your output and are better off
staying with 99SE.
Regards,
Hamid
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
UPS just drove in with a package of Altium's latest sales pitch to try to get
us old stick-in-the-mud 99SE users to upgrade by June 30. If all the
marketing-ese were actually factual, and all those features actually worked, it just
might be worthwhile to upgrade. Can anybody here give any insight, pro or con,
on whether with SP3, DXP is finally worth the upgrade $$$??
Steve Hendrix
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