My collegue just received the upgrade but just as Neilm says its not backwrds compatible.
?? WTF ? Really ?
Do they have no save-as, or export-as, like countless CAD packages can do today ?
What exactly has changed, and what in a OrCAD data base needs to be 64b ??
I can understand the EXE being 64b, but the design files are a whole different thing.
You can run 17.2 and older versions side-by-side. 17.2 uses the same pcb_env setting as the 16.6, but some customizations can stop working in 17.2. Specially skill context files, these need to be recompiled to 64b.
You can open 16.6 designs in 17.2, but once saved to the newer version you cannot open it anymore in 16.6. There is no way back...
Further, you can use your current pre-17 library in 17.2 without any problem.
For the Capture (schematics) part I was told that a 17.2 file can be opened in a pre-17 release. Didn't tried that one yet.
The Capture CIS needs to be a 64b database driver. So the older types (32b) are not longer supported.
Also the licence manager/server needs to be running on 64b.
My impression of 17.2 Orcad/Allegro, it works, it has a lot of (good) changes, but still with bugs. Currently the hotfix level is 2, and in my company we better wait for a few more hotfixes before moving on to 17.2.