A little bird told me that the vendor show at PCBWest was not very good for
anyone if you weren't interested in board vendors. She was pretty
disappointed, and so were we when she didn't bring back many booth goodies
to share :)
Makes me glad I didn't go...
--
George Patrick
Tektronix, Inc.
Central Engineering, PCB Design Group
P.O. Box 500, M/S 39-512
Beaverton, OR 97077-0001
Phone: 503-627-5272 Fax: 503-627-5587
http://www.tektronix.com http://www.pcb-designer.com
It's my opinion, not Tektronix'
-----Original Message-----
From: Ringle, Cyrus [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 15:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [DC] Soap Box - Altium absent at PCB West. Was it bad timing or is
Altium off TRACK with a different tool path?
Dear Altium and Brent Smith,
Being that I live in Arizona and it is spring season baseball time I would
rate Altium's decision to not participate at the PCB West as a swing and a
miss but, booo! Altium looked as if they did not even try.
I attended PCB West last week and was very disappointed not to see Altium
representing PCAD and Protel tools at the vendor show. Many people that I
talked to had similar things or lack of things to say about Altium. Most of
the conversation was about questioning the tools path or focus. I heard
rumors or was it rumors herd, that PCAD and Protel were going to merge into
one common tool. Maybe this would be a good thing but I really wonder if
anyone cares but the current users. I was not able to go to PCB West last
year but the year before ACCEL had a booth where ACCEL PCAD and Protel names
were all displayed at the same both. Looking at it then it looked as if
they were unsure of who they or their customers were. Now that you call
yourself Altium you decide to not even show up, worse you thought it better
to only showcase yet another tool Nexar.
Wake up Altium other PCB Design vendors are getting noticed while you look
unfocused and uninteresting to your current PCB Tool users. There are fewer
and fewer PCAD users in the Arizona area with both Mentor and Intercept
supporting local sales offices. I do not know of any major business other
than us that are currently using PCAD or Protel for new design. I would
hope that Altium will hear these words and make better communication
decisions before others are forced to make better tool decisions only by
moving to a different tool with support. PCAD's next release incorporating
LiveDesign oddly skips from PCAD2002 to PCAD2004. Am I just cynical or is
it odd how PCB tool vendors switch between having a design manager they are
moving away from promising stand alone best of breed or a new one that
promises converged nirvana. Personally I prefer the converged nirvana
myself because upgrades are easier to manage as a collective whole as
opposed to well it depends.
We at Inter-Tel use a Mentor tool for Schematic entry and the Cadence
SPECCTRA router along side of PCAD for PCB layout. Personally dealing with
all of these vendors and support issues has been both frustrating and
rewarding with PCAD support lately being heavily weighted on the side of
frustrating. I rarely really have the use for support but in the recent
past PCAD support calls have gone unanswered going to voice mail and emails
were slow to respond. The worse thing that I learned is knowing that if
anything that I requested really needed to be implemented in code it would
have to wait until the next release because they are already working on one
now. So I go on and solve my own problems after being frustrated and upset
at how many emails, phone calls it takes to get a, "no we do not intend to
even consider it until the next release." Why would I spend so much time
trying to improve my tool by dealing with support when I can simply solve my
own problems? I guess now I know better but I am not going to give up hope
because we have a lot invested in PCAD. I know that any solution to a new
tool will also require using PCAD while new designs are upgraded. I can
feel good that PCAD does do a real good job at our legacy design with little
change. I think you see the irony in my last statement.
The Embedded Systems Conference looks to be a much larger audience than PCB
West could ever be and LiveDesign and Nexar sounds exciting and may turn out
to be a real success for Altium. I hope the timing is just bad but if
LiveDesign and/or Nexar is the answer for Altium it would have been really
nice if we could have seen it at PCB West. Altium could have used PCB West
as a way of preparing for the bigger Embedded Systems Conference while
letting current and future new users know that better things are coming.
Please feel free to pass on my personal opinion about Altium's decision not
to attend PCB West.
The above personal opinions are just that opinions and they do not reflect
the views or opinions of my place of employment Inter-Tel, Inc.
Cyrus Ringle CID +
IPC Advanced Certified Interconnect Designer
CAD Engineer
Inter-Tel, Inc. http://www.inter-tel.com
7300 W. Boston St.
Chandler, AZ 85226
(480) 961-2263
mailto:[log in to unmask]
President of the Greater Phoenix Designers Council
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