Orcad X looks a lot like Altium - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: ajawamnet
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2023, 05:39:52 pm
content: Layer tabs across the bottom for one. If they'd only get rid of the padstacks and they way they handle libraries...in the Increases Productivity vid they mention placing polys is as easy as Powerpoint - and it acts like altium.Not sure if I'm insulted by that....

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2023, 07:56:05 pm
content: This is cloud-based shit?"Cadence OrCAD X Professional and Cadence OrCAD X Standard. Cadence OrCAD X products available for yearly single-user license (SUL) purchase. Free trial with Cadence OrCAD X Professional does not require a purchase or payment information for free trial sign up.""Cadence OnCloud Tokens A Cadence Token is a representative of computational usage giving you access to the tools you desire without the need for long-term contracts or bulky investment in equipment set-up."Cadence OnCloud FAQs1. OnCloud Free trial is for 8 hours or 30 days, whichever comes first. Payment required when you sign up for an OnCloud free trial. At the end of your free trial period, your trial subscription is automatically converted to a paid subscription. You won’t be billed until the end of the trial period.2. OnCloud Subscriptions renew every 30 days or 200 hours (90 hours for Microwave Expert role) with early renewal based on consumption. Plan will auto-renew at current rates. Read full Subscription details3. Cadence OrCAD X Professional free trial lasts for 15 days from time of purchase. No payment information required for free trial sign-up.4. Billed per year. Plan will auto-renew at current rates.5. Cadence University Program academic access is available in limited locations.Cadence OrCAD X Standard $1,280.00/yrCadence OrCAD X Professional $1,680.00/yr

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2023, 09:03:34 pm
content: "Payment required when you sign up for an OnCloud free trial". Ok. Got it.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2023, 09:37:15 pm
content: Why is this in the Altium section? To annoy Dave because there still is no Orcad / Cadence section?BTW, under the hood it is still Allegro with a slightly modernised UI but from the bat I don't spot any new functionality. Which is great because Allegro is about 10 times faster to use compared to Altium and I hope Cadence keeps it that way.

author: ajawamnet
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2023, 07:08:25 pm
content: Padstacks slow me down. I don't see how that's faster than Altium. Also, to me Cadence is a chip design tool company. PCB's are kind of an afterthought. In fact, I was told that by the regional manager of Altium (who jumped ship to Cadence) - he told me he couldn't compete with free. I did some work for this guy when he was at PADs back in the late 1980s. I was surprised as hell when he showed up as the Altium regional in 2015. I talked to him many times when he was there. He was so frustrated at not getting into the larger corps because they make chips and get the PCB tools for free... Google is a great example - I used to see them on the official Altium forum (usually bitching about something ) then they disappeared - right around the time they started doing TPU IC's. Now all the ref designs that come out of Google are in Cadence. I no longer see activity from their employees on official Altium forum.

author: ajawamnet
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2023, 07:09:18 pm
content: I was told by my reseller that it's not exclusively cloud based

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2023, 08:42:58 pm
content: Quote from: ajawamnet on November 10, 2023, 07:08:25 pmYou are very wrong about that. Orcad has been in the PCB design business for decades. Even before Cadence bought them. The only thing Cadense did was integrate their Allegro layout package with Orcad Capture as Orcad's own tool (Orcad Layout) was not quite up to the task for doing complicated designs. Allegro is a pretty old piece of software which clearly stems from a Unix background (and as a result it can run on Linux). But that Unix pedigree also makes it way faster compared to Altium as it has been written to offer performance from the ground up. If you get into more complex SoC designs, Altium just doesn't pack the punch to do these designs effectively. And it misses features. For example: internal package delay compensation (essential if you do DDR3 or faster memory layouts) has been added to Altium only recently where Allegro has had this feature long before that. And then there are things like signal integrity, EM field-solver driven impedance calculations, crosstalk and impedance simulation. It is no wonder you won't find Altium reference designs for SoCs; it just isn't efficient/suitable for such kind of designs (as Google likely has found out). And thus Altium reps will find themselves in front of closed doors when they want to try and sell to chip companies. It has nothing to do with price (even though Orcad Capture + Allegro are not super expensive).

