Altium free......ish for home hobyists.

Has anyone seen this from Altium ?

http://www.circuitmaker.com/#why_circuitmaker


The catch....

http://blog.circuitmaker.com/#Blogs/circuitmaker-community-09-30-14

Oh Goody. A new NonStarter project.

Rip

May be OK if you like having your stuff up in the "cloud". I don't, and have decided not to use cloud services at all. The closest I come to using a cloud service is having a Gmail account, and I keep nothing of real importance there. One "crisis" (real or contrived) and our dear leaders could flip the Internet "Kill Switch", not to mention privacy and security issues.

Perhaps the making of something useful. But, at what point does it stop being free? The rather nice web site doesn't seem to say. Crucial fact I would have thought. 'What is in the library?' would be another one.

I too wouldn't keep master copies of anything in 'the cloud' i.e. someone else's remote service, but I do find Dropbox pretty handy for keeping several machines in step. It is also quite magical that I can take a pic on my phone and then without any action except passing through a suitable wifi area I find them all on my desktop machine.

Won't the library for something like this just become swamped with millions of similar, untested and non-working circuits built by newbies? (Or by more experienced people who put the circuit up to help people, but don't have the time to test and document it?)

Ravenous said:

Won't the library for something like this just become swamped with millions of similar, untested and non-working circuits built by newbies? (Or by more experienced people who put the circuit up to help people, but don't have the time to test and document it?)

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I would think of it as a tool like this forum. People here post non-functional code all the time and through revisions it becomes something working. I'm sure there are people lurking that will take the code posted, try it and find some part still doesn't work and then fix that. Maybe they'll come back and post their version of the code. It's a great idea for open-source based products. I wouldn't use it for anything that you want to keep private or plan to make money off of.

Another angle to look at is the components used to make something. I have a growing Eagle library I've created because I either couldn't find them online or I wanted a tweaked layout to fit my design. Having all these in a central library would be nice but it's up to the user of all of this to test and weed out the crap.

As there are several good free un-crippled PCB layout programs available to download, have and use, (I use Free-PCB and KiCad,) I can't imagine why any sane person would want to use crippled software that is not on their own own PC to create PCB artwork that they don't own. Are these Altium folks on drugs? What is it they don't understand about human nature and common sense?

John West said:

Are these Altium folks on drugs? What is it they don't understand about human nature and common sense?

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They are most likely on drugs, have you been to the security line at the airport, seems like everyone has bags of prescription drugs.
The second part, as far as human nature, well you, like me, might be old and can't understand why people of their own accord give everything of themselves to facebook et al.

Times they are a-changin'

@JulianE - say it isn't so! - I hear that Bob Dylan appears on the AARP magazine cover [an old folks magazine]. -

Mr. Jones...

Dylan on the AARP magazine...not cool.

This forum is probably the most mature of all computer related forums, it has to be the reason why it's so polite. Even the slightest departure from good manners irritates me
no end. What would be 'normal' unpleasant discourse elsewhere is thankfully squelched here. I best stop the off topic blabber. Thanks everyone for a civilized corner of the internet.

julianE, you're welcome.

Having tried Altium before, I have to say it's really good compared to the free / cheap alternatives. It's not that you wouldn't be able to produce a board with Eagle, KiCad etc, but on many of those you spend time fighting the program and working around quirks.
I'm definitely going to try this for hobby projects, i don't consider the cloud based system being a negative. If someone else benefits from my hobby project, all the better. If the subscription fee is not too bad maybe for professional projects as well.

I'm avoiding 'The Cloud' wherever I can (not easy working in an IT type profession) for the simple reason I don't think it works! One major failure and you're without all your work.

This point was proven - only to my wife, but I enjoyed it - last week when our service provider had a random fault and we were left without internet access for nearly three days (I know, ages! It felt like months!).
After packing the kids off to bed and putting the TV on like normal, I booted my laptop and merrily worked away on a few things using the good ol' fashioned hard drive. Minutes later, I had the wife asking me why she couldn't edit this, or why she couldn't find that, etc. I had to explain how the internet/cloud works and try to stop grinning as I realised she keeps nearly everything online!

Breaking an internet connection hardly proves anything - happens quite often actually. That's why I have 2 backup wireless (3G and 4G )connections as well, they help me out of a jam if my cable connection goes haywire. And on the field I still have a backup too in case one has no cellular coverage(not too uncommon), or network breaks down(has happened a few times).
Though, I'm not relying 100% on the cloud services keeping all my stuff safe, I do make occasional offline backups too. Offline backup would be kinda nice feature to have in that Altium too..