Hi I've had a lot of requests for this video to take a look at the new Out Iam Circuit Maker software that hasn't actually been released yet. but it is in open public beta so you can actually download the thing and check it out and actually use it for yourself. But yes, it is still in beta, so bear that in mind Now as many of you will know: I used to work at Out Him I work there for about four years, but I've been using Out Iam slash Protel since about all the mid to late 1980s. So I'm a long time loyal user of it and just like every single loyal Altium customer I have a love-hate relationship with them.

and yes, I did do that video about what they should do when they release this free version. So let's take a look at what they've done, shall we? By the way, if you haven't seen my previous video linked in down below. Now first of all, Circuit Maker Out Him have actually bought back an old product which they bought. They used to sell a product called Circuit Maker 2000 and I actually liked Circuit Maker 2008.

It had a quite a good simulator in it I used it for quite some time as a simulator, but no, the new circuit maker has absolutely nothing to do and shares no code with the original Circuit Maker 2000. And whilst Circuit Maker does share code from the full Altium Designer product, it is actually a completely different beast. Now, my biggest recommendation is that they should have a completely free version just like Eagle do. Well, they have a limited restricted version and just like many other companies out there, have a free version of the tool.

Have they done that? You bet your ass they've done that. In fact, they've gone a lot further than what I thought they would and they've released everything for free. This is not a crippled version. There's no layer limits.

There's no size limits. There's no limitations whatsoever. It's a full like professional level or that remains to be seen. PCB level package with no limitations whatsoever except for a couple of little gotchas which we're going to take a look at.

But you do get everything. It's a fully functional tool, not crippled at all. Awesome! Got to give him huge props for that. Big thumbs up.

This is different to what I originally got as a preview back before they started doing anything public with it. Well, their original intention was to have like a just like Eagle to have a crippled free version of the software and you could actually pay some money to like, you know, for example, upgrade it to four layers or eight layers. You can pay a small amount of money. It was, you know, like sub $50 or something like that to increase the size of the board.

for example, the number of nets or whatever. They hadn't actually finalized it, but that was their original approach to actually doing circuit make, which didn't have a name back then, but they completely abandoned this and went well. If we're going to make it free, we're going to make everything free so they've given you the whole thing. no strings attached now.

Whilst I did really think that their original concept for having a free version plus some really realistic, affordable paid options to increase the capable of their product I Thought they're on an absolute winner there and they would have taken the market by storm, but I can understand why they've gone for the completely free approach and giving it away. Now here is the big trap with this thing. Yes, it is a professional PCB designed tool. Yes, it is completely free.

They don't charge you for anything at all. There are no optional extras to buy on this thing. but the catch is while it's a program that which runs local on your machine, it is cloud and community base. That is their focus.

They want to develop a have a free piece of your design tool that the entire open source hardware community can get behind and used. and well, okay, it's a very noble cause and I've got to give them props and huge thumbs up for attempting to do this. It's awesome and just before we have a play around with it in general I Thought I'd just go through a list of pros and cons up front here that I've basically found in my initial impression of this thing. The main one is, of course it is completely free.

There are no layer restriction, size restrictions, anything else. it is a full professional PCB package it's got locked. It's got the you know, the famous Altium art 3d view and all that sort of stuff. It's you know, basically as pretty much as fully functional as the regular Altium software may not be as productive as the regular Altium Designer software, but it is basically users of majority of Artyom's advanced PCB design technology so it's fantastic.

No limitations there whatsoever and it's got collaboration tools as well which I'll go into so you can set up teams and things like that and have multiple people working on your projects and stuff like that. So I go into my project here and I can add people to my team and they can see my projects and have multiple people. That's actually great for open source hardware projects which it's like community based projects which this thing is specifically targeting. It's got version control and forking users.

it's Altium zone in online get type you know, repository with releases and you can fork it and you know, do all that sort of jazz it. I Don't believe it's a compatible with like git or anything other third-party version control tools. I think it's all just LTM built in. so it's a community based tool and it can import a few different formats.

but the two important ones are Altium and also a DXF which is rather important for loading in things as we'll see later. I've loaded in the Arduino Uno files here directly from the board and it hasn't done a terrific job, but it has worked like it didn't throw up any errors. so at least get you started. So that's awesome that it can import Ego in a few older Altium Designer formats.

and here are the downsides to it: It requires an Internet connection to make the thing work. You cannot start the thing or otherwise work on your projects without an internet connection. That may be a showstopper for a lot of people right there. So if I actually try to start circuitmaker, it will load.

