The hard part with Altium is the component library. So far I have 3 friends that have obtained the license, and the initial feedback is that it's smoother than KiCAD and user friendly.

Student licenses are now free for Altium so I will recommend getting a license even if you are a beginner. Also, if you get it go out and find available projects in Altium so you can see how a 'real' design looks in Altium.Leave a comment if you start using Altium based on this article, and let me know what you think!Īltium has a huge forum for customer feedback on the product, so if you want anything changed, leave a comment there.įirstly we will need to get a Altium License: That's better value than a lot of the classes you'll take in college/university. If I assume 3 years at $120/yr, that is a very cheap price to pay for some valuable experience(assuming you practice and use it). You don't want to have to learn the basics on the job with someone looking over your shoulder.

If you learn the basics of Altium, you'll be glad you did when your employer asks about it during an interview, or you're required to use it on the job. You are much more likely to find Altium in you job later on, and since you are a student, I assume you will be going on to finding a engineering job. If you want to have a chance of importing to another package in the future you'll likely need the ASCII version, but Altium natively supports the binary. When you create a project in Altium, be sure you save the binary and ASCII versions of the board. I think it's worth it to have experience with multiple platforms.

Altium designer for students