orcad to allegro
Hi Kender,
It's an interesting opinion, but a bit misinformed. Altium has always owned PCAD - you can verify that by going back to any old DOS version of PCAD and looking at the file with a text editor. They are also the same company that used to be called Protel - they just changed the name of the company as they began to grow. Altium hasn't "killed" Protel. What used to be called "Protel" has just evolved and has been recompiled from an 8bit DOS program, to a 16bit Windows program, to a 32 bit Windows program. It's still written in the same base language (Delphi), and almost all of the commands are still there and work the same way in Altium Designer as they did in the old 16 bit PFW. They're just trying to outgrow the image of "hobby software", and become one of the major players to challenge Cadence and Mentor.
PADS is hardly "dying a slow death". Mentor poured a bundle into rewriting the software to emulate the look and feel of Altium Designer. They also added some RF layout features to try and entice new users.
DxDesigner has nothing to do with Viewlogic PCB layout software. The original owner of DxDesigner schematic capture was Innoveda. They are the same company that originally owned CAM350 CAM Editor. Mentor bought Innoveda to acquire both products.
Viewlogic is what Mentor now calls Expedition - it's a PCB editor (and a pretty good one in my opinion). It was purchased by Mentor as a product from Viewlogic Systems, Inc.
In short - your Orcad discussion group guru is mostly wrong about all his statements. I don't have much respect for his opinion. He seems lacking in knowledge concerning the history of the software on which he comments.
I should also add that Mentor rejected Cadence's bid to buy them out almost immediately.