Here we go. But what? Look I Can't see without an internet connection. I've physically pulled the ethernet plug from my Internet connection and look, we just can't do anything I Can't see any of my projects, can't see my account, can't see. Can't do a damn thing.

So much for being able to work on a you know, a plane or a bus or something like that. That's a yeah, it's a killer. The next major disadvantage of course, being cloud-based like this. you can only save your files on the cloud.

Now granted, it does actually save the actual look, the dot, sketch, dot files, and things like that locally, so you know they are technically there. But yes, so you can back them up yourself if you really wanted to. But essentially it's you know it doesn't let you work from these local files. And the other thing is it uses a completely different file format to out IAM designer.

Ah, and you cannot import Altium Designer or circuits to do files. So yeah, they'll probably they might add that in the future it. you know it just seems stupid that you can't do that, but I can't I would have loved to have loading some of my big out him designer projects that I've got, but I can't do it. It just doesn't support their own other products.

Unbelievable. Now because this is a completely free tool designed for online, collaborative, open source hardware projects for the you know, maker, community, etc etc. They pretty much are forcing you to make all of your projects and files public and I thought this was really horrible limitation at first, but it turns out it's not. It's actually better than what you think because if you go in here and you actually start a new project, so let's go in here and new project and we actually get the choice to actually do a sandbox project ie.

keep it all private and I believe that you can I haven't tested this yet yet, but you can collaborate with other people privately on that project and and if you've only got one or two projects then you don't have to share any of you in from with the public at all. You can keep them private forever so that is good They but they only allow you to sandbox projects and you can't do any sandbox. Being private projects, you can think of them like that you can't do any more than that. If you want to do that, then you have to release one of your sandbox projects to the public and you can only work on to private projects at a time.

It's actually not a bad limitation given the the market that they're trying to reach here, so it would have been absolutely horrible if you had to make every crap edit and everything you did public before you actually release the project. That would have been awful, but they've thought about it and there that actually works reasonably well. So I think that's a not a bad compromise. So for example, I've got two projects which is an Arduino Uno that I imported from Igor files and I have actually released that publicly.

But I've got a test project here which is also an arduino uno thing. but I haven't released that so if I right click on here you'll see that I can actually commit the project to the version control tool. All I can actually release it and that's and when you do that, that's when you actually actually I believe even commit makes it public. but I have tested that other people whilst they can see my project and they can see the name of my project, they can see that I've started a project called test project like this, anyone in the public can see it.

They can't actually see any of my design files until I actually go in there and commit and release them. so it's mostly private. not a hundred percent because people you know if you're just if you're title up here is very descriptive of your Cyka super Secret project, then well where people are following you, then they can see that name as public even before you release the project. And whilst I understand why they've changed the user interface to this ribbon format, people either love it or hate it.

I Can understand that because our team designer is not exactly the most beginner friendly package out there. It's super powerful. but I you know I think this one will be easier to operate for beginners. but that's how you know for me because I've been using our team designer since you know the 1980s when it was protal.

But here's the most annoying thing for an experienced you out him user like me is that not only is the user interface change, but it still actually looks. You know it's still quite familiar to me. That's okay. The thing that really bugs me is that they've gotten rid of all the shortcuts.

If I'm in the PCB and I go P for place like no, it goes up the project here. Oh Unbelievable. Why did they have to take out the key shortcuts like that? They've had the same key shortcuts since their original outer pro til for Dos product in 1985 or whatever. It was unbelievable.

I think I Know the reason is because they don't want to make this tool too productive. so you know that's that's one of the big differentiates between this one. Yes, it's a full-featured you know, professional type tool, but it's not a very nuts, not as hugely productive as the proper you know, full $8,000 or whatever it cost these days. Out him designer tool but you know, come on, that's just stupid.

