Upverter Gets Your Circuits Laid

http://blog.upverter.com/upverter-gets-your-circuits-laid

by joeyespo • 14 years ago

66 52 14 years ago

blog.upverter.com

mrjbq74• 14 years ago

Really, "Gets Your Circuits Laid"?

It's a shame too many of these product announcements subtly discriminate against women, and frequently minorities.

Why not a more descriptive title such as "Upverter Releases Sophisticated Circuit Layout Tool"?

Congratulations to the Upverter team, but try to be more sensitive next time.

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

Why is "getting laid" discriminatory against women?

jere• 14 years ago

Because only men can get laid obviously.

mrjbq74• 14 years ago

I could say something witty about women being treated as sexual objects more frequently than men, or reference the studies pointing out that sexualized environments encourage sexual harassment and discrimination to take place (something biased against women more than men), talk about how sexual innuendo is commonly a way for men to bond over their shared attraction to women, or any number of complaints pointed out repeatedly over the years by women in this industry.

But...

I don't think Upverter was trying to discriminate, nor do I think anyone should take real offense at their title. I just think that little jokes like this often recurring does have a negative impact on our ability to attract women to (and have them thrive in) technical roles.

mrjbq74• 14 years ago

If you'd like, here is some information on common complaints by women about this topic:

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Sexualized_environment

amalag• 14 years ago

I think it's hilarious and absolutely correct english. If you happen to find a sexual euphemism in it, what does that have to do it?

jrockway2• 14 years ago

"get laid" is not correct English.

akiselev2• 14 years ago

Correct English or not, you "layed out" a board, not "laid" it.

gte910h6• 14 years ago

That's not against women, it's just a bit crass (aka, against people who think sex should stay out of business).

Both men and women get laid.

zio993• 14 years ago

It's not crass, nor is it discriminatory. Laying out a circuit is the equivalent of getting it fabricated. Terminology is used at AMD every time a chip is shipped/sent to pre-fab/taped-out/laid/fabbed/traced/etc:

Sources:

[1] PCB layout: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:srb7R1n...

[2] Page 41: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/dsmith/dsmith.html

[3] Google Groups Discussion: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/comp.cad...

[4] PDF: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~mperkows/CLASS_573/Asynchr_Febr_200...

zio993• 14 years ago

I supposed "newly laid pipes" would offend you as well. Well, let's sign a petition to the Times of Malta to change their offensive wording.

</sarc>

Source:

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121026/local/Cou...

DanBC3• 14 years ago

The "problem"[1] isn't with the word 'laid' which has many uses. The problem is with the phrase 'get laid', which has one main use.

First impressions count. Upverter is really cool. How many people have missed the opportunity to be upverter users because of this bad pun? Perhaps more importantly, how many customers did upverter not get because of the bad humour?

They are free to use whatever language they like to talk about their project. Other people are free to be disappointed at the choice of language; or to be put off by the words used; or to not care about the language.

twerquie2• 14 years ago

Your hyper-sensitivity is far more offensive than the playful euphemism in Upverter's title. Furthermore, as others have pointed out, "getting laid" in no way discriminates against women, as women and men of all dispositions get laid equally.

mrjbq74• 14 years ago

I'm surprised you think it is hyper-sensitivity.

The joke is at least sophomoric, if not crass as others have pointed out.

epe• 14 years ago

I'd assumed it was a reference to jwz's "how will this software get my users laid":

http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

Maybe I'm giving them too much credit...

mamatta• 14 years ago

this is a big deal. from designing to manufacturing, this will help get prototypes off the ground much faster

mmorey2• 14 years ago

Where can I find pricing information?

mmorey2• 14 years ago

Found membership pricing http://upverter.com/pricing/

mercuryrising3• 14 years ago

I wonder if they delete your files if you stop paying?

Daniel_Newby• 14 years ago

I would never use this for professional work. Hardware lifecycles are often measured in decades. It is common to archive the complete collection of design software so you can come back in a few years to make an improvement or add a feature. Your career cannot afford to tie everything to a cloud vendor that may decide to leave you high and dry.

I only see a future for this product if they license the software for installation on private servers.

jfolkins• 14 years ago

Circuits need love too.

mindslight3• 14 years ago

> Same time schematic & PCB editing... for the first time ever

What exactly does this mean? How does this differ from Eagle where schematic changes are immediately reflected in the rat's nest?

It'll be interesting to see what kind of computational constraints they put on the inevitable autorouter.

mercuryrising3• 14 years ago

Same time schematic & PCB editing... for the first time ever... like in the world... first. time. ever.... this is a pretty big deal.

In Eagle, you cannot add new parts directly to the PCB (no layout duplication for panelization). Panelization is about the only place I have ever wanted that feature, as the abstract schematic is much nicer for connecting nodes. Although, I guess since I haven't tried it, I could be wrong. I'm not entirely sure why there is that limitation, but it would be a pretty nice feature.

Couple other points:

Full real-time design rule checking

Eagle does not do real time DRC. Although, as I've yet to really have problems with a DRC (most PCB milling machines are awesome, and you don't really have anything to worry about).

A system of automated footprint generators based on the IPC standards

That would be way better if I could supply a PDF from the data sheet, your software looks at the dimensions and gives me the footprint back.

mindslight3• 14 years ago

Yeah, trying to make changes to the circuit via the PCB is annoying in Eagle. It hasn't been a big issue for me, as the times when I've wanted to do it, I've wanted to do so much of it that it was worth doing that part of the layout using scripts (imagine a 4 signal layer PCB with the same functional unit duplicated 24 times, that wants to be as small as possible. adjust dimensions, autoplace, autoroute, evaluate, repeat). But I can see that kind of feature being quite handy when you have just a few copies to make.

