Interesting Tom, ... I know Altium allows you to save the board in an ASCII format... the program is written in Delphi (Pascal) if I am not mistaken... And they allow users to write their own Delphi script routines to interface with the Altium Program... there are many such routines available to download. I don't know about this 'super secret' thing... except it sounds like you had a difficulty in getting them to work a utility into their program that would interface with the PCB Libraries group in some fashion... So far they have been very helpful to me... hmmm... I have a bunch of 'scripts' (25) that were written by users and some by Matt Berggren at Altium that do tasks within the Altium Program. As far as I know they have not disabled that capability... I'll have to ask the tech support guys about it.
Bill Brooks | Datron World Communications, Inc.
PCB Designer/Engineer | Office: 760-602-7004| Fax: 760-597-3777 | [log in to unmask]
3055 Enterprise Court, Vista, CA 92081 | www.dtwc.com
Performance You Require. Value You ExpectTM
-----Original Message-----
From: DesignerCouncil [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tom Hausherr
Sent: Friday, May 18, 2012 11:52 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [DC] What CAD tools do you use?
I was going to stay away from the topic - What is the best CAD tool? But I responded to - What CAD tool do you use?
I forgot to mention one MAJOR feature that PADS has and Altium does not...
PADS has an open ASCII interface to allow 3rd party programmers create fantastic tools for super automation that is pretty much unlimited. And Mentor is willing to generously help those 3rd party developers with free tools, support and even programming help. PADS puts the ASCII format instructions right in the installation or on the CD-ROM.
On the other hand, Altium is super secret Binary Code that they will never share with any 3rd party developers. I've never seen a 3rd party tool for Altium and Altium's response is - "We don't need to share our code with 3rd party developers. Just tell us what features you want and we'll develop them" - Good luck with that.
Bottom line is - PADS is Open Architecture (good for developers) and Altium is Closed (bad for developers).
However, Altium does do a great job at importing PADS data, but of course the only reason they can is because "PADS is OPEN"!
As far as which is a better tool, that is subject to the time someone spends on the tool. Everyone has bias opinions in this category. If I used Allegro for 20 years I'd be telling you it's the best tool in the world with the best features. I'm not sure anyone go compare CAD tool feature to feature. It's all about price, learning curve and can you get the job done. I'm sure I'd like Altium if I was an expert at it. It seems that everyone I know who uses Altium likes it and conversly, everyone I know who uses PADS likes it. Same with Allegro or OrCAD PCB Editor, Pulsonix, CADSTAR and Expedition. If you use it every day and can get the job done it's the best CAD tool for you.
Also, I don't want to buy features I'll never use. I wish I could buy televison service by the channels I watch, but no, I have to buy a package that has 500 channels and I only watch 10 of them. Sheesh!
Tom
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