I Mean it doesn't help people when they start out with circuit making like this and then move up to out him design up. Ah so frustrating. Calm down. Dave Calm down, it's a free tool.

just deep breaths in. But here's where I Think the wheels have really fallen off the Billy cart with this idea and well, circuit make a standalone I Think is you know it's a great concept and and they're doing the right things here. They just they've just killed you. right step.

Well, let's say you wanted to. Europe You've used circuitmaker. you know to work in your projects, and now you're working on on. You know, something bigger and you want to keep more than two projects private.

and you want to be able to work on files locally. For example, you're on a play in a train or whatever, we just have a shitty internet connection or whatever. What do you have to do well instead of giving you like a pay 100 couple hundred bucks even I don't know. I'd happily pay a couple hundred bucks for the ability to work on projects locally.

For example, something like that, no what they force you to use. They've now got another new program confusingly called Circuit Studio. Okay, so they've got out. him designer is their flagship product, then they've got Circus to do, and then they've got circuit maker and circuits to do well.

It uses a similar ribbon system to circuit maker. Once again, it's different to out him out him designer. So you're not stepping up the our team design is sort of like stepping up half way to Circuit Studio. and well, that might be okay, right? But how much does it cost? They've teamed up with Element14 haven't they? The makers of Eagle because they own Eagle and Element 14 a clearly one Eagle to be like the low-end hobbyist crap product and I've heard that they're actually laying off staff at Ego? I Don't know that's true.

There's a rumor going around that that's the case, so it probably won't phase it out anytime soon. But yeah, they've teamed up without him. Not sure who contacted who first. but anyway, Element14 is now where you buy circuits to do from this mid-range package.

Okay, great, how much does it cost? Tell us the price. son. Well let's go in here. Standalone license plus one year subscription.

All year. you got to buy the subscription Just like our DM designer. How much hold under your hats hold any hats? Three thousand, five hundred and seventy three dollars and fifty five cents before tax? That's a Yankee Is that Yankee dollars? Yep, that's Yankee dollars. Unbelievable.

So you've got a step from the free tool up to three and a half thousand dollars. what the plus? and to keep the thing maintained and you know bug fixes and all that. it's 591 dollars a year. after that tend to continue.

that's yeah. maybe okay yes, but like it's three and a half thousand dollars. it's in this no-man's land is dead zone pricing banned between free and out him designer. they they needed like a three hundred couple hundred dollar option maybe even five hundred dollar option for people to use circuitmaker locally.

Why have this middle of the range circuit studio? Unbelievable. I Reckon they've just completely screwed up here with their product. You know, a differentiation between the different products. There's no need for this circuit studio.

I Haven't tried it granted, but just the pricing of it. Just go. Ah fail. I Don't reckon it'll sell at all.

So what the hell Man, 14 and out Iam playing out here I Mean well. Element 14 I Can only think what they must want to have a tool to step people up be able to sell a tool to step people up from Eagle So in that case, well, they probably don't plan on putting much effort into Eagle anymore if you know that's just going to be some low costs in a hobbyist kind of thing and we'd much rather have people sell out him Designer. But it's very interesting to note and perhaps telling that Element for teens, competitors, Mouse' and Digi-key have done the same thing. Look at this.

Digi-key have now teamed up with Mentor Graphics and they're offering designer schematic and designer layout some cut down thing with 1500 connections. How much is the unlimited connection? one? Let's have a look. I Haven't actually looked at a 499 bucks? There you go. Look at that.

That's just for the, that's just for the schematic and the layout is unlimited connections. So 500 bucks and 800 you know it's they a cheaper solution. What bloody Circus to do is from Element 14, that's for sure. And Mouse' yet another competitor, Digi-key and Element 14 they're offering.

Why? National Instruments Up Multi-sim This is like a edited, fairly highly regarded simulator. Buttons does PCB Design and bomb and stuff like that. You can download it for free Free. Choose completely free, blah blah blah Free Free Free.

Oh goodness. I Don't know. Tried if you dare. So I You know the word that they're playing me too and they have to have something and they asked Our team and our team went oh yeah we can just repackage circuitmaker and cool it.

Circuits 2d on just three and a half thousand dollars for it. How does that sound with everybody happy? So anyway it is what it is. We have circuitmaker and it is free so that is awesome. Let's not complain shall we? So the way it works, like all this over here this this panel.

