there WAS (not the use of past tense) nothing wrong with OrCad. For years it was the reference for PC based schematic and PCB design. Sure there was Viewdraw and Ariadne and Pads and Hiwire and Smartwork (yikes..) and Tango and Layo and Ultiboard and Vanguard and Daisy and Circuitmaker and others.
but somewhere along the line they fumbled the ball a bit and Protel came to be ( out of frustration with OrCad's lack of support and willingness to listen to customers demanding some features )
by the way, OrCad = Oregon Cad. They were based in Oregon.
And then the move from dos to Windows happened and EVERYONE , apart form protel , was late. Protel was the first.
They were also the first to have schematic link realtime with PCB. And then the world exploded.... everyone was all of a sudden 'borging' everyone else. Some of the big boys stepped in like Cadence.
Cadence borged OrCad for 2 reasons
1) the existing user base
2) the Masstek router technology embedded in OrCad
Cadence then drove the development straight into the wall , through the wall and into the drink... subsequent releases (post OrCad, so Cadence release) began being troublesome , buggy and brought nothing really new. To the point that somewhere mid 2000's every OrCad user got a 'Dear John' letter... basically telling everyone to get screwed , move to their higher end pcb tools and orcad was just going to be schematic with little development and a stalled pcb section. The price went through the roof at that time. OrCad layout is gone , and the shematic front-end is old , crusty and badly supported. At this point the whole orcad system is just a collection of loose programs tied together with some scripts , spit and ducttape. it still feels like it is 1999 ...
They call this sort of CAD tools the 'shrinkwrap' CAD. meaning it is sold in a cardboard box sealed in plastic schrinkrap. ust like any other software you find in a computer store.
the big players (Cadence, Mentor , Zuken )are not used to , and don't work like that. you buy a yearly licence to run ( not an update fee like altium , but a real licence to run. don't pay means you can't run it. some tools you even pay by the run hour or number of processor cores running it.
Cadence and Mentor ( they borged PADS) thought their way into the schrinkwarp market would be easy. simply borg these companies, make some extentions to their existing tools to glue it together. they miscalculated grossly... the audience is totally different, and also the way the audience works is totally different. very quickly the support for the schrinkwrap tools became a burden that was draining profits.. that's why cadence killed off the layout in favor of their higher end in-house tool.
Ultiboard was one of the companies that held out the longest. Eagle is a relative newcomer. There was a german company that held out for a long time as well. EdWin. that was it.
but they all fell by the wayside. some are still around but make those 'pcb maker' tied-in tools. many a pcb maker now gives you free cad software that, of course, can only generate output they can read. that's where things like Tango and a lot of others ended up.
The open-sauce stands nowhere. their performance is even weaker than eagle. Hopefully with the effort injection from CERN that will change.
and then there is the whole borging going on by the likes of digikey and element14 and mouser ( all three now have their tools)
And then there are the web-based design tools, which are still in their infancy ... diaper stage... The kind of diaper that hasn't been changed in a while and leg openings are starting to fray and show brown spots...