Orcad Pro Vs Altium Designer Purchase Decision

[FelixK]

Hey guys,

I've been lately getting into some designs where timings and length matching are a bit more important and Circuit Studio isn't looking like it's going to cut it anymore. I was shopping around and basically have it down to either replacing it with Altium 18 or Orcad Pro 17.02. The best price I've been quoted for Altium was ~$7.5K for perpetual ~$4K for 1 year. I was quoted $3K for a Orcad Pro perpetual license.

Are there any good reasons to not go with Orcad in this case? The price seems great and has all the features I was looking for. Importing my existing work and libraries probably would be a pain, but overall this seems like a really great offer.

[nctnico]

I've had both demonstrated earlier this year and both packages are equally capable. Altium seems to be more popular so if you want to work with others the chance they use Altium is high. Orcad OTOH seems to need less resources. Orcad 17.x is still on my shopping list to upgrade my existing Orcad.

[asmi]

I've purchased Orcad Pro about a year ago (took advantage of a sale) and I never regret it! I especially love SI tools included in the package.
If you do decide to go for it, my advice would be to 1) order USB HASP key (this way the license will not be tied to a computer's MAC address, and you can move it easily by simply moving the HASP key instead of involving Cadence support to rehost - well worth $100!), and 2) get their PCB Editor basics course (it will help you to learn the tool quickly - I've made a successful DDR3 + FPGA design 3 weeks since I started using Orcad). Also request a free 30 days trial - as part of the trial, they will assign a field engineer to you that will answer all questions you might have very quickly. You can also use that to make a final decision if the tool is right for you or not before committing to a deal.

[voltsandjolts]

Circuitstudio should have paid upgrade / plugin options exactly for this situation, instead you are left with the big gap in price and features to AD. Altium is missing (yet another) trick here.

As mentioned, if you are working with small to medium companies, there is a strong chance they are using AD. That also means if you are ever looking for a job in that type of company AD might be the better option to have on your CV. (I have no statistics on that, just my feeling here in northern UK)

However, OrCAD 17 looks very capable and pretty (I've never used it) and quite a saving.

Got any parting comments on CS, have you enjoyed using it, up until hitting its limits (length matching)?

[chris_leyson]

Used Orcad 17 for a few months after upgrading from Orcad 16 at my previous job. As asmi stated get a USB HASP key then you can move it from one machine to another and the SI tools are really useful. Definately get a free trial for a few months before making a comitment. The user interface can be a quirky at times, by that I mean you have to scroll through too many options just to make a small change somtimes. It would be nice if you just click the right mouse button and select things like track width or default via etc. Been using Orcad on and off for probably 25 years, give it a try. $3K for a Orcad Pro perpetual license is a steal.

[nctnico]

If you buy Orcad then make sure you also buy the CIS option. This allows to put parts in a database and link a symbol, footprint, value, manufacturer, order code, etc, etc  to it. Without the CIS option you are basically back to creating bills of materials manually.

[T3sl4co1l]

FYI, Altium can usually be negotiated to ~$5k (perpetual license and 1 year subscription; I don't know if they've changed that licensing model).  Probably, Orcad has room for negotiation, I haven't heard anything about it though.  (This board is pretty Altium biased, so that shouldn't be a surprise. Let us know if you wind up doing better!)

Tim

[FelixK]

Tim,

I've been offered $5K as a limited time special for upgrading from CS back in Feb but at the moment the sales person I was talking to wasn't showing signs of budging or moving on the price. Even at 5K, that's still 66% more than Orcad Pro for 3K. The key thing I'm hoping to learn is what would I be missing with going with Orcad Pro instead of AD here. Cost is definitively a significant consideration for me, and I'm leaning heavily to Orcad Pro for that reason but I'd like to know what I'm getting myself into and what limitations I will have with this route.

