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Advanced PCB Design

I

icegray

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi All,
I have been using Orcad last five years for schematic and pcb design.
I think Orcad has bugs, it hasn't got useful tools specially at PCB
design. So I want to use a different eda tool and we plan to use
PCAD-2006. Our designs have got high speed tools and lines, BGA packs,
a lot of SMD device, etc.
Anybody have recommend about pcad or others (Pads, Allegro, Altium
Designer)?
Thanks
 
V

vasile

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi All,
I have been using Orcad last five years for schematic and pcb design.
I think Orcad has bugs, it hasn't got useful tools specially at PCB
design. So I want to use a different eda tool and we plan to use
PCAD-2006. Our designs have got high speed tools and lines, BGA packs,
a lot of SMD device, etc.
Anybody have recommend about pcad or others (Pads, Allegro, Altium
Designer)?
Thanks

I know Pads, Orcad, Eagle, old Tango and at beginner level Altium and
Protel (and a little PCAD). From the perspective of schematic capture,
Orcad is my favourite. From the BGA editing and library manipulation
perspective, Pads is the first one. From the autorouter perspective I
can't say anything. All are nasty.
Some specialists say that Altium Designer is the best for huge
designs, but in my evaluation process I found Altium difficult for
use, with a lot of documentation splitted in too many documents. Pads
is difficult too, at least aparently has less documentation and better
organised.
Any program will be, imagine you need a longer learning curve than
you've spend for Orcad, so choose well.
 
P

PeteS

Jan 1, 1970
0
icegray said:
Hi All,
I have been using Orcad last five years for schematic and pcb design.
I think Orcad has bugs, it hasn't got useful tools specially at PCB
design. So I want to use a different eda tool and we plan to use
PCAD-2006. Our designs have got high speed tools and lines, BGA packs,
a lot of SMD device, etc.
Anybody have recommend about pcad or others (Pads, Allegro, Altium
Designer)?
Thanks

Well, if you use the whole package (Orcad + Allegro + SpectraQuest) you
*do* have a high speed design package.

I am not affiliated with them, but I have done successful high speed
design in that environment (think thousands of 5Gb/s links).

Most current tools support such things, but expect to pay through the
nose for them.

Cheers

PeteS
 
I

icegray

Jan 1, 1970
0
I know Pads, Orcad, Eagle, old Tango and at beginner level Altium and
Protel (and a little PCAD). From the perspective of schematic capture,
Orcad is my favourite. From the BGA editing and library manipulation
perspective, Pads is the first one. From the autorouter perspective I
can't say anything. All are nasty.
Some specialists say that Altium Designer is the best for huge
designs, but in my evaluation process I found Altium difficult for
use, with a lot of documentation splitted in too many documents. Pads
is difficult too, at least aparently has less documentation and better
organised.
Any program will be, imagine you need a longer learning curve than
you've spend for Orcad, so choose well.

I think so Orcad is very good about schematic capture but PCB design
is very bad.
Allegro and Orcad interfaces are same? Can we say If you use Orcad you
can use Allegro easily?
 
D

David L. Jones

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi All,
I have been using Orcad last five years for schematic and pcb design.
I think Orcad has bugs, it hasn't got useful tools specially at PCB
design. So I want to use a different eda tool and we plan to use
PCAD-2006. Our designs have got high speed tools and lines, BGA packs,
a lot of SMD device, etc.
Anybody have recommend about pcad or others (Pads, Allegro, Altium
Designer)?
Thanks

P-CAD is effectively being phased out in favour of Altium Designer,
(Altium own P-CAD)
Read this:
http://www.altium.com/pcad/product/PCad2006-letter.pdf

Altium Designer is the only "unified" product available, which means
it has integrated support for FPGA's, embedded processing, and signal
integrity.

I would strongly recommend Altium Designer instead of P-CAD.

Dave.
 
M

Mikko S Kiviranta

Jan 1, 1970
0
: perspective, Pads is the first one. From the autorouter perspective I
: can't say anything. All are nasty.

In the old days when Pads was bundled with the Specctra router, I recall
feeling the relief that finally there is an autorouter capable to perform
a decent routing job, after tweaking its options a bit. The router in the
current Pads versions is as bad as any other I've seen.

Does anybody else share this appreciation to the Specctra, or is it
just that the time has gilded my memories?

Regards,
Mikko
 
N

Noway2

Jan 1, 1970
0
David said:
P-CAD is effectively being phased out in favour of Altium Designer,
(Altium own P-CAD)
Read this:
http://www.altium.com/pcad/product/PCad2006-letter.pdf

Altium Designer is the only "unified" product available, which means
it has integrated support for FPGA's, embedded processing, and signal
integrity.

I would strongly recommend Altium Designer instead of P-CAD.

Dave.
A while back, I spent some time evaluating both Allegro and Altium
designer as a replacement for the discontinued P-CAD that I have been
using. Of the two, I felt that the Allegro was a lot more focused on
designing boards and Altium Designer was trying to follow the Eclipse
concept of one unified IDE. Company management decided that they didn't
want to spend the money to upgrade at the time, but given the choice, I
would have chosen the Allegro hands down.
 
P

PeteS

Jan 1, 1970
0
icegray said:
I think so Orcad is very good about schematic capture but PCB design
is very bad.
Allegro and Orcad interfaces are same? Can we say If you use Orcad you
can use Allegro easily?

The integrated tool suite from Cadence (not available directly any more)
includes OrCad and Allegro - they are both owned by Cadence so netlists
etc. transfer easily.

Cheers

PeteS
 
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