Eh? Don't know why you'd ever not worry about DRC. If the PCB fab is that good, make your features smaller :P. You also want to always make sure that you're not violating your electrically-significant constraints.

And yeah, footprints are quite annoying (especially when starting out) and one of the things that I think a widely-shared online approach like Upverter will actually succeed in fixing for the common cases.

zio993• 14 years ago

Congrats to Zak and the team at Upverter!

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Sigh, this is so cool and so disrupting to the eda vendor community I know it won't last. Definitely going to see about designing a few projects with it. Great job

DanBC3• 14 years ago

I really like the Circuit of the week. That's a neat idea.

> Same time schematic & PCB editing...

If this means you tweak the schematic and the PCB updates at the same time - that's good. I think. How well does it cope with 4 / 8 / 12 layer boards? Or are those not realistic use cases?

> PCB Editing! Woot!

Why would someone want to edit the PCB? Is it to make things suitable for production? ("This bulky component is too close to the edge and interferes with production machine loading. Let's move it over there a bit"?) Or are there other uses?

tlb• 14 years ago

Connectors need to be placed to match the enclosure

Components are available in a variety of packages, and supply problems sometimes require a last-minute change.

Thermal or EMI or noise problems require moving traces away from each other.

kbruneel• 14 years ago

Congrats to upverter with their new release, together we can kick some kicad and eagle butt :) Make sure to also try out circuits.io

nickevans• 14 years ago

Nice work Zak! I've been waitin for something like this for years.

fotbr2• 14 years ago

A few criticisms. Hopefully you can put them to good use, or at least understand what some old fuddy-duddys that aren't impressed by "the cloud" and "social" think. Or have a beer and laugh at the old guy saying "get off my lawn" - I'm OK with that too.

When you make claims like "the worlds most sophisticated layout tool" you're making impossible claims. I've yet to see anything that your tool does that Protel (now Altium) and others weren't doing a decade ago.

I understand different markets, but at $299 / user / month for your "professional" offering, you're not too far off of Altium Designer's cost. You're roughly double Eagle's price, and yours is a subscription service, rather than a pay once and done.

It appears you also have to pay separately for simulation - another cost that Altium and Eagle do not have.

You make pricing hard to find on your website. I'm looking for pricing, not a "try upverter now" button - to me that says "get the demo", not "pricing". Your package names look like something designed picked by someone just out of college and trying overly hard to be hip, not something meant to convey any meaning. "Open Source" "Awesome" and "Professional" - really? Why not just "Free" "Personal" and "Professional"? Conveys what you get with each package much quicker and more clearly. You have very little about what's included with each package. For instance, what's a "Team+User" account type vs a "User". How much simulation time is included with each package, since you make a reference to paying for only what you use? What's the cost of additional simulation time?

From your "Professional" registration page: "Welcome, Professional. This is going to be awesome!" Really? Awesome? I thought "Awesome" was your middle-tier package. It creates confusion and impressions you may not want.

Too much emphasis on buzzwords. Do you really need to use "cloud" that often? How about "Awesome!"?

Your "Terms of Use" basically say you're not responsible for the security of anything. Not something you want when you're trying to entice people into doing creative work with your service. You say you can end the service whenever you want with the only notification being via the webpage - Not something to make businesses shell out $3588 / year. Likewise, you say you're able to revoke access entirely or in part without notification, and that the website may be unavailable at times, and that you may, at your discretion, delete a user's uploaded data.

From a business standpoint, these terms are completely unacceptable - would you pay $3588 / year with no guarantee that you'd be able to use the service, or that you'd be able to access your data?

As a hobbyist, are you willing to have all your work and data disappear on a third party's whim?

From a business customer standpoint, I'd rather pay the extra to Altium, sink the cost of the software, pay half your yearly cost for Altium's subscription, and keep my propitiatory data in-house, instead of trusting an unknown 3rd party's claims to privacy, security, and longevity. Knowing where Protel was a decade ago - I'll also say that their software does a lot more than yours, again putting your claims at being the "most sophisticated" in question.

From a hobbyist standpoint, I'm still not comfortable putting things that are as tedious to reproduce as schematics and board layouts under the control of a third party. Eagle "Standard" is $169 (individual hobbyist use), and the copy will be good as long as I have a computer that will run it. That cost just over two years of paying for your "Awesome" package. Eagle "Light" is $69, less than one year of your "Awesome" package, and I again have something that lasts as long as I maintain a computer that can run it. I can buy a new "Light" package every year and still save money over your service.

stephen_g2• 14 years ago

I agree - I'd be excited by this if I were a hobbyist using the free version of Eagle, but despite what they say on their blog it doesn't look anywhere near as compelling as Altium for my business even if the subscription was another 50% less...

Hopefully tools like these will eventually get better to the point where put a bit of pressure on the big guys to make them lower their prices though!

akiselev2• 14 years ago

Yeah claiming to be the most sophisticated PCB editor is a massive stretch.

Just looking at the last project I did and the features I could not have done without, do you have differential pair routing? Interactive length tuning? From-tos? Pin swapping? Integration with some part swapping system for the manufacturer? Export and then reimport of DSNs for Electra/Specctra? Polygon pours? Integration with PLMs? Use scripting engine?

As far as working with Altium goes, those features are all pretty basic.

Upverter Gets Your Circuits Laid

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