2nd Best... would be Cadence. The features are similar but the user interface is 10 years behind. Similar cost, similar time to get up and running... similar maintenance...similar modularity.
Bill Brooks PCB Design Engineer , C.I.D., C.I.I. Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510 -----Original Message----- From: Brooks,Bill [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 09, 2004 9:55 AM To: 'Protel EDA Forum' Subject: Re: [PEDA] Good schematic/PCB development suite recommendation? The 'best' program out there by popular opinion... I hate to say this... Is supposedly Mentor Expedition. Now that being said... the reason it's the 'best' is not its ease of use. It does gate and pin swapping. It has a first class interactive autorouter. It can interface with REAL GOOD simulation tools and they can do simulation based upon the board geometry. The design team at Qualcomm was using Mentor to do the cell phones that they are so famous for... but it took having a Mentor rep onsite to deal with the issues that they had... and a lot of custom programming... it was not cheap. I taught a PCB design class at Palomar using Mentor... What a pain ... Mentor set us up with a minimal system... ala the PADS story...( see previous e-mail) They have a similar sales philosophy at Mentor, (may be why they bought PADS), add on modules that you need so you can customize 'till the cows come home'.... it's a very 'feature rich' environment... But... with that comes great difficulty in use and lots of time on the tech support hotline trying to figure out what went wrong... and why this thing here crashes, and what's this error code mean? Etc.. etc.. They have pretty good phone support for paying customers. Colleges, well they don't support the colleges as well as paying customers. They are a big company, and they make millions every year. The software costs about 40K a seat. Figure to spend a year to get it to the productive level you would expect it to be at for a design team. It's a big investment of man hours and money, but I hear once you get it up and running smoothly it's a performer. Also expect to pay your designers 100k or more a year. That goes with the territory as well, so I am told, unless you outsource to India. Our sister company used Mentor Board station and upgraded to Expedition... after a year and a half they couldn't seem to get any more productivity out of it and shut it down due to the oppressive maintenance cost. They are shopping their boards outside to a guy that uses PADS that gets them what they want quickly with out the large maintenance fees that Mentor charges for support. We use Protel here.. and so far, Altium does not charge us for support... I could set up a design group of 5 guys on Protel for the cost of one Mentor seat and maintenance. So if you have a year and half a million to spend, you might be able to get the 'best' for your team. And that might be an option for you, if it is, I can put you in touch with a good friend of mine who is the regional tech/sales guy for the whole southwest.... I know he will treat you and your company very well. Some folks need the capabilities that are not available in Protel and can afford to buy them. For the rest of us, there is Protel. Bill Brooks PCB Design Engineer , C.I.D., C.I.I. Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510 -----Original Message----- From: Ray Mitchell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 09, 2004 7:42 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEDA] Good schematic/PCB development suite recommendation? Our group has used Protel for years. I've tried to get everyone to change to something else for most of that time but the resistance has been fairly great. It seems that the the philosophy has been that pain you know is preferable to the pain you don't know. However, with the introduction of DXP/2004 everyone is starting to realize that a good tool is needed. Is there something that is generally considered to be the best? I realize that some of the tools cost significantly more but when the frustration, poor results, and wasted time are considered, it may not actually be that expensive. One of the guys here uses PADS and really likes it. If we make a change we don't want to make the same mistake we made with Protel again. Ray Mitchell Engineer, Code 2732 SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego, CA. 92152 (619)553-5344 [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