This projects panel looks exactly like our team designer but as I said this ribbon layout up the top here completely changed and it all starts with Hana Klee This start page here and this is what you get when you load up the program or you can go back here at any time from wherever you are and it lists like a popular projects the ones that have been committed. Things like that. You can follow people. These are my projects here.

I've only created two of them. You can make a new one here. you can search for components haven't actually tried that. And here's the forum activity and it is tied into the Forum, which still uses the Bloody Morphic Forum engine.

Anyway, Yes, they do have a a forum over there. It's not hugely active, but there are a lot of people there who will answer your questions, including the Altium people. So yeah, these are my ones that people have replied to. threads I've done and things like that.

You can send messages to people. and it all starts from here. so we can do a new project or we can not do recent projects down here. Now down here in extensions.

they do actually still have the purchased option here. They don't have anything for you to purchase, but obviously they've got the facility in place. so if they wanted to do things like okay, local saving or something like that, maybe they can add that as a purchased option and updates a fairly seamless installation work. No problems for me.

A few people reported issues, but it's about a 300 Meg download or something. I just updated it again and it like downloaded 300 Meg again. But I've got a by the way, I've got a pretty fast rock-solid connection here. I've got 20 megabits upload and 20 megabits layout and download direct fiber connection.

So yeah, it's a rock-solid internet connection so I unfortunately I can't test it with a dodgy internet connection to see how slow it is. Now if I do actually type a number into this lookup components here, searches it, searches and it finds various parts. Now by the way, Altium have teamed up with Octo Parts so they're using the Octo part database and back engine and all that sort of jazz to get price and you know, supplier information and all that sort of thing. Unfortunately one of the problems here is that oops, it just.

ah, libraries There we go. Here's the library's art breakout and like how to wait. Scroll this like all this pricing data is down here but like how do I like like it's just not that my screen is not big enough. I Go toufool nineteen Full HD 1920 by 1080 screen you know I Granted I've used bigger ones with our TM designer before when I was using it professionally of course and but yeah they just haven't liked.

How do I get to my data down here it's just chopped off I mean this is like a very typical sized screen you every users going to have and you can't see all the information then okay assuming that way of you know found a part that we like or whatever. then we can right click on that whoops and then we can either place that directly on our schematic sheet. We can build a new custom component or we can edit this, build new versions, add to favorites, library and stuff like that. Here's our component detail here.

we go see it. That's the thing with this. Innoko It seems to take a lot of things in here. it seemed to take a while anyway.

I Know it's downloading data from the you know, the back here, from the octo part engine and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, Look, we do have stock. Look here. There's people who have these things in stock, not authorized ones.

Digi-key blah blah blah tell you the price, how much stock. you got I mean Fantastic. Looks like our Diems teamed up with Braintree they're in Essex in the UK and they've got this Bond management bomb analyzer, all this sort of stuff and distributors. so I'm not sure whether or not that has anything to do with octo part, but they were supposed to be using the octo pot back in for that.

So I'm not exactly sure what's going on there, but anyway, it's tied in to the all these different third-party back-end databases and this is why they've got showing Sievert. Calm down here in the Parts library. And that's why if you go over to the library's panels, the actual library is called Arts Eva. so that is what looks like Altium Opinion: all the hopes on is that all of your library components all the parts you don't get access to the regular Eltham designer libraries which is, you know, they've got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of parts.

It's actually, you know it's not bad at all, but they don't give you that in the circuit maker one. they've gone for this third-party company called Sivir and or which ties into the octo partner. Well, that's what it originally was. maybe they've changed over to Sivir I'm not sure.

Anyway, you know I don't know anything about Sivir I Haven't really looked at it, but this is where all of the component your standard built-in component libraries are coming from. now. One thing I'd love to see is in the schematic here being I would a right-click on the part and then actually go to the that page that we saw before with all that information. Sure, we can go down to properties here and it pulls up like an Altium almost an identical Altium Designer info panel.

