Altium Designer

Altium Designer is without a doubt the best PCB design tool I have used.

We originally used EAGLE cad, I could not find the tool in the above menu. Altium Designer is miles better than EAGLE with a much better user interface and the ability to select parts intelligently with filters that greatly speed up the design process. The error checking and manufacturing outputs are much smoother and easier to run as well.

It's the first and only choice.

Altium is too expensive...

We had two licenses, purchased at a time when Altium Designer products were affordably priced. I can't remember how much they were, but they were not at a price where we even had to think about it at all. We wished to purchase a 3rd license a couple of years ago, actually, because we wanted more, but the price had risen so considerably that we were asked to test some less expensive alternatives, which we did. Suddenly, the pricing structure skyrocketed, and when more than one license and more than one subscription are wished, then it becomes serious money. However, we decided to continue with Altium Designer, as none of the alternatives matched up to it.

Altium Designer is much more intuitive and has a far more comprehensive library already available.

I'm more experienced with Altium, so I use it. If I had to pay for it myself I don't have a personal copy of Altium I would consider a free tool.

Overall Altium Designer is in another league compared to KiCad, especially the older versions. The whole design process works better in Altium Designer. The only thing I miss from KiCad is the disjointedness between symbols and footprints. Whilst less appropriate for production designs this made it very quick to draw one off PCBs with new parts as it wasn't necessary to recreate footprints.

Altium Designer is overly complex, particularly for smaller organizations that don't have a dedicated library, schematic, and layout personnel. KiCAD is simple to use and free.

Altium Designer is the industry standard for a reason. While KiCad can be used for complex and capable designs the software will fight you along the way. Further, the constantly breaking backward compatibility makes KiCad hard to maintain current versions and up to date with.

Altium Designer is far easier to use and has a simplified pricing model for use to forecast project costs. Altium Designer also has many value-added features such as Altium 365 and MCAD integration which we can use for no additional costs. Other vendors charge by feature. Altium Designer has no hidden costs.

It is certainly easier to get designs up and running with great support and constant software updates. The ability to work with or without the cloud is a great feature. The only downside to Altium Designer is that it does have a cost to it that is not cheap. Overall I think it is worth the investment.

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.

I prefer Altium Designer because it makes collaboration easy, and I have had a more enjoyable time using it. Altium Designer runs better on my computer than other software, and I have never run into a problem while using it. It allows me to really get into my work and focus on what matters, not whether or not the application will crash.