Altium and Element 14 released a new software called CircuitStudio. I was curious how it looks. I made this video, so you can see the menu & options of CircuitStudio and compare it with Altium Designer.
CircuitStudio Overview – Cheaper Altium Designer?
Published
Welldone Blog 
How about the PCB editor? How does it compare to the Altium one. Is the interactive router there, and is it as capable?
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Hi Mikael, I have not tried to route or do any project in CS. I only went through the menu – for me the big minus is PCB incompatibility, so I was not really investigating deeper.
After your question I had a look at the PCB again, and there is interactive routing, including the modes like Ignore Obstacles, Push, Stop, Autoroute. However, I normally need differentail pair routing – and this could be a problem in CS.
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Ahhhh. So that was why the Rexboard didn’t show. Pity. Maybe it works the other way around, i. e from CS to AD. Would make sense from a business point of view maybe. I am sure more strong/weak point will be posted on the net in the coming weeks. Anyway, thank you for the quick walk through!
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According to my information (may not be 100% accurate), Altium Designer will be able to import CS PCB file, but CS will not be able open/import AD PCB files. Even AD will be able to open it, AD will not be able to save it as CS PCB file.
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Noticed here http://t.co/FY1kxrU7UO that diffpair routing is supposed to be available. But it would be strange if you can’t define rules for diffpairs. Ah well. It does seem that Altium is introducing CS at a price point that allows them to compete in a cheaper class, and at the same time charge even more for AD and still be much cheaper than Mentor etc.
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Nope. Don’t waste your time with Cirtcuit Studio. The half-price ain’t even worth it.
I am still having problems licensing which takes them forever to fix.
I called Altium directly. they told me they don’t support Circuit Studio while element14 points their finger at Alitum.
Customer support is extremely poor.. I suspect circuit studio is already dead.
Orcad has much better support.. at least the tech guys are much more responsive than element14/altium
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