Orcad Promotion - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: mstevens
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2012, 04:24:06 pm
content: http://www.ema-eda.com/OrCADAdvantage/PADSSwitch.aspx?campaignid=1067Anyone know what the price of maintenance for Orcad is? This might not be a bad deal for some looking for a tried a proven PCB package.Any comments on Orcad?Thanks

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2012, 05:47:18 pm
content: two words : old tripeOrCad used to be the de-facto standard for Pc based schematic / pcb. they started under dos on a 8086 ...it was a pretty good program. But then it got 'borged' by Cadence. Cadence was after the router (specctra) .. and they wanted a quick solution to pull the line from ic tools to board tools and deliver an end to end solution. They did this because their competition borged viewlogic and viewdraw ...cadece lost interest soon after and it got to the point where they sent their customers a 'dear joh' letter. they pulled the plug on it.orcad schematic is still around but the pcb is dead and they drive you to allegro or expedition or whatever their hi-end tool is called.that tool is not bad. but the costs are staggering !schematic is like 4k per seat , pcb stats at 10k$ per seat. and yearly maintenance isn't cheap either.

author: Time
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2012, 06:04:37 pm
content: It is what I learned to use in school. Than when I graduated and went to work I had to learn something else because OrCAD was too expensive for my employer.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2012, 06:20:33 pm
content: Clearly someone's not done their homework!Orcad Capture is the schematic tool, and it usually retails for about £1300. It's perfectly good in its own right - I use it professionally every day - and can also be upgraded (for about another £1000) to Capture CIS which includes hooks into separate component databases.That's admittedly still a bit expensive for just a schematic editor, but there's much better value to be had by upgrading to PCB Designer Standard. This is a package consisting of Capture and PCB Designer, and the combined cost is still under £2000.PCB Designer is a cut down version of Allegro; it's missing high speed design rules, but has no limitations on database size or layer count. Since it's essentially the same binary as Allegro but with certain features switched off by the licence key, it's completely file compatible with Allegro, and you can upgrade at any time.If you want the high speed design rules, there's PCB Designer Professional, and that's about £4000 IIRC.I briefly considered buying PADS instead, but it was about £4500 for a version with comparable capabilities to the most basic version of Orcad PCB Designer, and has limits on database size and layer count as well as being over twice the price. The choice was a complete no-brainer.Yes, Allegro is expensive, but unless you're using it all day every day and really need the advanced productivity features, chances are you don't need it.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2012, 07:43:41 pm
content: If you ever buy Orcad Capture get the CIS version. Its so much easier to get a proper bill of materials from a component database than to have to edit a bom manually (with the risk of assembly errors). The CIS extension will pay for itself.