OrCAD

[olkipukki]

Altium has built-in support for panelization, Orcad doesn't.

Wait a sec, what about this? Does it available in Pro package?

[nctnico]

I think this video shows Orcad 17.4 (or later). I have 17.2 Professional running and that doesn't have a panelisation function.

[olkipukki]

I think this video shows Orcad 17.4 (or later). I have 17.2 Professional running and that doesn't have a panelisation function.

Why you didn't update to the latest?
Are you out of maintanence or something else?

[nigelwright7557]

It amazes me how much some people will spend on PCBCAD software.
I sell mine for £4 on ebay !
It cant be too bad as I have done around 300 pcb's with it and sold hundreds.

[olkipukki]

Exactly, so many amazing things people are doing like buying a water in plastic bottles instead of a tap water or spend thousands on air tickets although they're free to walk from point A  to B... 

[nctnico]

I think this video shows Orcad 17.4 (or later). I have 17.2 Professional running and that doesn't have a panelisation function.

Why you didn't update to the latest?
Are you out of maintanence or something else?

I'm out of maintenance; I'm not sure whether updating to 17.4 is worth it. I do have the initial release and first service pack but due to the many changes there might be bugs fixed in a service pack I don't have access to and other things might have changed for the worse.

It amazes me how much some people will spend on PCBCAD software.
I sell mine for £4 on ebay !

The magic words are: DDR4 and design verification. If you are doing designs with memory running at clock speeds of 1.6GHz you need PCB tools which support length matching, differential pair phase alignment, impedance & crosstalk simulation. The same for stuff like HDMI, MIPI, PCIexpress, USB3, etc. A board spin sets you back about 2k euro just in costs. With tools which can verify these kind of designs you can be very certain that the board will work the first time. Debugging these kind of boards is a huge challenge which needs expensive equipment and/or lots of time. Suddenly spending 5k euro on a piece of software is peanuts compared to the alternative.

[AndyC_772]

It cant be too bad as I have done around 300 pcb's with it and sold hundreds.

Here's the feature matrix for the various OrCAD licenses, which gives a reasonable indication as to what features professional engineers may need to do their jobs and are willing to pay for.

Care to indicate which boxes your software can tick?

https://www.parallel-systems.co.uk/matrix/

[Note: the basic version is still on offer - I paid £430 including 12 months' support and maintenance!]

[olkipukki]

[Note: the basic version is still on offer - I paid £430 including 12 months' support and maintenance!]

Did they provide any training videos or just software packages with support?

[AndyC_772]

Both. See: https://www.youtube.com/user/parsysEDA/about

[nigelwright7557]

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[olkipukki]

OrCAD - How many updates / hotfixes usually on annual basis?

As comparison, Altium has released 15+ updates for version 20, and two times less for version 19.
They do a new release each and every year now.

[olkipukki]

"e-Learning for OrCAD (6-month license)"

https://www.ema-eda.com/offers/buy-orcad-today

Is somebody used it? How useful for a beginner?

[olkipukki]

https://www.parallel-systems.co.uk/matrix/

[Note: the basic version is still on offer - I paid £430 including 12 months' support and maintenance!]

Do you have access to Ultra Librarian for OrCAD that mentioned in https://www.ema-eda.com/offers/buy-orcad-today ?

[asmi]

OrCAD - How many updates / hotfixes usually on annual basis?

As comparison, Altium has released 15+ updates for version 20, and two times less for version 19.
They do a new release each and every year now.

In 2 years I was on maintenance subscription, they were rolling out "Quarterly Incremental Releases" every, well, quarter, also there were bugfix/maintenance releases in between QIRs which were more often, but I can't remember by now exactly how often they were.
Over my time on a sub, they basically re-implemented 3D view engine from scratch, and added a fair bit of functionality in it like ability to move parts right in 3D view which will back-propagate to the layout, or collision detection, cutout views. Also in one of QIRs they've enabled some features to Professional license which were previously only available at higher licenses (things like impedance and crosstalk visions, via z-height, dynamic phase matching for diff pairs, etc).
So I think if you use OrCad professionally and can afford it, I would say maintenance subs are worth their money.

[asmi]

Is somebody used it? How useful for a beginner?

