Altium Designer vs. DraftSight

In a professional environment of design and manufacture of electronic equipment, without a doubt, ALTIUM DESIGNER turns out to be the best option! However, the high cost of its license makes us consider the option of using lower-cost alternatives. In the case of small companies or independent developers, free options turn out to be more appropriate, although some functions are not implemented and require more work from the designer.

We put it through its paces with our drawings and it works fine. We do a lot of wiring diagrams and industrial control panel layout drawings, so we use a lot of its 2D capabilities. I would not use it in a multi-user environment where you have multiple designers working on one project at a time. This software makes no provisions for allowing multiple users to work at the same time on the same drawing and has no native version control. And because of their poor software control, DraftSight many times put out versions that are "crashy", which would make a lot of people very unproductive very quickly. I would look at other products for larger projects like that.

• You can easily bring in a dwg format drawing into the programme and it will display the information just as well as AutoCAD.
• The programme supports shortcut features or one-click buttons for the most commonly used operations.
• Script files can be used which is a bonus.

• Draftsight could run better on lower performace machines, even on high performance machines there can be some lag now and again.
• There used to be a more basic subscription version which was perfect for our needs, now lowest subscription is more expensive. Bringing back the standard version would be great.
• Including hash pattern files would be very useful.

It has given us, a small startup, the ability to compete effectively with far larger competitors by evening the playing field at a low cost.

Easy if you know how to use CAD software. But is not very difficult to learn using DraftSight if this is your first CAD software. As soon as you get in to it the work flow will save you a lot of time and its simple interface is very nice.

Other than a bug created by a VAR tech support that didn't get resolved until I installed the next version, DraftSight has worked fine.

We have never experienced any such problem. Pages load quickly, and this may partly be an artifact of using top- end hardware. And we have never had customers complain of issues with opening and using our exported files.

Technical support seems to be overseas with broken English and difficulty to read English. I asked for a trial license to try the fix but it was declined. Ask pratiksha.dahotre and gayatri.keskar for details. In summary, they released a broken version, I helped to fix by providing feedback and error logs. They claimed it is fixed but I can't test it.

An easy to use User Guide would help new and inexperienced designers get up and running even quicker. Ideally, intelligent prompts in pop ups would be wonderful, but at this cost it is a lot to ask.

My relationship with ALTIUM DESIGNER is from the time I was a student of the Electronic Engineering career, at the university, it was the official tool to carry out the electronic practices and simulations of the circuits studied in class. Then I used ALTIUM DESIGNER as an independent consultant, however, at present I am using KiCad EDA as a design tool since it is free and open-source, although I have a high rating for KiCad EDA, it's a choice over ALTIUM DESIGNER is only because of its economic aspect.

While SketchUp is free, DraftSights cost is minimal and its abilities are much greater. It is so much easier to layout and modifies a system design. Since DraftSight is compatible with all versions of CAD, it makes it easy to collaborate with customers on their specific system design. We spend less time and see greater sales on our projects.

As a startup, we really appreciate scalable software or tools, and because we use it for diverse types of projects, flexibility is key.

• Although I am not currently using ALTIUM DESIGNER, it is only for the price of its license. However, the use of the platform reduces work times, generating a positive impact on the associated costs.
• When working with colleagues in other countries, ALTIUM DESIGNER is the tool taken as a reference, its use is very useful when exchanging information and files.

• I have been able to save countless hours by making drawing corrections myself. Previously, I would have had to wait hours or days to get drawings back from our customers.
• In the past year I would say that DraftSight has saved roughly 200 hours. That time would have been spent waiting for our customers to make corrections and then send them back to us.