Australian-listed software maker Altium (ALU.AX) rejected a $3.9 billion takeover bid from U.S. peer Autodesk Inc (ADSK.O) on Monday as too low, but kept the door open for a higher offer as its shares leapt to near six-month highs.
Unfortunately my experience with it is limited and it didn’t quite work out. I can’t afford Altium, but I had to look at some schematics for a project I was working on. I had to go through some roundabout way to import the Altium files into KiCad, and the result was rather poor. I ended up just working off of the PDF export. I’m willing to bet Altium makes subtle changes to their file format all the time, making it difficult for other tools to interoperate.
I’ve heard a lot of open hardware projects use KiCad though, so it must be good!
KiCad looks really good!
Unfortunately my experience with it is limited and it didn’t quite work out. I can’t afford Altium, but I had to look at some schematics for a project I was working on. I had to go through some roundabout way to import the Altium files into KiCad, and the result was rather poor. I ended up just working off of the PDF export. I’m willing to bet Altium makes subtle changes to their file format all the time, making it difficult for other tools to interoperate.
I’ve heard a lot of open hardware projects use KiCad though, so it must be good!