Volts,

I've used Eagle, Diptrace, Upverter, and now most recently Circuit Studio. I paid $500 for Circuit Studio and overall I have enjoyed the interface and workflow which to my understanding is similar to AD. Of all the tools I've used I have enjoyed CS the most. I was surprised at how great it was to have the live supplier linking feature. It made BOM management that much better when ordering a board. My biggest complain was that when I would rename components in the schematic it had a tendency to mess up the layout of the PCB by moving components based on their name in the schematic instead of just changing the names of already placed components.

[asmi]

The key thing I'm hoping to learn is what would I be missing with going with Orcad Pro instead of AD here. Cost is definitively a significant consideration for me, and I'm leaning heavily to Orcad Pro for that reason but I'd like to know what I'm getting myself into and what limitations I will have with this route.

In this case you should definitely request a trial. This will allow you to make sure you're satisfied with what you will be getting.

[FelixK]

Since I was recommended to look into the CIS tools I got a demo of the toolset along with the CIT tools. It looked fantastic as a way of having a centralized parts database with direct linkage to digikey and others. However this is not included in the $3K price. The list price of CIS and CIT addons together was an additional $4250, putting the total to be right up there with AD. So much for price advantage there OrCAD. I'm going to see if I could talk them down on the price point of CIS and CIT but I'm kind of unsure now what to do now.

[asmi]

Since I was recommended to look into the CIS tools I got a demo of the toolset along with the CIT tools. It looked fantastic as a way of having a centralized parts database with direct linkage to digikey and others. However this is not included in the $3K price. The list price of CIS and CIT addons together was $4250, putting the total to be right up there with AD. So much for price advantage there OrCAD. I'm going to see if I could talk them down on the price point of CIS and CIT but I'm kind of unsure now what to do now.

I don't have CIS tools and honestly don't see this as a big problem. But of course it depends on your needs.

[FelixK]

Are you able to link to digikey and other parts vendors without CIS?

[asmi]

Are you able to link to digikey and other parts vendors without CIS?

No, but I didn't need that functionality because I have my own part management system that I had prior to purchasing Orcad license. Right now I export BOM from Capture into CSV file (which has my custom part numbers among other things) and then look up parts in my system.

[nctnico]

Since I was recommended to look into the CIS tools I got a demo of the toolset along with the CIT tools. It looked fantastic as a way of having a centralized parts database with direct linkage to digikey and others. However this is not included in the $3K price. The list price of CIS and CIT addons together was an additional $4250, putting the total to be right up there with AD. So much for price advantage there OrCAD. I'm going to see if I could talk them down on the price point of CIS and CIT but I'm kind of unsure now what to do now.

You need CIS only. Not CIT. I think they are trying to upsell but don't fall for it.

@asmi: I've been using Orcad capture + CIS for 20 years and I never ever want to go back to creating bills of materials manually.

[FelixK]

@nctnico

Sorry I made a mistake, it wasn't CIT but CIP, that is the Component Information Portal which allows the pulling of data directly from Digikey, Mouser, etc. If you don't have that then do you manually find the information for parts and enter it into your CIS database?

@Asami

What do you use for part management?

[asmi]

@asmi: I've been using Orcad capture + CIS for 20 years and I never ever want to go back to creating bills of materials manually.

I don't do it manually - I have my own system developed by me to deal with this.

[Neilm]

We use OrCad + CIS at work. We did look at the CIP when it was released and had a demo. What we found was that is did not produce IPC correctly on the few parts we tried. I assume it has got better since release.

[FelixK]

Talked to Altium sales again, best they were offering was a few hundred over 6K. Best offer I've gotten for Orcad Pro + CIS & CIP is a few hundred under 6K. Going to play with both trials more, but I'm unsure which direction to go still.

How good is AD18's signal simulation? OrCAD appears to have some very nice capabilities in that regards.

[asmi]

Talked to Altium sales again, best they were offering was a few hundred over 6K. Best offer I've gotten for Orcad Pro + CIS & CIP is a few hundred under 6K. Going to play with both trials more, but I'm unsure which direction to go still.