author: asmi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2023, 10:45:29 pm
content: Altiums high-speed tools are still crap compared to what you get even in Orcad Pro tier - it doesn't auto-calculate via delays, it doesn't know anything about dynamic phase matching for differential pairs (this ensures that signal fronts travel next to each other along differential traces), it's SI tools are utter garbage and they rely on using negative layers for ground/power layers - and nobody uses them nowadays, it's xSignal-based length matching DRC is buggy - xSignals randomly "lose" trace segments and start complaining about un-routed traces, even though they are routed - to fix it you have to re-toute some random part of traces until it "finds" the trace again. And they regularily break things in updates which were working before - like recently AD started ignoring a rule which forces vias to be tented for newly placed vias - and I didn't notice that until manufactured boards arrived - if you looks closely on the photo here:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/planningdesignreview-for-a-6-layer-xilinx-artix-7-board-for-diy-computer/msg5134983/#newyou can see them in the bottom right side of the board.Performance-wise I don't find AD particularily slow - at least I didn't noticed any significant slow-downs during layout of the board above (and it's a ten layer board), but I do remember Orcad PCB editor being MUCH faster on really complex boards - like multi-socket 16 memory channels-class server motherboards.That said, I find AD's schematics tools to be eons ahead of Orcad's Capture. It would be super-cool if it would be possible to somehow combine Altium's schematics with Cadence Orcad/Allegdo PCB editor and related tooling (like SigXplorer). But since I can't afford to maintain update licenses for both, and some of my customers for some reason demand Altium, I naturally settled for it for now.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2023, 10:51:53 pm
content: Quote from: asmi on November 10, 2023, 10:45:29 pmI beg to differ. Updating parts form a database doesn't work reliably in Altium. And then there is the eternal poorly readable 'Times' font you nearly can't get rid of. On top of that, Altium's schematic tool is pretty slow as well. And it likes to crash. In my most recent project I shared with someone suddenly all the 'DNP' notations for all parts got missing.

author: asmi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2023, 11:12:09 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on November 10, 2023, 10:51:53 pmYou can beg all you want, but in my experience Capture is a pile of old barely useable crap. AD is super-convenient as far as schematics go, it never crashed on me (aside from the issue of resuming from sleep, but that doesn't seem to be directly related to schematics, rather with something more fundamental about AD), and I didn't notice it being slow at all - besides why would it be slow at all in schematics? DNP notations relate to the view and current variant, so that someone likely was looking at the different view - so it's not a problem with AD, but with a person between a keyboard and a monitor.

author: temperance
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2023, 12:39:00 am
content: A New Era in PCB Design has Arrived... I don't see anything new in those videos. It seems they have again redesigned the GUI instead of improving the general usability like BOM generation, Gerber generation, Library management.What I like about Orcad Allegro-Schematic capture used to be superior in comparison with AD. That's until version 17.4 came out. I hope it has been repaired.-Routing tools are and still are superior compared to many other CAD packages. (P-CAD, Altium, Pulsonix, Eagle)-Orcad constraint manager. Amen.-Orcad: layer management. The pre defined layer set is very extensive. I don't use all of them. But if you get a ref design or something made by an other company, it's all very consistent. This is practically non existent in Altium and the reason why some big companies don't even want to look at Altium because nothing in AD is consistent. (wait until you have to work on a board made with Altium by an other company. The layer mess awaits you.)-Cross probing and visibility are good but lack features.What I don't like about Orcad:-Creating PCB components is a very time consuming adventure because you will first have to create all pad stacks. If you decide to trim one pad, you must edit the PAD stack and update the component. This has become a complete mess in my PAD stack libraries.-You can only open one design at the time. That's very inconvenient at times.-Library management and BOM creation. Unless you have some expensive options, library management and BOM creation is non existent. Although not perfectly implemented (the mechanical layer things) this is where Altium saves me a lot of time.-Gerber file generation. Is there some way to save the parameters and settings? After 10 years, nothing has been done about that. Instead they started tweaking the GUI to make it look like Altium. Fools.-Adding text to a PCB... And setting up fonts for a PCB.What I don't like about both Altium and Orcad:Keep out zones. The only tool doing this in a convenient way must have been P-CAD. In P-CAD you could just draw a keep out zone on any layer and that zone would be a keep out assigned to that layer. Simple and elegant. Perfect Amen.Altium:-Speed. Compared to any tool out there, Altium is extremely slow. You have to switch off automatic polygon pour on complex boards or the recalculation takes 2 minutes. Orcad performs the same operation on exactly the same board in the blink of an eye. I've shown this to Altium and they replied: it seems we got some work to do. That must have been five or six years ago. Nothings changed and the latest versions of Altium seem to be slower than earlier versions.-Altium seems to save files in uncompressed and zipped. Pressing the save button it can take 5...10 or more seconds to save a very large design (enclosure step model in the design) and a message in the status bar says: compressing file... Why not do this in the background on an other temporary copy.-The GUI structure. To much clicking around for stupid things.-The rounding errors which piss me of every time. Especially in the DRC. What the fck.-Any rookie can do anything in Altium. Very time consuming and error prone if you have to review a layout. In Orcad you can be very sure that a rookie has not been changing for example the PAD diameter and drill sizes in a layout because you simply can't.-Since the latest version, you can now import and export DRC rules. Finally. Why did it take Altium I don't know how many years to realize that companies standardize on a certain set of design rules. Unfortunately its still possible for any rookie to change whatever they want. Very bad if you happen to hire some fresh out of school rookies.Altium looks very fancy on the outside. The inside is collection of tools with a zillion features implemented in a half descent way. But they always inform they are working on that when they ask for more money.@ asmiQuote-Try to make some net's in a different width. Now move some components connecting to those net's. It will turn pretty quickly into a complete mess where you have to delete and redraw parts of the schematic.-Try to move around a block with components. The all ready connected net's outside this selected block move in the most strange ways leaving you with a mess. The only option is to delete some net's and draw them again. In Orcad they move with this block in a proper way unless there is not enough space.QuoteThat must have been with the polygon's shelved I guess because I tried this in the latest version and it's still too slow unless you find waiting 2...10 seconds not a problem. Orcad repairs polygon pours in the blink of eye.QuoteI which Orcad would come standard with some descent library management and tools for output file creation.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2023, 01:07:44 am
content: Quote from: temperance on November 11, 2023, 12:39:00 amIMHO you shouldn't attempt to use any schematic package without a component database for projects with more than a handfull of components. To be more specific about Orcad: you shouldn't buy it without CIS. I have been using Orcad CIS for about 25 years already and being able to have the right symbol, part number and footprint in one go and produce a correct BOM with a single click still puts a smile on my face. Yes, it takes adding components to a database upfront, but from there it is smooth sailing. IMHO it is good to seperate the process of creating parts (symbol + footprint + logistics data) and doing design work. One thing less to worry about in parallel.Exporting Gerber parameters is part of the board/color/tech file export. I have setup a couple of templates that get me a ready-to-go configuration (including basic constraints) for a new board in Allegro.Opening only one design is a PITA every now and then but you can also use the Allegro viewer to open a different layout and look around.

