Mid level PCB Design programs: share your experience and questions

[gigahertz]

This is a topic that may be of interest. Not meant to be a "this is better than that", but more of a general information exchange for "mid level" PCB design programs such as: PADS, Altium, Cadstar, Proteus, etc.

I'll start by asking about OrCad:
I always thought Cadence OrCad was to be discontinued, but it looks like it is here to stay (at least in name) and is Cadence's attempt to gain a share of the market that PADS and Altium currently have the biggest share. This is an interesting program to me because it seems to share a upgrade path to higher end Cadence tools. If there are any users of this tool, can you share your opinion? Is it in the same league as PADS and Altium, or not? Cadence has it priced by cheap where it's even competitive with Altium. My Altium is up for renewal and I'm thinking of changing to another program and all of a sudden OrCad is in the mix and I know zero about it.

I'll also ask about Proteus since I'm not familiar with it: which geographic area uses it the most?

In general, which mid range tool would you feel most confident with using for a large design like 24 layers?

Again, this is not the same old debate as which tool is better. I'm just interested in all the mid range programs and would like to hear opinions and questions for these? Maybe others are also interested since the information is always changing. It will be useful to hear the latest especially for those of us shopping for a new tool for the new year.

 

[fisher101]

hi well the point is that i have used proteous and orcad orcad is a bit difficult and it can create foor prints arror some thimes mather most of the times you can ask me the aspects on which you need info i can gladly share my experince

as far as proteous is concerned it is better than orcad but it also has some components issues despite that no software can provide with a universal library still i find poteous to be insufficient as compared to orcad

 

[marce]

I'd be interested where you figures for the number of ECAD seats and whether it is world usage...
As to Orcad, the origional Orcad layout was discontinued in 2008, to be replaced by Orcad PCB Editor, this is a cut down version of Allegro.
As to which try them out, get a demo of Orcad, Cadstar, Pads and Altium, try them for yourself.
Libraries, write your own and use IPC7351 footprints, setting up the libraru is 90% of having a useful and error proff tool, that YOU control.