Which PCB tool to choose?

[PCBilly]

First time poster here.

I started with VeriBest 98 then on to Mentor Expedition, now I use Pads and Cadence. They both have thier own pros and cons, but I prefer Pads over all.

I plot out the gerbers, then use Cam350 to convert the fab and assembly to .dxf. I then import them into AutoCad to create my assembly drawings.

I have designed boards ranging from 2 sided "do nothings" to dual processor mother boards for Compaq. Rapid 5, Texas Instuments....blah blah blah....

 

[tha]

Hi
I think CADINT is the best

THA

 

[hermin]

Ive been using protel for a long time, and i find it somewhat average, sometimes it routes your pcb in a way that you dont want it, and sometimes it doesnt route a connection but you cant see it until you made a statistical analysis, a lot of companies that i know use cadence but until now i havent use it but i think cadence is better because industry uses it and they say the price is quite fair

 

[Manjunatha_hv]

I think all the tools lack Signal integrity Analysis capabilities ...

 

[nat-b]

Firstly, sorry for the long post. It's not meant to be a rant - just a collection of my opinions which may be useful or stimulate discussion.

Man, there's nothing perfect out there. Everything has it's flaws. It's a real pain trying to work out what's best for any one person. I'm just going through th same pain but at a lower price point (spending my own money!!!)

I've been using Cadence Allego for the last few years (spent around 12k UKP of my employers money on a couple of upgrades alone last year!). I mainly do schematic capture and sub out the PCB layout to a layout house. Allegro HDL (a.k.a. Cadence Concept HDL) is the schematic capture tool. It's pretty quirky, but what it doesn't do isn't worth doing. To get the most out of Concept, you have o type at it a lot. Selecting things, moving things, etc. is all most easily achived typing the commands into the console.

Nice things about Allegro (concept) HDL:

Concept (allegro HDL) uses the idea of 'annotated physical parts' based on simlpe text files. This enables you to use a single capacitor symbol to map to many 'orderable' parts. This is equivalent to the 'CIS' part of Orcad, except it is _much_ easier to maintain and enter parts compared to CIS (IMHO). If you use a text editor with column edit mode (i.e. ultraedit or pspad) you can enter a bazillion components an hour by mungling Farnell/RS online component lists. I once entered over 1500 ceramic capacitors in around 1 hour. When you have put this kind of information in, you can get BOM out that you can (almost) fax straight off to the disti. (I am essentially lazy, but I will go to great lenghts today to save myself time tomrrow!)

All the underlying files are based on ASCII files (there are some binaries used to speed things up, but if you kill all the binaries leaving only the ASCIIs, it will regenerate the binaries). This means that if/when somthing goes wrong, you can go in and hack the files (if it goes wrong, it is usually that you did somthing really stupid like trying to merge two desgins by simply copying files around. Also, for big complex parts, you can write your own scirpts etc to make parts. Just been doing one todya. Had a design that has been layed out and manufactured done by inexperinecd (in CAD tools) engineer - it was a real dogs breakfast - patched new half a desgin with old half a hierarchical design and managed to tie it all back into the PCB data - try that on some of the 'lesser' tools and have it work!

Crossprobing betwwen HDL and Allegro PCB works just fine (like the more integrated tools) but all links between PCB and Schematic are via a small number of forward/pack annotation files. Makes working with external PCB house easy.

Hierarchy works well with NO requirement to flatten your schematic drawings in order to netlist - you can maintain hierachial design, back annotate, view ref-des but still maintain the minimum number of shcematic pages. Works well.

Gripes:

It's expensive and you always seem to need some extra bit that you don't have (contraints manager, part developer, 'Expert' level for impedance measurement or whatever).

Steep learning curve (but works well when you've learned it). Completely un-windows UI (heritage from Unix platform)

Dangerous library management strategy if you're undisciplined (libraries are stored globally, so if someone changed a library and you reload your design that used to work OK, it will break - nohing 'unfixable' but can be a pain - desgnate a librarian and only let him/her edit the library! use CVS!) (note, you can make design archives which automatically collects all the libraries and saves them locally) - personally, I prefer this, but then I am the librarian (amongst many other talents, I assure you!) for the company I work for.

Regarding Allegro layout, it is very flexible, but again, you have to buy a load of extras if you want all the goodies. It has good contraints management and can measure track-track capacitance, line impedance etc. etc. (expert or higher version only, I think). Routing contraints can be propagated from Orcad, Allegro HDL etc (for example diff pair impedance, relative/absoulte propagation etc) - this can all feed into the Spectra router.

Also worth noting (I guess other vendors do this too) - cadence do an 'EDA card' like a pre-pay phone card - you can load it up with credits and rent various bits on short-term lease - so, you can buy the bits you use 24/7 and rent the spectraquest (which costs more than my house to buy!) when you need it.

Making libraries for allegro is OK, but nothing special. You can, of course, do pretty much what you want, but it might take a little while to do it.

