Altium Usage?

[Dave Flowerday]

I designed and built a custom PCB that we're using 4 of on this year's robot to work around limitations of the control system and to simplify wiring. I did not use Altium, though, as I only had about 3 days to design the schematic and lay out the board, so that seemed like an inopportune time to ramp-up on a new (and probably complex) software package. I've heard great things abut it, though.

Instead, I stuck with the standard suite that I've used for the last several years worth of Wildstang custom circuits and a few other projects. I use KiCad for drawing schematics and FreePCB for board layout. I imagine these tools are primitive compared to Altium, but they're simple and work great for what I use them for. Incidentally, the author of FreePCB is (or was, at least) a FIRST mentor, so that's pretty cool.

I'll try to grab some pictures tonight of some of the boards I've done using this setup.

Sadly, I just now reconfirmed one of the reasons I didn't attempt to use Altium: we're only given a temporary license that expires next January. I'd hate to put in a bunch of work laying out a board and then not be able to access it after that point. And, it's way too expensive to consider buying a permanent license for myself, so using it now and getting hooked would likely just be a disappointment later on when I don't have access to it anymore.