YES it will have 3D, and most other PCB/Schematic/Library creation features you are used to in AD. YES, the free version can be used for commercial projects.

So it won't have the likes of push'n'shove, multi-channel, and other things in AD that save you time. Differences from AD will revolve around design productivity. And if you finish your project early you'll be able to get a credit back and use toward another feature, useful if your projects requirements change all the time. The big attraction is you'll be able to rent extra capability easily for a period of time to get a project done, for a reasonably small amount. Free version will have restrictions in total board area (not fixed like Eagle!), nets, layers, and components. It might be usable off-line, but the initial version won't be, you have to save files online. They clearly want to take on Eagle and the likes of Upverter in one hit. If you are after a standalone PCB program to use in your own little offline world, this isn't going to be for you. Suffice it to say that the community is the cornerstone of the entire concept of the tool. There will be lots of community power in the program to do this I can't talk about quite yet.

The whole idea behind this is to encourage and share projects and libraries online. But it is most certainly a PC based program, nothing web based. Have had another talk and demo with Altium Some answers to some questions: - NO, you will not be able to save files locally, they must be stored online in the cloud. (Otherwise the software wouldn't work with the Windows API set provided by WINE.) Sent from my Smartphone So this tells me the DipTrace guys are good programmers who stick to published APIs and don't resort to low level hacks and shortcuts. However, I pushed on and.it worked great! Everything was super fast and 'just worked' including 3D support, printing and mapping of Windows-specific folders to the Mac equivalents (My Documents to ~/Documents). The first time I tried DipTrace I almost dismissed it completely because of this. Yes, that's right, they literally ship the software in a WINE bottle. The next release will include a native OS X build! (The Delphi Cross Compiler supports native UI Widgets on each platform, so no need for something like QT, which *does* make an app feel 'non-native' or out of place.) DipTrace's current OS X support has come from WINE. DipTrace is written in Delphi and have just moved over to the new tools. The latest version of Delphi supports cross-compiling for OS X, Android, iOS and (soon) Linux.

Altium designer free