|
Re: Altium Usage?
Eric,
While our team did not make use of the Altium Designer license that came in the kit, I personally have used it briefly as part of a graduate-level EDA course. I echo your praise for the software after several painful years with other electronic design programs.
Regarding Altium and PCB design in FIRST, I think that several factors are challenges to its widespread use:
1. A lack of mentors (and almost no students) experienced in PCB and hardware design.
2. The 6 week design and build timetable makes designing, verifying, and fabricating hardware (and especially PCBs) very difficult.
3. The capabilities of the new FRC control system and the components given to us (thanks Eric!) are more than sufficient for 99% of realistic FRC tasks. If we were still using BASIC Stamps, then I think that more teams would pursue hardware solutions to problems.
4. Even if I have the know-how, time, and motivation, using an FPGA would still be my first choice. In which case the FPGA-specific software (ex. Xilinx Tools, etc.) would probably be used instead.
Hope this helps!
|