Hello Phil, You are right, the higher subscription fee is a drawback until I start using Nexar. However, one has to make a decision and proceed, new boards need to be designed, being afraid is no option in business. And yes, Situs is not usable for me. When I look at its results, I ask myself how stupid it can go sometimes (I only used it to see how well it works, never for a real design). But also, is there a better one? I do a lot of multichannel very low frequency very low noise (<1uVpk/pk from 1-100 hz.) designs with high impedances, I think any autorouter will be worthless for that. Further, in my designs I almost always use buried laservia's in SMD pads and blind ones under them. I did not search too well, but is there any autorouter that can handle this efficiently?
Before I selected Altium, I did some asking around at design houses. I heard terrible stories about the big companies. Perhaps my favourable offer came because I had a subscription and felt I Altium should offer what I paid for: an upgrade including FPGA. That's perhaps the advantage of a subscription. Nobody can predict what the Altium policy will be next year, including themselves I think. But next year I will evaluate again: what did I get for what I paid for, do I need more improvements and is the fee reasonable for another year. Then I will decide if I will subscribe again or I will stick with what I have for some years. Ton ----- Original Message ----- From: "Phillip Stevens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Protel EDA Discussion List" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 7:51 PM Subject: Re: [PEDA] Snake Oil vs Pricing Ready to upgrade to 2006? > > That decision seems like it is going to be made for me I am afraid. > > If one did not choose to upgrade at $2995, why does it become more > attractive to upgrade as the price pushes ever higher over time ($3495, > $4000, etc). I don't need the CPU core stuff, or the Tasking stuff. > I do want the VHDL, FPGA, and FPGA pin swap capabilities that I > previously had in AD & SP4. These do not seem to be available in AD 6 > without upgrading to Nexar. They seem to have "rewritten the deal" > here, and pulled the rug out from under their customers feet. > That's just not right. > > And it's not just the current upgrade costs, it is the additional future > upgrade costs at the higher product level if one does upgrade to Nexar. > > For me it is mostly the lack of attention to Situs development, and > the removal of the previous VHDL capabilities. (unless one upgrades to > Nexar). > > I also swore to myself at the time, that if I did not get that world > class > autorouter that I thought I was buying into when I bought into DXP, that > I > was "done". And so, here we are. > > Doing a presto-chango-version-number, and asking for more $$$ has not > fixed the autorouter issues that I have. > > ---Phil > > rbn> For those out there that do not need the Nexar like functionality... > are you > rbn> continuing with Protel? > > > > > > > > ____________________________________________________________ > You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum > > To Post messages: > mailto:[email protected] > > Unsubscribe and Other Options: > http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com > > Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > ____________________________________________________________ You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum To Post messages: mailto:[email protected] Unsubscribe and Other Options: http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