So this is intimately familiar to me and we can edit the pins that we see the parametric information and stuff like that. But like, where is the ability just to jump over to that Sivir page that we saw before? Because the beautiful thing about all this community parts thing is, well, this is not a good example, but it will show you how many projects is used in which projects it's used in, what revision the parties. Things like that, you can say you can see how popular the part is and I'm not sure if you could actually sort by popularity of parts so it shows the most popular part and things like that first. but when you've got a community component database like this, you do all sorts of powerful stuff like that so you know you can see.

Oh yeah, the Arduino people use that particular part higher. Yeah, I can trust. That must be a winner. They've made you know a hundred thousand of those boards.

No worries. Now the general responsiveness of the schematic is okay when you just you know, panning around and doing the usual stuff. No problems at all, but over encountered. Like something like that one popped up instantly.

But I have encountered like lag and things like that. Now there's one thing that I really like. if I leave my cursor over here over a component, it pops up with the supply-chain insight. which is that some of that information or the information we saw on that component that library page before we got from that Seva website.

that's that's really quite nice. But look, I don't know why there's no like a right-click option to call that up. Why? Why do I have to like I didn't even know I Just found this by just leaving my cursor there like you know, where is it? Where is this supply chain inside up here I Don't get it, you know. Look, it's not up in View libraries.

It's not any part of that, right? So like, what the hell you know these like magic stuff like that just hidden I'm just going to leave my cursor there. Why can't I right click? Crazy! And one of the things with this ribbon interface up the top while it looks like and I kind of jazzy, but look at how much vertical room of your real estate you lose in to this ribbon frame up here. It's just crazy. No wonder we can't see everything in the bloody Libraries panel because it's all taken by this stupid ribbons thing.

When this thing pops out, it should like use all of your available screen. but now look, there's no ribbons and there's no options in here. But still, it's just like completely wasted space. Terrible.

and all of your project options stuff was is a you know straight out of our team designer. If you've used it before, it's yeah. it's exactly the same. So it's very clear that they've just taken out Iam Designer and there you know, whacked on this ribbon interface.

Shoe haunted in, you know, all this light, you know? made a few changes over here, but they've kept all the projects and all sorts of other stuff and all the menus are basically exactly as you see on our TM designer. But hey, that's not surprising. You know they didn't actually develop this from scratch and it's got some of our team designers more advanced functionality as they promised and things like our PCB pin swapping for example so we can go in there and dark configure our pin swap data for you know, very handy for FPGAs and other types of pin swappable micros and things like that and over on the PCB side of things. Yeah, once again, it works exactly like our TM designer where actually by default in single layout.

well not by default by what this library was uploaded as in single layer mode here. And of course we can just hit the three button to go into our TMS famous our 3d view which is you know fantastic and we can do lots of so. a couple of like the zero key and things like that still work from our TM designer. We can do stuff like you know fly inside the board so I'm doing with this with my mouse I don't of my space navigator that I was used to and I was working that out in but we fly inside the board under the part and things like that so you know it.

Fantastic. Just hit two or three key. It's one of the most powerful features about Iam Designer. not just to see like their 3d components like this and things like that, but just to see the bare board even if you don't have the 3d component information on there, being able to see a solder mask and everything else.

Fantastic. And it's nice that you can actually take your board and export that as a step file to for your you know to put in some other up 3d package. Terrific! And yeah everything's just like Altium Designer I Feel completely at home. It works the same way.

It's just that they have this ribbon interface once again look pissing away all the space up here. They could have made these icons smaller. Anyway, yeah you know we can do this. Assembly, drawings, pick and place files NC drill files, print everything else.

It's exactly the same. It's exactly the same menu getting the full version of our team designer. so we can go in there. We can choose our layers for example, our top overlay and our top and bottom layers and our bottom overlay.

We can generate our Gerber files and off we go. Bob's your uncle So here's our generator: Gerber Files Unfortunately, one big thing that they have removed and is Garba Viewing Look: you can't actually view these Gerber files whereas before you could use the rather crude internal Gerber viewer in now TM Designer: So here's the top layer and if we click on that, oh yeah, there's a Gerber file viewed as txt. Thank you very much, you want to read the matrix. Another thing I'm actually amazed about is like when you go into here and you look at all the community designs I found this IDEs we know one I'll look at in a second but I just like put five stars on the air and it's automatically appeared to the top.