author: temperance
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2023, 01:19:15 am
content: QuoteThat's in AD standard. But for Orcad this is an expensive option.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2023, 01:38:11 am
content: Quote from: temperance on November 11, 2023, 01:19:15 amExpensive is relative. CIS does save a lot of time and reduces chances of errors so it pays for itself quickly. Over the years I've seen others struggle with BOM errors leading to time consuming debugging which would have been easely avoided by using a component database. IMHO CIS should be standard but given the heated debates about to-database or not-to-database it is likely Cadence choose to cater to both crowds by offering CIS as an add-on. Still, Orcad CIS + PCB designer pro is cheaper compared to Altium last time I checked.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2023, 12:19:22 pm
content: Quote from: asmi on November 10, 2023, 11:12:09 pmI wish the latter was true because that is an easy fix but unfortunately the BOM contains all components regardless of the variant. The 'do not populate' information got lost somehow.

author: ajawamnet
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2023, 04:03:52 pm
content: I actually have a design right now that's dog slow in 17.4 with things like zooming and navigating, but the translation is much better in Altium. As to exporting importing DRC rules, you could do that AD 6.9. And yea - I still have 6.9 installed, since I use Qualecad for build sheets when we have to hand build prototypes - ex here:http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawamnet/parts/EMB0032TopSideBuildSheets.pdfThis was an add on that a user made.I actually have 30 different installs of Altium - including P99SE. Nice to have that since Altium is buggy.But hey - at least Altium will tell you they create a ticket for a bug. Cadence? Well, I had an issue that I presented to EMA-EDA as to the failure of the padstack preview panel. When they brought it up to Cadence they said, "...regarding "Can not preview (quickview) padstacks in Select a Padstack form."I agree 'Quick View' is not showing the graphics while selecting the padstack, there are many customers have reported this issue and we are reported to R&D through CCR(R&D make this CCR as In-active), Would you like to file a CCR behalf of this issue?"then:"The new status is set to Inactive, which means that no action is planned. Each CCR is carefully considered, evaluated, and prioritized along with other fixes, planned feature additions, and enhancement requests, for possible inclusion in upcoming product updates and releases."then after we all complained:"Thanks for the update. Have a nice week and happy Christmas.With this, I shall be closing this case.You might receive a customer survey form for this Case. If you do, please share your feedback. Your feedback will help us improve our support effectiveness and product quality."Then even later: " R&D will review this and accept these issues and also they will discuss with marketing team consider an priority basis."Hmmmm... I guess making it look like Altium is a marketing priority...

author: ajawamnet
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2023, 04:28:41 pm
content: Yep they even admit they stole the UI:199 seconds (3:19) into the vidThat's funny...