I've also used Orcad. I don' like it one bit. The whole capture system is a mess as far as I'm concerned. I prefer global libraries (as in this method when fixes get made they apply across the board) - Orcad, IMHO, encourages poor discipline and 'quick hacks' that cost time later. I can;t imagine how it could be used in a design-for-manufacture context without the CIS option, which is also a pain to set up (have to use a database program like Access - much more of a pain the text files). UI is OK in Orcad - very 'doze, so if you can use word, you can probably draw a schematic - you can probably even make a library - can you make a _good_ library that you will want (and be ABLE) to use again? It's possible, but not as easy as it might at first appear.

I tried protel (eval) - couldn't get on with it - also read nasty things about it (many bugs)

Orcad layot is pants. I'd rather use some of the freeware out there, quite frankly. I can't think of a single redemming feature of Orcad layout. It's cheaper than Allegro PCB, but there are much better tools out there for less money.

On that subject, I'm looking for a new tool myself (for my own personal/small commercial progjects) - looked at quite a few. Closely examined all the 'freeware' I can find. Nothing doing on that front. Kicad and gEDA are good achievements, but nowhere near capable enough in my eyes. I'm not building rockets or anything, but I need more than a couple of op-amps and a pic. As far as I can see, none of these freeware apps even support back annotation - no way I'm uising that!

I really like Eagle UI, but it has a couple of _major_ features missing - namely, only basic geomtrical padstacks (duh!), no hierarchy support in schematics, no auto-pin/gate swap - a real shame, cos I really really like the UI - it's quirky, but really well thought out to keep the commonly used things on the mouse buttons or mouse/ctrl/alt/shft combinations - if you don't need these missing features, seriously look at it. I was sceptical about lack of 'CIS' type operation (it is clearly a PCB layout tool that grew a Schematic tool), however, there are some reasonable post-annotation-stage BOM generators included (or downloaded) that makes it useable (not my favorite way, but perfectly workable)

After looking at a zilion other packages and discarding for one reason or another, now looking at Proteus. A bit worried that they're pusing down the 'noddy simulator' route with shite micro-controller simulators built in - makes me think their main market is education, which doesn't fill me with confidence they're making a pro-tool, however, it does have the main features I' m after at around 1000 ukp for the full thing.

Main features I'm looking for:

1) Built in way to include 'pysical part' inforamtion (like 'CIS' part of orcad)
2) arbitrary shape pad-stacks (polygons with curves)
3) Homogenous and Hetrogenous parts
4) Auto gate and/or pinswap in the PCB layout (I use a lot of FPGAs - in the early days, I used to work out all the pin lists by hand - then I discovered auto-pin-swap on allegro - bing! never want to go back!)
5) all the usual stuff like forward/back annotation - auto reannotation - blind/burried vias - max 1 micron basic resolution - min 16 layers - prefer electra/spectra interface posibility - prefer (at least optional) track property measurement (characteristic impedance and the like) - decent looking schematics - usable UI (quirky is OK, provided it works efficiently if learned well!)
6) quick/slick workflow! Very important! (why I liked Eagle)

less than 2k UKP

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Nat

 

[nagaraj_hsmn]

Better to Use cadstar good one 4 layout design and Orcad 9.0 for schematic.

 

[nagaraj_hsmn]

Orcad for beginngeer .

 

[sugvivek]

I Prefer to use Orcad Capture for schematic and
Cadence Allegro or Power Pcb for layout

 

[kops]

thanks

 

[tieuquaybk]

it's easier to make simulation in Orcad and route the PCB with PCad.
Orcad layout 's realy not comfortable to use

 

[electronicus]

Orcad, is the best !!!

 

[Abhishek Kakkar]

East or west, Eagle Light Is the best

 

[vamanan]

I use orcad for schematic and dxp2004 for layouting. I dont have anything negaive for dxp2004

 

[drabos]

Hello

What's the difference betwen Cadence PSD and Cadence SPB?

Thnaks,

 

[subspace]

I agree pads is a very good choice for:

1. a budget of 4k - 6k
2. for layout Engineer only
3. learning curve is less than of Orcad

 

[Monolisa5791]

According to your application,

PADS will be a better layout tool , and next to that Allegro is a good tool at the higher end .

 

[ree]

PADS is very good

 

[prasannavenkatesh krishna]

Hi all

For schematic orcad is the best.
When it comes to layout there is no software to beat Cadstar HS.It has all it requires to make perfect PCB.We can do SI analysis and EMC/EMI analysis.The cost is less when compared to other softwares providing all these features.
We can import the schematic netlist from Orcad easily into Cadstar.It has very good easy to use menu structure and powerful autorouter.
In cadstar we have a feature called "Trunk routing" which is not there in any other software, it is very helpful in routing Buses using this feature.
If ur budget is good u can go for Zuken's CR5000 excellent tool and costs less compared to Mentor's Board expedition and cadence Allegro.

regards
Prasanna

 

[NuSkool]

I am currently in a situation at work where they are discussing purchasing EDA software. They are considering 2 options now. Orcad Capture/Layout or DxDesigner/PADS. What is the more viable package?

I have heard rumblings that Orcad Layout is a dying product, is there any truth to that? Is Cadence pushing people towards Allegro?

 

[abhi002]

use zuken tools
the tool for making quality pcbs