Do I need to upgrade Altium 10?

[embedded_sys]

My company currently has Altium Designer Release 10, but no one really knows how to use it, and I am well versed in Eagle. We are beginning to work on projects designed originally in Altium, and we are trying to decide if we need to buy the latest Altium release for $8000 and pay the $1900 yearly subscription or if we will be okay without it. The learning curve seems high on Altium, so we would like to decide before we start learning too much on a specific platform.

 

[dknguyen]

Wouldn't you just a do a cost-benefit analysis (or guesstimate) between redoing the original project in Eagle versus buying and learning Altium? Plus evaluating which approach is more futureproof?

Why not do an evaluation? For $8000 plus $1900 anually, they are probably willing to send someone down to demonstrate and try convince you how straightforward the software is, and try to sell the software to you.

 

[DerStrom8]

Altium Designer is FAR more powerful than Eagle and has become one of the industry standards. Yes, the learning curve is steep, but it is well worth the time and effort to learn. I used Eagle for several years before I started using Altium, and within a week of first starting I never looked back at Eagle. Altium is better in almost every way for most professional projects. If your company is serious about PCB design, Altium will win over Eagle every time, hands down. The toolset is much larger, shortcuts make opening tools and changing settings very quick and simple, and the tools themselves (like interactive routing) are just smarter than they are in Eagle. Definitely request a trial and hire someone to train you, and you won't regret the switch to Altium. That being said, don't use Altium 10 - that is way out of date. Use Altium 17. Altium 18 is the latest release, but is still somewhat buggy (they overhauled the UI in Altium 18).

 

[dougy83]

I found Altium much easier to learn than Eagle, and a hell of a lot more polished, though I don't currently use either

 

[large_ghostman]

There is many really good videos tutorials about altium on you tube, I also havnt used it past V10 though. I love things like the auto nudge to nudge tracks over when routing, i could never get my head around eagle.