Altium - The Future Beyond P-CAD
Almost two years ago, we announced the last major version of P-CAD and our intention to retire the P-CAD product line early this year. Since that time, we've laid out our vision of what the future would hold for you as a valued P-CAD customer.
We are now formalizing the end of life for P-CAD, which will no longer be supported after June 30, 2008. This has a number of implications for you as a user, and for your organization. Having made this decision, we also acknowledge that you have choices for your future. Our task now is to make your decision to stay with Altium as compelling as possible, and to support the transition from P-CAD to Altium Designer. To that end, we have created a migration path to Altium Designer.
What does P-CAD retirement mean for you as a P-CAD customer?
- Maintenance contracts for P-CAD will continue to be honored but will not be renewed. But if you make the switch to Altium Designer before June 30, 2008 (at no cost) your contract will be transferred and you will retain continuity of support and service.
- P-CAD upgrades or additional licenses will only be sold to existing customers until June 30, 2008
- If you are using a version of P-CAD that is older than P-CAD 2006, you will need to upgrade to P-CAD 2006 to be able to upgrade in turn to Altium Designer 6 and Altium Designer Summer 08
- There will be no further support of P-CAD to existing customers after June 30, 2008.
- Special upgrade offers are available if you migrate before May 15, 2008 - contact your local Altium Sales and Support office for details.
Moving from P-CAD to Altium Designer
Altium Designer provides all the capabilities currently covered by the P-CAD design system with the added benefit of fully supporting the design unification and convergence necessary to help you move into the future with confidence.
Many of the features that you like and have come to rely on in board layout in P-CAD have been expanded and incorporated in Altium Designer. Like P-CAD, Altium Designer has a rich set of functions for designing printed circuit boards and generating output for manufacturing. In addition to the promise of improved existing technologies brought into Altium Designer, there are many powerful features that provide you with everything complete to face the future of electronics design.
Altium Designer 6 offers a unified electronics design solution that takes PCB design to new levels. Highlights include:
- Import Wizard to fully support your migration
- 3D Visualization environment for today's complex board design, with advanced output to MCAD and manufacturing
- Interactive Routing capability
- True hierarchical design
- Variants Management that is more powerful than ever
- Circuit analysis that includes Spice, PSpice® and SIMetrix/SIMPLIS®
- Design documentation linked to your entire organization
Further to these highlights you can access to the future generation of electronics design software. This migration path gives you access to Altium Designer Summer 08 which contains many features that you have come to rely upon from P-CAD - and more.
Altium Designer lets you:
- Work with the latest devices and design methodologies
- Remain up to date with changing technologies
- Remain competitive, both now and into the future.
We believe Altium Designer represents the best and most compelling path forward for P-CAD users. View the P-CAD 'Your Complete Migration Guide'. It contains answers to your questions, details on the features within Altium Designer most relevant to your P-CAD experience, early insights into Altium Designer Summer 08, and quotes from other P-CAD users who have chosen to make this move and their experiences of using Altium Designer. It also addresses the implications and opportunities for organizations, for both IT and design management. For more information on Migrating from P-CAD to Altium Designer contact your local Altium Sales and Support Center.
More information on Altium Designer >
Join a Live Web Demo >
Upgrading to Altium Designer 6 >
Your FAQs Answered >
Customer Migration Successes
Many P-CAD users have made the move to Altium Designer – and have done so successfully. You too, can do so in the confidence that you have peers who have gone before you, supported by Altium.
