Orcad vs. Open Source

rickman · 2008-03-14T17:20:59+00:00

I am trying to finish up a board layout and I have been making changesto facilitate the routing of traces without so much crisscross. I amusing FreePCB to do the layout and it is going very well. FreePCB hassome issues and periodically pops up an error message, I click Ignoreand save my work (on top of saving it every time I make a change). Sofar I have not lost one bit of work with the errors in FreePCB. Sothe frequent saves may be overkill.Orcad, on the other hand, doesn't fail often. When it does fail, itusually offers to let you save your work. When you restart it, itknows it was shut down rather than having exited and will open theproject you were working on. So again, I have lost little or nowork.But now Orcad is dropping a net from the net list. This is a net thathad been listed just fine. I moved the pin it uses on the FPGA andnow it is gone from the net list. I have checked and double checkedthe three connections to parts on this net and they all seem to befine. Even so, if only one of the three pin connections were good,there would be errors. If two were good, it would still be in the netlist, just with the third point missing.The Orcad file format is closed and I can't do anything to try to fixthis problem. The FreePCB file format, in contrast, is open and veryreadable. I can view it to see what is going on although I only didthat when I started using the tool and didn't understand some thingsabout it.I thought about using an open source schematic editor when I startedthis project, but I didn't want to take the hit on the learning curveand I did not have a lot of confidence in a new tool (to me) notscrewing up. Looks like I got that anyway.

Mar 14, 2008 27 Replies

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rickman 18 years ago

I hope this won't turn into an Open Source vs the world flame war. :^)

I think you took his comments out of context. His comment about "good stuff" was in regard to ...

**************************************************** What do you say about these software then?

- Linux kernel

- gcc

- PostGresql

- Mozilla

****************************************************

I am the one saying that I think FreePCB is an amazingly good tool considering that it was developed by a single person in his spare time. Whether it is good enough to use professionally is not a matter of fact, but is up to each user to decide.

I think Habib's point is that there are some very good and much used (professionally) open source programs out there. So the idea that an open source program ***can't*** be good enough to use professionally is simply not accurate given the facts.

I would rather discuss the specifics of various programs than to argue the idea of good and evil of open source.

rick

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Habib Bouaziz-Viallet 18 years ago

Le Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:43:13 +0000, Vladimir Vassilevsky a écrit:

Who needs it ?? Do not spit on what you use

From: Vladimir Vassilevsky Organization: AbVolt, Ltd. User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en,ru

HBV

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Guy Macon 18 years ago

..thus solving the "hard(er) to find it on the schematic" problem with ordering the part numbers by board location vs. schematic location.

In such cases, a grid system can be a big help. You usually have to keep the components back a bit from the edges, so there is room to put a row of numbers on the X-Axis and a row of letters on the Y-Axis. This is especially beneficial when working with parts lists, where an extra column with the grid location is easy to fit in.

misc.business.product-dev: a Usenet newsgroup about the Business of Product Development. -- Guy Macon

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Vladimir Vassilevsky 18 years ago

ecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax)

I am using Netscape because of the historical reasons, not because there =

is something good or special about it. It is just too much of work to=20 transfer all of the data and settings gathered through many years to IE/O= E.

VLV

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Habib Bouaziz-Viallet 18 years ago

Le Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:22:32 +0000, Vladimir Vassilevsky a écrit:

Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax)

You're really amazing Vladimir ! But you know it's always funny to read your posts.

HBV

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CBFalconer 18 years ago

... snip ...

You're absolutely right. I have been taking the idiot much too seriously.

[mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) [page]: Try the download section.

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rickman 18 years ago

ecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax)

OE.

Yes, that is what Vlad does best, comic relief. He's a regular Seinfeld. :^)

Rick

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thedoc 18 years ago

orcad/cadence.. royal pita.. try Kicad..

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