If you are trying to manipulate a component on a sheet of your schematic but need to rotate it, you’ll need to open a pop-up menu for that component by clicking on one of the pixel-width lines within the component to open the window. It’s reminiscent of the scene in “Office Space” where they guys are trying to figure out how to launder money by looking up the definition in the dictionary they found words but not answers.

(This “feature” alone puts Mentor Graphics at the top of my list of nominees for “Death by Mass Rabid Weasel Attack”). Don’t EVEN bother with the vestigial context-sensitive help icon, it will just open a browser window that tells you to look somewhere else for information.

Half of the time when I click on the “Help” button it will crash the application, and the times that it doesn’t the information you need is just not there. The DX Designer user interface is either un-evolved or just plain insulting for starters. I could deal with a Windows 3.1 level of user interface, even a DOS 5.0 user interface, but with DX Designer I feel like my productivity would be better if I was actually PISSING my designs into a snowbank. Christ, I get a better user experience with CadSoft EAGLE, the pencil and quadrille paper I was designing with 30 years ago, or even the 80’s version of “HiWire” (the very first CAD I ever used). I want to share my opinions about it with you (whoever “you” are). The Mentor Graphics product really SUCKS and they know it well (because that is self-evident & I’ve told them so in detail). I have to say, compared to Altium, using the Mentor Graphics “PADSFlow” (or ‘ PADSFlaw‘ as I like to call their abysmal constellation of half-assed software) is like trying to teach a pig to whistle. I’d been using Altium Designer previously (and giving them Hell about minor issues, honestly), but the company decided to standardize on Mentor Graphics for PCB design. So, I’ve been fighting with Mentor Graphics’ DX Designer for the last week or so. Wordpress is free, so they aren’t disrespecting their customers every moment of every day andĬharging them thousands of dollars for it). (C’mon, you knew I was gonna say ‘ Well let me count the ways‘, didn’t you?Īll the outrage that follows is couched in light of the limitations of the WordPress interface.

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