Okay but like where are all the huge big reference designs? Why don't they load? You know they've got nano boards in that you know my design when I was there they're massive, big like eight layer ballers, big reference designs. I had 12 layer boards and things like that I'd love to be able to load in and show you and why they don't have. You know a really fantastic example you know they should have. like you know, promote examples here or whatever.

look at here. you know, we can do a big sixteen layer board with BGA's and coming out our wazoo and everything else and it's just it's just not there. I Mean granted, this is not a release, right? this is a beta, so maybe they'll Hopefully they'll add some sort of stuff and this is like the most complex project. I Could find that somebody had uploaded browsing through like three or four pages worth of projects.

so it's an Arduino were doing that there. v if I'm pronouncing that correctly that they've imported from Eagle and that looks like it does the business. Yeah, there are a few issues with the imports, but as I said, you know it gets you the basics anyway. Like you know, nobody's like gone through and tidied that up.

I Had a few issues with the PCB and things like that, but if you need to import projects, yeah, it's not going to be seamless. but it can do the business. So of course it's got all that lovely interactive multi routing and things like this. This won't be the world's best example, but I can go in here and I can go interactive.

Moldy Routing on these three pads I Haven't set up all my routing rules and things like that, but you know it'll and you can set for push and shove. You can see the traces down there, just push and shove around and things like that. So it's got all the usuals, the powerful routing capabilities about him. Designer: I Love it! It's fantastic and it's free so this video is already long enough I Won't go through and show you what Altium designers like but yeah it from what I've you know I've only played with this thing for a little bit but it does look like it has most of the capability.

All the good stuff in Altium Designer in the full like you know $8,000 package that everyone knows and loves or has a love-hate relationship with. it depends on which way you look at it that you know a multi it, push and shove, order routing, interactive differential pair auto routing the BGA ohm you know the pin swapping and all sorts of stuff like that. it looks like it's the full-on package. It's just that they're the only way that they've sort of dumbed it down is to add in the sort of you know, online only internet only cloud capabilities and stuff like that.

but hey, you know Fantastico! I'll take that for free. Thank you very much! Unbelievable So you know the great thing and the 3d view has always been one of our team's strong points and know a lot of other packages have caught up to that now. But even if you don't as I said, even if you don't do the 3d models and things like that, it shows you. you know WYSIWYG What you see is what you're going to get from your PCB manufacturer.

there's just sold a mass expansion. Things like that you can actually go into the board if you're that keen and you know fly around and add sub. Yeah, it's just terrific stuff. and you get all this in the free version of circuitmaker, you know? Wow! My hats off to them.

Fantastic! Now of course I would expect our bugs in this but because it's based on it looks like it said I like the complete Altium Designer back-end and things like that seems to look, work and feel. almost all the menu options are identical. in fact it's sort of like only the ribbon kind of interface which is changed all the menus. everything else is exactly our team designer taking out a few things I take for granted regularly using now TM Designer like the hotkeys and the Gerber viewer are the in simple internal Gerber viewer for example.

but I geez no problems whatsoever I mean you know ya Altium always has bugs always had they're famous for their bugs but yeah anyway, it's still a kick-ass package in this circuit maker. I'm sure even though I haven't fully used it for in anger yet I think it will be pretty much as good as our team designer because it's basically it's going to be like the same code I'm not sure they how they handle it at a project management code similarity point of view. Where were any updates in our team designer automatically get pushed through the circuit maker or vice versa? but yeah, it's pretty impressive. So actually moving up from Circuit Maker into Eve as well, the circuit Studio is going to be the same as Circuit Maker accept it allows you to do all the local stuff I believe.

but moving from Circuit Maker up to the full professional Altium Designer shouldn't be that hard at all. And of course I'm completely familiar with this I Can you know lay out boards fairly quickly straightaway because it effectively is Altium Designer just with a little bit easier to use user interface. although I think they you know they're wasting a lot of space up there? Space is always real-estate screen real estates always been an issue without him designer. and yeah this new ribbon layout doesn't doesn't help matters at all.

but I feel so at home I Love it. but of course because it is based on our team designer? well you've got. You know what? 25 years worth evolved? Maybe not 25 years. But you know, since when did they release the first Windows version I Don't know.

but there's just like, you know, so much legacy in the menu options and things like that. So Out In is famous for having lots of duplicate functions all over the place. and you know, lots of things. different options scattered in nonsensical areas and you know things like that, and that carries over into a Circuit maker.

