Anablog

I received two interesting missives from the Altium circuit board layout company. The first was a deal to do a competitive upgrade from Orcad Capture for $995 (autoplay of video with audio). Now it sure looks to me like that would also include the SPICE package and Altium can do signal integrity simulation as well. The last I heard Orcad wanted $5 grand for Capture and another $5 grand for PSpice. Don’t be surprised if Cadence fights back with their own deals. One thing that Altium does right is that they can import and use Orcad schematics as well as Orcad libraries. If I remember right, they also export in Orcad format, all so you can adopt Altium with minimum pain. I have always loved Orcad Capture but now that Cadence is dropping Orcad Layout for Orcad Editor, a stripped down Allegro, I may start using Altium to get signal integrity and, if you can drop $5 grand for the layout package, Altium does matched differential trace lengths, better copper pours and rule based vias and other benefits. They also have 3-D views of the board and layers. The downside to Altium used to be stability, at least when it was Protel. My pals using the latest Altium say it is way more stable, although you will need a real CAD workstation to power it, no P3 running Win98. For some interesting history, read my interviews with two guys that worked on the original Orcad Layout package.

The other neat Altium communication I just received was a page on their attitude to software piracy. It reminds me of the best days of AutoCAD, when they had no real copy protection and anyone could get an AutoCAD 10 on a single floppy disk. A person at Altium told me they know that there are a ton of bootleg copies out there but explained they have an enlightened attitude for dealing with the problem. He told me that if someone stole an Altium to take it home and learn it, or used a bootleg copy to do work at home to supplement a legal copy that was running at work, well, he said that did not concern them too much. If you were a consultant doing board layout and charging for it, well yeah, they expect you to pay for the software and charge your clients accordingly, a policy I happen to agree with. If you were a big company, they would work out a deal to give you a price on a bunch of stand-alone copies or they would do a network license. I should warn you that when I worked a big company there was a dispute with Altium because my company thought the term “network license” meant “floating license” where any employee could pull a license off a server whereas Altium thought a “network license” meant that and specific employee had Altium on his computer and that computer would go on the network and retrieve a license only for him. Big difference, so make sure you understand if you are getting a floater or just a regular license whenever you buy CAD software from any company. I described NEC’s pricing differences between a regular and floating license in this blog.

In any event I want to applaud Altium’s sophistication in dealing with piracy in China. If they are to be believed they have a huge market penetration in China, with the only problem is that most of it is stolen from them. Rather than go on a rampage by trying to break everyone’s bootleg, they understand that the important first step is getting people to use and love the program. Once they have the market, they realize that intelligent companies will always want legitimate copies in order to get support. That is happening in China and don’t be surprised if Altium creates a market juggernaut in China by accepting that may people will pirate their stuff.