> Hi aj, > > snip... > > and I'm surprised that Protel (and now Altium) hasn't gone a little > > further towards this end. One would think that the profits they've > > generated by doubling and then tripling the pricepoint for their EDA > > entry would easily absorb such a lost-leader to a literal handful of > > companies in payment for the long-term press they might receive as a > > result... (And I would not be at all surprised to learn that Orcad and > > the other HAVE implemented such investment strategies, to their > > long-term benefit) > > Altium have been running at a loss for a few years, I don't think most > users realise this. > > Darren
Altium seems to have real problems with understanding how their customers view their products, and how their customers view their attitude towards them. I recall a case of a user reporting shortcomings with the DRC procedures (for PCB files) - and he was *not* *just* complaining about shortcomings related to checking connections on the Internal Plane layers (which would be less than straightforward to fully implement, because of the "negative" nature of those layers), but about *other* shortcomings as well, which *shouldn't* be anywhere near as difficult to rectify. He suggested that a patch should be released on an ASAP basis, because of the critical nature of DRC procedures - but even after the following SP had been released, the issues which he had complained about still hadn't been rectified (and I strongly suspect *still* haven't been rectified). And I think that it is poor form to release files (and sometimes (sub)folders) which contain spelling mistakes, non-unique accelerator keys, menu entries *without* accelerator keys when they really *could* be provided, strings (in menu entries or within buttons in dialog boxes) which *don't* have a suffix of "..." when they *should* (which suffix is used to indicate that a dialog box will subsequently be invoked), strings which *do* have a suffix of "..." when they *shouldn't*, etc. I believe that users who see things like that have a good chance of wondering whether Altium is capable of writing satisfactory code for procedures of a complex nature, when the evidence suggests that they are not capable of properly handling tasks of a less demanding (and even relatively trivial) nature. Such users could wonder whether Altium is even capable of running a lemonade stand (or with less decorum, of organising a p*ss-up in a brewery, or of getting laid in a cathouse). I tried to rectify as many of those shortcomings as possible, but there was usually an element of "pulling teeth" when it came to actually making any changes to any of the associated files. When I first started at Altium, I had to go "over the top" of a then-fellow employee who didn't see anything wrong with assigning the 'Ctrl+P' shortcut key (in PCB files) to *both* invoking a printout from the (currently focused) PCB file *and* invoking a dialog box for configuring printouts!!!! (We arguably need an acronym of BMUS - for Beam Me Up Scotty.) (That shortcut key had been specified in a menu entry resource, and also in a toolbar button resource, and one of those types of resources always takes precedence over the other, so invoking that shortcut key would always have resulted in the same outcome. That said, it was still very bad form, as the text provided for any menu entry, and the "bubble" text displayed from any toolbar button (invoked after positioning the cursor over a button for an extended period of time), both include a reference to any shortcut key assigned to the associated resource.) I could continue, and maybe I will in following messages, but I'll finish for the time being by saying that another thing that they really don't seem to understand is that issues which (I think) should be rectified on an ASAP basis include those involving output (printouts, Gerber files, ODB files, BOM files, exported files, etc), DRC procedures, and "gotchas". (One example of a "gotcha" is that when a pad incorporates a hole, and that pad is *not* on the MultiLayer layer, then "blowouts" are *not* provided for that pad on *any* of the Internal Plane layers. And there are others...) Regards, Geoff Harland. [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]