Said why? It looks a bit easier with the ribbon thing up the top Etsy and I Not quite as user-friendly as it could be, that's for sure. And there's been some talk that you can't create your own components from scratch. Well, that is not true. You just go into your pedal over here, your right-click and you just go build new custom component and off you go.

Bingo. and this will certainly not be a component. A creation tutorial by any means. But yeah, here you go.

You can add the new schematic symbol, you can add your own footprint, and you can add your own simulation model as well with no problem whatsoever. So the interface is exactly like Altium Designer except as I said, I don't have the bloody hotkeys which is really annoying, but I can just place my rectangle I created that in like you know, 10 seconds and Bingo easy and it automatically showed up here in your models. Yes, I know I've put pin Zero in there I was just automatically repeating and we can go in and do exactly the same thing with the PCB footprint as well. So we are I can't do place up? Ah, Anyway, we can place our pad 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 yeah right, 5, 6, 7, 8.

There you go. There's our Dave's dodgy component and if we go over here has a created note, we might have to just give that a little save and it should pop up over here. Bingo, there's our component. We can go through an ad like we regularly do.

You can you know add a 3d model and all that sort of jazz so no problems whatsoever. Although it seems like you can't change this weird ask you know auto-generated number up here. so I'm not sure what the hell's going on there. but anyway I guess you've got to have a unique part.

This is the unique name. This is part of the you know the community aspect to it. and when you go in and start your new project like if you want to, somebody's already use Proto, we know if you want to or some of these trends met 8 or transmitted ater. Anyway, you can't use any project name that anyone else has used so you know if you put if you've already used a test project.

well you can't use Test Project Motor Use Test Project 592 and add your age or something like that. It's like getting a bloody gmail address. Although the only thing I'm unsure of is actually now how to call up, search for and call up that part I could I gave it the name eevblog test part and I can't find anything in the regular place parts section and I can't find anything in the library the see the light so I'm not sure how it actually adds them to or if it adds in the Sivir or whether or not stored locally or something I haven't It's not over in my favorites. so I haven't exactly figured out the full component management yet, but you can certainly create your own symbols.

Not a problem. Well there you go. I think I'm actually going to work. Call it quits there.

This video is long enough. It was just like a brief look and sort of like my first impressions of Circuitmaker here. and I I started out being you know, so excited I did that video telling out him how not to screw it up without his famous for shooting themselves in the foot and screwing things up and I was, you know? and then I saw like the preview release and they talked about the community stuff. another yeah okay yeah okay but I really was quite excited when they told me that they'd you know have the low cost model and they could add things on I thought they'll hit it in the right direction.

Everything was terrific and then rumor came out that they yeah had completely gone away from that. It's now completely free, but it's now fully online and everything else and I just went groan and sort of gave up for it on a while. but now I'm be on the lookout too for a new package and I am definitely going to try Circuitmaker because it basically is out him designer which I both myself and David to hear in labor he's familiar with as well and we can collaborate on designs and it's free. We can do unlimited size designs as many layers, as much complexity as we want, and we can make them publicly available because we plan on doing open source hardware.

so it's not a problem and it's a reasonable limitation to have like the two free things. but I really think that they need to offer that local saving option If your internet connection goes down, it looks like you are screwed. or if you're going to pour in an internet connection, you're screwed. you know? I'm kind a bit used to that.

all my emails online and I use you know Google Docs and things like that for stuff and so I'm used to that sort of thing. So and I'm tentatively gonna, you know I'm bit nervous about trusting everything online like that, but the options are compelling. This is the fool. Basically, you're getting almost all about him designer for free.

It's incredible and I think that it ultimately might be very powerful. with the community stuff and things like that. this is only a beater Altium or after feedback. so if you got feedback on this, install it it's free.

No catches. Try it out! Yeah, I was I was skeptical but the more I think about it, the more I use it. I've only used it for an hour or two so I haven't got really in-depth to it, yet I need to start a full project from scratch and the whole design cycle. everything else.

