Why is layout/schematic software so klunky?

Does anyone if it's still possible to purchase Orcad for DOS? I believe that version V4.42 was the last of the DOS versions.

We bought a copy for what we thought at the time was a LOT of money (thousands of dollars). I was also trying to justify the purchase of a kick-ass (for the day) computer to run it. I did ONE tiny CMOS timer board for a water purifier with perhaps 20 parts (would have taken me about 30 minutes to hand tape) and the damn thing locked up beyond repair even with their best tech support minds helping-- and of course it took forever to do. We shipped their $##$#(*$ dongle and the $#(*$#($ program back, and after a few months of wrangling finally got our money back. Put me off the stuff for years and years.

The current version, or at least 9.x, isn't so bad.

Hello Guy,

I do not believe you could. AFAIK it is out of support and then stuff is usually dropped. My favorite was SDT III. Lean, fast and rock solid. It ran on a late 80's Wang laptop with 1MB, no sweat. And the board I did on that old laptop was huge, about the size of a birthday cake.

The problem with a lot of DOS packages is that printer output and other peripheral usage becomes increasingly difficult. Once I ended up having to write part of my own printer driver. That was definitely not my favorite chore.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Roger,

For about $800 you can buy the full professional edition of Cadsoft Eagle schematic and layout. If you want the autorouter that's another $400 for the full version. Not so bad and this is certainly not amateur SW but serious stuff.

I don't know how well their autorouter works because my designs cannot be autorouted.

Regards, Joerg

I worked as an instructor for OrCAD while it was DOS-based. I got a better job before the Windows version . They outdid themselves after making the Windows schematic capture the worst abotrion in history with an EVEN WORSE PWB layout program. I tried and tried to make the autorouter work. Finally I tried routing a very simple circuit - a through-hole resistor and a capacitor in parallel. The OrCad autorouter took over five minutes to route it and the result had 27 vias! What kind of management allows allows something like that to ship?

--
Guy Macon

If you pay enough for - should we name it "Slow And Bugged Amateur Software", SABAS in short? - it is'nt SABAS anymore. It's the best you can afford, so you tolerate the quirks. And you, for your own's sake, will not admit yourself to have bought SABAS.

Isn't something like this called stuff for the "Prosumer" :-)

When I first evaluated CAD packages, about mid 80's, I found 3 classes. One running upto about $1000, with serious shortcomings, each of which can be a show-stopper. More Kindergarten in the low end, really useable in the upper end of this class, but you have to know the limits, keep your designs in the limits and select your manufacturers accordingly. A second, about $5k. Also serious shortcomings, but no show-stoppers in sight. You can compensate the shortcomings with working hours. And serious stuff, $10k up. With shortcomings. Some of them can be healed by another $5k, others require working hours.

I did not really look at the $50k up class.

After deciding for one product of the middle class, I furtheron only cursory observed the market, looking for the WonderWare, and could not see any change in this classes. Sure, all the products change their faces, and features are coming and coming. But I haven't seen a real new kid in town (except for Oliver Bartels BAE, which I haven't evaluated), there's noone breaking this class society.

Andreas

--
You are not allowed to call yourself an engineer until you've "smoked"
at least 100 circuits *and* understand why they "smoked" ;-)
- Jim Thompson

Hello Andreas,

It depends on what you do. For chip designs, yes, in the 80's you usually needed at least a Mentor Graphics station plus a few ten thousand Dollars. Plus space the size of a board room, a diesel in case the power goes and so on. But for boards I cannot quite agree. We have designed huge ultrasound systems containing more than a dozen B-size boards that were crammed full of SMT with regular OrCAD and Dash 2/4. With Orcad the systems often started with one top layer sheet and then decended into a hierarchy. No problems.

When I started my own biz in 1989 I had to buy my own CAD licenses and as a young entrepreneur you've got to be frugal here. I remember that I paid $499 for the Orcad SDT license. And here again that little CAD package allowed me to design more of these huge boards. I have neither seen serious shortcomings nor show stoppers and some designs were rather challenging (RF, fast digital stuff, lots of Spice simulations). Layout was usually done on Pads. Not that expensive either and no show stoppers.

With Eagle I don't see major issues except for two: No hierarchical schematics which is serious but manageable. I wish they'd do something about that. Then, no free parts designators which makes cost calculations and ECO tracking a bit cumbersome. I have some hope that the latter gets taken care of in a future release though.

Regards, Joerg

42 to 2,585 Euros, depending on version.

I proved (the hard way) that it is possible to use Protel for 10GHz designs.

But this is just using Protel as a dumb drawing package; it basically offers no features that are needed for modern designs (like routing differential traces, or matching lengths of traces, or controlling impedance along a path (through vias) or anything else that makes modern PCB design interesting).

Regards, Allan

I can pretty much assure you that you can not purchase a new copy of DOS Orcad SDT.

As a matter of fact, I doubt you can purchase anything older than 9.2.3 Capture, at least not from the original companies.

You probably can still purchase used software, probably in violation of license agreements, of all sorts.

--
Charlie
--
Edmondson Engineering
Unique Solutions to Unusual Problems

Mentor Graphics - with some of the Hewlett Packard EM extensions (They are Chinese, so there are no licensing costs ;-)

Mentor can do almost anything, given enough USD!

Does it still insist on installing on "C:"? I mean, The "nakid" silver wimmen on the Ads I can take - it is a German product after all - but:

*That Part* put me right off even trying it, alluding to total DOS/MASM Cruftiness and firm developer belief systems hardcoded everywhere ;-)

.... and if the Install is broken, Uninstall will be more broken and then my PeeCee will be broken also.

Thanks to everyone who has provided the feedback. Very insightful!

-- Andy

Courtesy R. Steve Walz.

Cheers! Rich

There is also

--

    Boris Mohar

I'm not unsatisfied with Orcad. For PCBs the best piece of software I've used so far is Layo1. The author/creator of that package has been in the PCB layout software business for over 15 years and uses his own package for layout work (he seems to do a lot of layouts for Philips's evaluation boards). I'm amazed I'm always the only one to mention this piece of software in threads like these. Has no-one ever heard of it?

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

First I have ever heard of it. It looks like I would have to shell out 100 to 200 euros (multiply euros by 1.3 to get US dollars) in order to get something that will do big multilayer boards.

Thanks, Rich, and Thanks Boris!

My philosophy is that if a company is selling sofware, I pay for it or do without, but if they aren't willing to sell it to me, I figure that it is Abandonware and is free game.