Converting Orcad schematic to protelDXP scematic

Not hard at all.

First, you print the Orcad schematic, preferably 'D' size. A BOM will also be very helpful.

You then open Protel. First, you create parts for all the elements listed in the BOM. Then, starting in one corner of the printed Orcad schematic, you place the new Protel part in that position on your new Protel schematic. Mart the part with a sharpie. Then place the next part, and connect the two. Repeat until you have all the parts and connections on your Orcad schematic duplicated in your Protel schematic.

Or, you can go through translation software and import/export nightmares that take twice as long, and give you more errors...

Charlie

Can't you open Orcad Capture files directly in Protel?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

To be honest, Sphero, I don't know beans about Protel. Asking Derek over there in support would give you a much better answer... ;-)

I was just replying to all the "Can I take a design in A and open it in B?" posts...

Charlie

Don't know about DXP, but 99SE has an option to open OrCAD Capture and Layout files directly. I've never tried it and therefore have no idea of the quality of the imported files. Sometimes you end up with a mangled file when trying to move between different design suites. Also, DXP is several years old, so you need to look at which version of OrCAD is being used. New OrCAD files may respond differently than older ones.

Chris

I've been reasonably successful pasting in a WMF of a client's schematic (into PSpice Schematics... natch ;-)

Then "tracing" by plunking down components and wiring them up, then delete the WMF.

Did that on a fairly large Microchip project.

...Jim Thompson

I have converted several OrCAD schematics to DXP 2004 recently and if the OrCAD files are not a newer version than the DXP, it works pretty good. A lot further ahead than the manual methods. You may find as I did that some (a few) random part symbols don't import into the DXP schematic. This was very random, with one symbol it read in just fine within one schematic and then the identical symbol was omitted from the next schematic, go figure.

Simply read the DSN file into DXP via the file open menu and selecting the proper file type in the bottom drop down window. The one issue or problem I encountered is that the part parameters (partfields in DXP) are scattered wide and far across the schematic and need to be moved close(er) to the actual parts using them. there could be some option that would control this but I didn't find it and just manually reset the locations of the partfields once in DXP.

-- Sincerely, Brad Velander.

What about a gerber import to your PCB entry module?