I'm pretty certain that they're not going to go and offer a local option for this because that's what Circuit Studio is for. and that's why you got to pay three and a half thousand dollars for it. So if they went and added like even a $500 option for circuit maker here to save everything locally and work without the internet, then, well, why would you buy Circuit Studio? You wouldn't it be nuts to pay three and a half grand? So they've got to protect that market Now that they've made that commitment to or you know, the agreement with our Element14 they just locked into it. It's not like they can just go and can that thing.

That'd be embarrassing. although I think they should I think they should. That would be the sensible. Just admit no sorry Circuit Studio that was just at that sort of price point.

just a dumb idea, or just lower the price of circuits to do you know, make it a thousand dollars or something like that, you know? Heck, I'd probably even go and personally buy it at a thousand bucks, you know? So, but not three and a half grand. It's just not. it's going to fail. So my verdict at this stage, although I don't think it's the right direction that I wanted it to go in I'm not going to you know, kick sand in their face because this it looks really good and I'm quite excited to have most of our team designer for free.

and I think the limitations are probably quite reasonable. So yeah, I've got to give it a I've got to give it a thumbs up and I recommend people going I try it because all that power in there for free. but hey, I understand if it's a showstopper with the internet connection or whatever all you really need multiple projects for fur, you know, but private and things like that, then well, there's you know. Hey, you're sorry, you're just going to have to go choose another package.

there's probably not for you. it's not for everyone, but jeez, imagine if everyone had it and they email need to work on the community tools and the libraries and the aspects of it and things like that. But initial first reaction is it's a it's it I Think it's going to be successful I Really do I'm Circuit Studio I Think it's just going to fail. It's it's just priced in the wrong market.

Maybe if it was a thousand dollars it'd be successful, but because it's like three and a half thousand dollars plus maintenance and things like that that that's just going to fail. No one's going to go for that. They're all just going to go right up to the full blown-out 'i'm designer I think anyway. but hey, I could be wrong.

But yeah, that's the impression I'm getting. But I need to give Circus to Do go. But Circus to do is effectively from what? I Understand circuitmaker just with like local saving options and all that. not internet.

You know you're not locked to the internet. So yeah, I'm not sure what they're doing there. They could have all done it all with circuitmaker, just charged a reasonable price. maybe left out things like auto routing, or you know, some of the interactive auto rounding.

Perhaps the multi, you know, just left out. a few things that you know would have sweat in the deal, but hey, you can't complain when it's all for necks. Unbelievable. So yeah, I'm rather excited to have Altium Designer for free.

And one really important thing to note is that there is no like non-commercial clause to this. You can use this for any commercial project you like. It doesn't matter, there is no restriction, it is free gratis. just go and use it.

ads out Eum's gift to the open source hardware you know, slash hacker make a movement for people to use this thing. Sure they want everyone to collaborate and all the rest of it. Maybe they can make money somewhere on some optional extras. or maybe just I get people to upgrade to the previous version.

But yeah it's It's a big move on their part by just making everything comply. Italy Free And that's just that is brilliant. Yeah, they have crippled it and if your workflow doesn't support the crippled nature of the fixed internet connection requirement, then well, sorry. But yeah, if you can handle it, this could be the package of choice anyway.

I recommend you What? Try it out! I've only tried out for a few hours I will no doubt start doing my projects in this and because we yes I am working on now the micro supply and other projects as well along with Dave to here and we'll both be using Circuit Maker and looking forward to the collaborative functions and the release management and all that sort of stuff. And no doubt I'll be doing more videos and probably tutorial videos and things like that. In due course, because I think I've found my package I'll give it a go anyway. might come back to bite me out here.

might cancel this damn thing in a couple of years when they change direction again. Who knows. I yeah I wouldn't put it past them, but anyway, it we'll cross that bridge if we ever get to it. So yeah, sorry, this wasn't a an in-depth look because I've literally only used it for like an hour.

just bummed around. but yeah, I like it. I think it's got Wiener written all over it. so there you go.

check it out. I'll link it in down below. if you want to discuss it. jump on over to the AV blog forum.

Catch you next time. Wish I had my space navigator I could do this You know really nicely you you.