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2023, 11:08:24 pm
content: "We looked at all the other good UIs out there"Well, Altium would be better off if they borrowed more ideas from other CAD software. The limited stuff they've done was good (solidworks style entry boxes).

author: temperance
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 15, 2023, 01:38:22 am
content: QuoteI don't like those panels. But it might make the UI more accessible to those who never saw Allegro before.

author: wanabemaker
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 25, 2023, 02:14:08 am
content: It looks like Orcad X/Allegro X is subscription only, the subscription page is up on the Cadence site. The only two perpetual license options for complex CAD SW for individuals/small shops are Altium or Siemens PADS Pro (PADS classic is gone for all practical purposes for any new features). Altium is strongly passive aggressive in trying to move people to higher tier subscriptions, now with the constraint matrix available to only Pro subscribers (may be not passive but more aggressive I suppose). Siemens PADS Pro puts Flex and automatic high-speed tuning behind an active maintenance as far as layout features go. Hear they are also working on a large UX "upgrade" which will likely be locked behind a subscription as well given the trend. Looks like days of perpetual licenses are numbered with stunted features.

author: Uky
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2023, 09:41:48 am
content: From what I saw a few days ago, the reseller in the USA offers both perpetual licenses + one year support (recurring fee) and subscriptions of whole packages.The license file I got has dates on each "feature" indicating november 2122 and also the text "PERM" so I guess that these figures indicates that the licenses does not expire during my life time.

author: wanabemaker
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 25, 2023, 03:56:22 pm
content: That's good to know. There is one reseller who lists this on their store but has version 17 and not 23 in the specification, but it may be that the page has not been updated in some time.

author: CadenceAE
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2024, 07:09:35 pm
content: Thanks for the pros and cons. We have actually addressed some of the issues you posted. For example we did automate Gerber setup and allow you to save/reuse any custom setup.We also introduced a new/easy way to make pads when your making a footprint. That being said we still have to address some of the other issues you have brought up. If you have time please take a spin with the free trial and give us your thoughts. We will only get better if we listen to users.

author: CadenceAE
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2024, 07:20:23 pm
content: In OrCADX we give you full padstack preview, graphical and data details when searching for a padstack. please see picture

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2024, 07:44:07 pm
content: Uh your post is confusing.I see a SMT connector Molex 53261-8 yet there is a through-hole padstack info on the right.14 layer tabs, none of the colours match the shown footprint.A padstack being in a library, how do I know the revision history and what components are affected by a change to it?Example PAD60CIR36D if a dimension is changed like soldermask annular ring, are a mystery amount of library components changed?

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2024, 10:13:13 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on January 25, 2024, 07:44:07 pmThe idea is that you can browse through padstacks and then choose a suitable one for your footprint. Personally I don't like that workflow. I always make a padstack specific for a footprint or series of footprints (think a range of connectors with different number of pins). That way you can always tweak a padstack specific for that component (series) without messing up padstacks for other components. And no, I don't like to keep tweaked padstacks specific to a component as part of the footprint. The padstack library is leading.

author: glenenglish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 01:40:48 am
content: To the Cadence person :I am going to give ORCAD X/allegro a go.... As a 30+ year Altium user, time to change... so not done lightly. I'm probably referred to as a 'pro' user, high speed features , 2000 ball FPGAs, heavy RF..The big deal for Cadence right now is that Altium are changing their license structure and are pissing off alot of long term perpetual users.I think the sum of my maintenance license contribution to Altium is probably over 60 grand over the 35 years since 1990.So now is the time to look good and fix a few things. and have "Cadence for Altium users" support..Using the 30 day demo, So far I've had quite a few hard crashes. Not great. lost work. (altium is running backups pretty much continuously in the background and you rarely get a hard crash) .I think this post from Nico is one that needs to be taken seriously. It is a major pissoff of everyone coming from Altium, Nico does describe it well :https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/orcad-x-looks-a-like-like-altium/msg5298823/#msg5298823That's and the lack of a multiple document interface is minor PITA. So far I have not figured out how to have multiple instances running so I can do this.regards

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2025, 11:30:33 pm
content: The 'workaround' for having multiple PCB designs open, is using the Allegro viewer application. At least you can browse around in another design. The version I'm running doesn't add the viewer to the menu but it can be found in the installation directory (allegro_free_viewer.exe assuming you are running Windows).

author: glenenglish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2025, 10:33:55 am
content: So, sorted out the crashes - config/install error. All good. Only crash I have observed now is on importing anything more than a 2 layer PCB from Altium.But Cadence support is taking it seriously .Apart from that , it's a pretty nice flow. I thought it would be hell changing over, but it is like fresh air.Nico : and that's a reasonable workaround (using the viewer)I wonder if the clipboard will work between viewer and editor. Will checkcheers. glen.