Migrating back to OrCAD 9.x !!

What's crashing, PSpice or (likely) Capture ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

Mostly capture, but also a couple of times PSpice, and I am talking here about OrCAD 10.5 SP1!

Please elaborate. Examples?

If it's due to Capture, I can't help, I use PSpice Schematics.

...Jim Thompson

I've never had a problem opening a 10.5 design in 9.2; I believe the differences are in the "user interface" and that the file formats/capabilities are, if not 100% identical, very, very close.

User interface features you lose in 9.2 include:

-- No rotation of multiple objects selected as a group

-- Clicking and dragging is a little more squirrely (tries to resize instead of selecting)

-- Pin names can't be moved!

-- Grid is a little more squirrely (requiring moving part off-grid at least one grid space to re-snap to grid)

-- Rotating text doesn't work as well (aesthetically -- alignment gets messed up)

-- Junctions are a little dumber (if you delete one leg of a T, the junction dot remains and needs to be deleted manually)

-- Multi-level undo! (9.2 only has single level. Uggh.)

-- In property dialogs, you can't type exact coordinates

That's what I have off-hand.

You might want to consider switching to a different program, e.g., Pulsonix. It has bugs (I keep a list of the ones I've found on the Yahoo! Pulsonix group) and isn't as feature-laden as ORCAD, but it is built with a much clearer "vision" of what they're trying to achieve (whereas ORCAD is on life-support these days, with on-going development in India) and any real "showstopper" bugs (those that cause data loss, crash the software, etc.) get fixed pretty much immediately -- in general they're a lot more responsive than Cadence. For the *money* it's a much better value.

You can also import ORCAD schematics; this work pretty well. They claim you can *export* ORCAD schematics too, but don't believe it -- the functionality is nowhere near ready for commercial work yet.

---Joel Kolstad

(I probably sound like Leon Heller here, but...) Pulsonix uses the SIMetrix SPICE engine, which is quite good. (Although, just like ORCAD vs. Pulsonix, Pulsonix SPICE isn't as feature-laden as PSpice is and a lack of, e.g., fancier transistor models would probably make it a non-start for some uses.)

I should point out that Joel has only listed two bugs in the current release. The first is somewhat annoying, but can be worked around. The second is very unlikely to be experienced by anyone, is very easy to avoid and won't cause anyone any problems.

Leon

Actually it's more than half a dozen, although there are only 4 that were re-checked in the current build (2959). However, it's a fair bet that any bug in previous releases that the current release notes don't address are still in there. Here's a new one for you: Name a PCB something like "test.031.pcb"... now generate LPKF output for it... you'll find that the "test.031.gbx" file is incomplete (the "." in the file name messes up the output file generation) -- Pulsonix has confirmed this as a bug (in the current build), but it's minor enough I didn't bother adding it to my list.

In any case, since Pulsonix -- like many EDA companies, including Cadence -- keeps their internal bug list private it's a fair bet that if I, as a very "lightweight," casual user of Pulsonix can document more than half a dozen bugs, there's probably hundreds on the internal list. (Of course ORCAD probably has just as many...)

I'd let people judge that for themselves after reading the list.

---Joel

For Layout, you can't do a proper DRC on a board that uses blind or buried vias in version 9.x. However, you will gain a load of redraw speed for copper pours/areas by going back to version 9.x. EDA's handling of this bug report was very unimpressive when I brought up this bug in versions 10.x, even when talking to them over the phone and supplying simple examples. The problems of exporting the software development to India! Actually, the latest version 9.x was pretty darn stable.

Don't know about Capture. Dog of a program. I still use the old DOS version of Orcad SDT 386+ which is stable and efficient. With the new VESA video drivers someone wrote a couple years back and hacks to some of the utilities, it's still a very nice schematic program.

Hello Mark,

Agree. I was never really happy with any of the OrCAD versions after they migrated to Windows. Plus the pricing has IMHO gone up a bit too steeply. So, I switched to Cadsoft Eagle. They didn't outsource their work and you get prompt answers in one of their NGs in case of problems.

I have always wanted to use Eagle for its easiness, large number of users, and cheapness. But I have heard from colleages and from tutors in my University, that you can't do series projects with it, i.e. not recommended for projects that have more than approx. 6 layers or more than approx. 100Mhz !!

Yeah, its probably due to Capture.

Hello Jidan,

Huh? Why would that be? It has been used for RF layouts much above that and it can support a lot more than sic layers. No offense but I'd talk to folks in industry about that ;-)

IMHO Eagle has three major downsides for industry users: It doesn't support hierarchical sheet structures, it does not offer additional part fields (will be offered soon though) and it doesn't easily interface with foreign layout packages. I use a contract layouter so the latter is a pain. But all that is outweighed by it's nicely integrated behavior and good support.