I did - it was thrown into my purchase deal. It was extremely useful, as part of a course they shipped some paper learning material (and it's a big binder of paper!), plus videos (which I've downloaded so that I can refer to them at any time). I was given also a video-only introductory course for Capture (schematics tool). Both these were great, and showed many features I didn't even know about.
That said, the PCB part of a course did not cover some aspects like high speed designs, simulations, which I assume weren't included as to not overload the PCB basics course as much as to leave them opportunity to provide more in-depth (and more expensive!) training courses.

[AndyC_772]

Do you have access to Ultra Librarian for OrCAD that mentioned in https://www.ema-eda.com/offers/buy-orcad-today ?

I don't know, I've never looked. I always draw my own symbols from scratch as a matter of good practice.

[apurvdate]

I'm making this purchase today.. opting for an additional USB lic dongle on top of that.. Lets see how this course turns out..

Is somebody used it? How useful for a beginner?

I did - it was thrown into my purchase deal. It was extremely useful, as part of a course they shipped some paper learning material (and it's a big binder of paper!), plus videos (which I've downloaded so that I can refer to them at any time).

The representative of ema-eda India did not mention any printed material. It'll be great if I can keep the videos downloaded as you say

[owlhawk]

OrCAD - How many updates / hotfixes usually on annual basis?

As comparison, Altium has released 15+ updates for version 20, and two times less for version 19.
They do a new release each and every year now.

In 2 years I was on maintenance subscription, they were rolling out "Quarterly Incremental Releases" every, well, quarter, also there were bugfix/maintenance releases in between QIRs which were more often, but I can't remember by now exactly how often they were.
Over my time on a sub, they basically re-implemented 3D view engine from scratch, and added a fair bit of functionality in it like ability to move parts right in 3D view which will back-propagate to the layout, or collision detection, cutout views. Also in one of QIRs they've enabled some features to Professional license which were previously only available at higher licenses (things like impedance and crosstalk visions, via z-height, dynamic phase matching for diff pairs, etc).
So I think if you use OrCad professionally and can afford it, I would say maintenance subs are worth their money.

That matches what I saw in the past also, but they seem to have fallen behind this year. It used to be a QIR with new features each quarter and "hotfix" releases about every two weeks with bug fixes. Since they put out version 17.4 last fall, there have been no new feature releases and the "hotfix" ones are more like every month or two. I'm not sure if this is the new normal, or just due to coronavirus and/or them being busy on bug fixes for the 17.4 release. They will have a hard time convincing me to renew my subscription if it goes another year with no feature updates.

[Note: the basic version is still on offer - I paid £430 including 12 months' support and maintenance!]

Did they provide any training videos or just software packages with support?

In addition to the included training, Cadence made the online versions of all their courses available for free as of few months ago. Log in to support.cadence.com, click on Training Courses, then filter by PCB design courses and price of free. They have the Intermediate and Advanced PCB editor classes, which cover the stuff missing from the "Basics" course included when you buy the software. Also specific courses on high speed design, PSpice, and a bunch of other stuff. I thought I knew orcad pretty well, but learned a lot of new tricks from these.

I believe this is all accessible to anyone who has had a orcad license and created a cadence account at one point. I don't think you even need a current subscription. Not sure if it will remain free long term or not... the emails I got didn't mention a time limit.

[olkipukki]

Wonder if Cadence training will supersede EMA EDA since both cover same topics?

[Shadowfire]

I bit the bullet and bought PCB designer Professional, and the Pspice option.
PCB Editor in this version DOES include the panelization features in that video, I played around with it very briefly.

[nigelwright7557]

It cant be too bad as I have done around 300 pcb's with it and sold hundreds.

Here's the feature matrix for the various OrCAD licenses, which gives a reasonable indication as to what features professional engineers may need to do their jobs and are willing to pay for.

Care to indicate which boxes your software can tick?

https://www.parallel-systems.co.uk/matrix/

[Note: the basic version is still on offer - I paid £430 including 12 months' support and maintenance!]

Given I have done 300 pcb's with no problems I dont care about all the stuff I dont need.
1/ Draw schematic.
2/ Use schematic to pcb converter.
3/ In PCB entry use component auto placer.
4/ Use auto router
5/ Fix anything auto router couldnt do and sort out star grounding.
6/ PCB to Gerber file converter.
7/ Send to pcb maker.