Altium Designer

There is always room for improvement on some features. But overall I enjoy using Altium Designer and I find it very user friendly.

Altium Designer is extremely easy to use in my opinion, but some of the more advanced features are difficult to find documentation on. I can find documentation on some of the older versions of Altium Designer, but it is not immediately apparent how to do certain operations since there are so many supported avenues of getting something done. For instance, the query language is extremely powerful, but I did not know when to use it until I had used Altium Designer for over a year.

I find it works simply and intuitively.

This is obviously a complex software tool, so sometimes trying to do simple things might turn out to be more complex than it should.

With practice, Altium Designer is quite straightforward to use and capable of producing excellent-looking schematic drawings and PCBs regardless of the complexity. What we do not like is that dozens of settings are only accessible by going up to the system setting preference menus. If a particular function needs to be switched off or changed for a single operation, going up to the setting preference menu, making a temporary change, doing the work, and then going back to the menu again to change it back is tiresome and often disturbs the workflow.

Easy to use software. Sometimes need to google what I'm looking for from the main menus.

Pretty steep learning curve with lots of tribal knowledge. I think the tutorials are good but it could be much more intuitive.

I feel like Altium has a steep learning curve. I was fortunate to have had a course on how to use Altium when I was first entering the industry. However, Altium can be quite complicated for newer users.

The learning curve was very steep. There are a lot of hidden menus and functions only accessible via keyboard shortcuts which are hard to find out about. The online documentation is invaluable in this regard.

Significant feedback given to previous questions. In particular:
- Poor functionality for key features
- Library functionality, in my experience, is the most frustrating engineering tool I have ever used
- Reduced usability over time
- Radical fluctuations in pricing reduces trust, in my opinion

There are some difficult to find features and each new feature added does not always match the same style as any other feature added. Yet the design core of the product is incredibly function and easy to use.

Altium Designer is, by far, the easiest to use ECAD program in existence - and we’ve used a lot (OrCAD, PADS, Xpedition, EAGLE, etc.). Altium Designer has a very intuitive user interface and easy to understand and navigate. Even our project management team, who may not have technical backgrounds, can use Altium Viewer for the purposes of reviewing and handoff to our customers.

When you start up Altium Designer for the first time, it is intimidating to look at, but once you start with a simple PCB to learn on, you quickly get a good feel for the navigation and how the package works. The shortcuts are hard to get used to unless you are a dedicated layout engineer, so that could be improved, but overall it does quickly get someone from start to finish quickly and efficiently.

It is very simple and easy to use once a person has understood all the intricacies and shortcuts the program has, but to someone new it can be a significant barrier to entering the world of PCB design. Being new, you will not be able to navigate Altium Designer and will constantly find yourself googling tutorials, shortcuts, or finding how to do simple tasks, like design a round PCB.