My advice for you would be to do a board in each of these CADs. This board would better be complicated enough to necessitate a use of advanced features like SI tools, length matching, BGA fanout, etc. It's important to do a board end-to-end as devil is always in details, and you will be able to see the whole workflow, and not just pieces of it which is what is often shown during vendors' demos. At the end of the day, nobody but you can tell which toolset is best for you.

[nctnico]

@nctnico

Sorry I made a mistake, it wasn't CIT but CIP, that is the Component Information Portal which allows the pulling of data directly from Digikey, Mouser, etc. If you don't have that then do you manually find the information for parts and enter it into your CIS database?

Yes, but that is pretty simple to do in an MS Access database (a single table). I have to see if a part is available from Farnell anyway so I put the order code and (budgetairy) price into my database at that point.

@asmi: I've been using Orcad capture + CIS for 20 years and I never ever want to go back to creating bills of materials manually.

I don't do it manually - I have my own system developed by me to deal with this.

I've seen & used such systems before (you are not the first and last who has developed something) but having Orcad deal with it directly is much easier. There is a lot more to it than just linking parts to a database. For example: Orcad can also check for you if the parts are correct when compared to the database (for example if someone changed a value manually or the footprint of the part got changed/updated).

[asmi]

I've seen & used such systems before (you are not the first and last who has developed something) but having Orcad deal with it directly is much easier. There is a lot more to it than just linking parts to a database. For example: Orcad can also check for you if the parts are correct when compared to the database (for example if someone changed a value manually or the footprint of the part got changed/updated).

The question is if these features are worth the price (both for purchase and for maintenance subscription updates). For me the answer is "no". If I'd have these extra funds, I'd rather spend them on PCB SI upgrade as it provides some really useful features like parameter sweep.

[blackfin76]

Orcad pro is that the name of the product?  This includes capture, pcb and CIS? What are the main features of the SI software?

I used to work with both Altium and Orcad in the past but I remember Altium being full of bugs, is this still the case?

[nctnico]

The question is if these features are worth the price (both for purchase and for maintenance subscription updates).

I don't do maintenance subscriptions. A CAD package works or it doesn't.

[asmi]

I don't do maintenance subscriptions.

Well then you're missing out a lot. During last year alone they made great improvements to both PCB Editor (brand spanking new interactive 3D render for one) and Capture (improved symbol editor). So for me it's totally worth the price of admission.

[tszaboo]

If you can choose, get Altium. I just convinced my company to hand back the Orcad 1 year license, and get altium.

[asmi]

Orcad pro is that the name of the product?

It is a name of the license level.

This includes capture, pcb and CIS?

PCB Pro includes Capture, PCB Editor Pro, SigXplorer (SI simulator) and some support tools. CIS is a separate addon to Capture.

What are the main features of the SI software?

It's a simulator that can be used to either pre-plan traces layout, or extract routed traces right from PCB and simulate its behavior using IBIS/HSPICE models of transmitter and receiver. I use it to verify that signal quality will be adequate for traces I routed, as well as to determine the best value and physical position of termination resistors if termination is required. PCB SI option allows performing parametric sweep, without it (with only PCB Pro license level) you will have to manually change values before each simulation.

I used to work with both Altium and Orcad in the past but I remember Altium being full of bugs, is this still the case?

I can't say anything about Altium, but Orcad did not crash once on me during the year I've been using it.

[Gibson486]

Everyone seems to be moving to Altium. I really do not know why. It was the first professional package I used and I have had no reason to move to something else.  It works, but it can be annoying when it crashes. Personally, I still like KiCad better, but its library management needs to improve in order for me to even consider it as a professional tool.

[ebclr]

Did you try Diptrace?

It's intuitive, easy, powerful and relatively cheap.

https://diptrace.com/

[Pack34]

After using both, Altium is just easier to use. You can get around paying extra for the vault by just creating repos for your libraries on any cloud service.