Orcad vs Altium

[FriskyFerret]

>Tre: It is all about choosing the right tool for the job.
Agree, and the right tool for the user.

Which is the best one? These threads are often pointless.

Which is best?

Fork or spoon?
Man or woman?
WinXP or Vista?
Maxtor or Seagate?
Compaq or Dell?
Sex from behind or sex from in front?
Microsoft or Linux?
Hot climate or cold climate?
Cricket or football?
Islam or Buddhism?

A 'best' thread that could be productive:

"I am a third year student at university. My major is electrical engineering. I have to do a simple PCB board as part of my project. I don't expect that I'll be doing PCB design after I graduate. I just need to get the one PCB design done with a minimum or hassle and learning. The software has to be free because my advisor frowns on pirated software. What PCB would be best to do the job?"

[wnmaximino]

My opinion: Altium designer Summer 08 is the best!

[Giovepluvio]

I have no experience with Orcad and a little one with Altium. In my opinion saying which is the best is pointless. The right question is which is the best for you. I had a chance to learn something about Altium so is the best choice for me.

A very useful thing comes with Altium is the training center on their web site: http://www.altium.com/community/trainingcenter/
Don't know if Orcad has something similar.

[radhaeda]

I prefer Altium over OrCAD. I find it pretty easy to use and learn as a beginner. I have not much of idea about the advanced features of either of the packages. OrCAD might be better as some members suggest, but I am quite satisfied with Altium as it completey suppots my requirements.

[jeniusj]

I think Altium is more appropriately suited for PCB designing rather than Orcad as Altium has more powerful libraries as well as extensive wizard for drawing your own footprints on the basis of mechanical data extracted from the data sheets of the particular component also it has more powerful Design Matrix that help you to design your Layout with more perfection and shurity with ease it is easy to manage schematic and PCB in one workspace panel as Orcad have to manage its schematic and PCB in Capture and Layout Plus individually.
But I appreciate Orcad in its simulation profile it has the results that are better than Altium.Also it has almost the complete toolset required for the better simulation of analog as well as Digital circuits.
Thats all from me about Orcad vs Altium

[efan]

I perfer Orcad, it is easy to use.

[mr_byte31]

easy doesn't mean the best
but it means the best for u

[eoasap]

I've use Altium and love it. The only benefit i've seen with Orcad is the autorouter (specctra), but altium is fantastic. It has SI simulation (2D field solver), integrated code compiler, etc. it is much better with newer versions than say 6.0

Orcad has been rumored to be sold (read a few months ago) so who know's what to expect if that happens.

[anatom]

I think that Orcad is easier to use, faster, and is Better thank Altium. I used Altium in past but, I didnt like it much.

Exactly...

[LEAS]

All depend on that,for what purposes is used. I used OrCAD 9.2, Altium DXP SUITE v2004, PCAD2002 and stopped on last. I do my board manually one sided by means of laser printer and transparencies film. Altium's Situs cannot route one side board and Shape Based router from PCAD too, but PCAD has direct automatically connect with Specctra without difficultys with DO file. Specctra may automatically set jumpers any length. OrCAD 9.2 only 6 types of length. Discussion may be very long.....

[oscar.inc]

orcad is more design, the boards pcb ending beautiful,, but altium is more easy and friendly

[aristiadi]

i think altium is the best because it's easy to use and become the industry standard,

but there's relative 

[RedAlert]

I have worked with both of them, and I can say that in the bottom line it really depends on your needs, and will summarize it as:
for simulation or small PCB project use OrCAD and for medium/serious PCB project use Altium.

Schematic are bit faster to place with OrCAD, but Altium has more possibilities in that area.

Eventually Altium use more modern technologies and their UI are suprior compare to OrCAD.

As I used OrCAD from earlier versions(v7 if I remember correctly), I can say that till now Cadence has not added new and improved features to it, except new UI in the latest version, which is too little and too late...

I think OrCAD could have been a lot better, and it need to die long time ago - but it didn't just because it was good enough that times and easier to learn and because of that users/PCB designer get used with it...

Altium is more industry related and new features are added very fast; Learning curve for Altium is higher than OrCAD.

There are more, but think it is enough for now. Just my 2 cents..

[patoliyarj]

pcb123 : www.pcb123.com

express pcb: www.expresspcb.com

both are  free and very easy to learn and full technical support from manufacturers....

[ali_asadzadeh]

Of course altium is the best it has all needed stuff and you can find it here for free!
there is also eagle which has very nice foot prints and there is an ulp in their site which can export eagle to protel.so you can use these nice footprints in altium.and i think orcad is good for taking exam from students in college in industry you should use something more powerfull.

for pcb and fpga design i suggest altium winter 2009 and for logic simulation and micro controller use proteus 7.4 sp3 and only for analogue simulation use orcad.also in altium web site there are free video tutorials which can help you .

[microfun]

Interfacing to Altium Designer from SolidWorks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIkx86l5s_M

[oscar.inc]

I talk, the experience with software, I use the two systems (OrCAD and Altium)

orcad have enough tools, many unnecessary

OrCAD take many computer resources, the simulation is good, but I prefer to simulate proteus for digital circuits .... multisim for analog circuits and often are better applications proposed by manufacturers in their pages and know that we discussed about (OrCAD and Altium)  not be of more comment to reference and compare

be difficult to create libraries, is unfriendly, and in doing simulation, is slow due to resource-intensive computer in facility occupies more than 5 GB

Altium is lighter and friendly, is very simple and easy to create libraries, besides that resource usage is moderate, I prefer to make diagrams and pcb design, pcb libraries are very easy to customize, plus they can migrate very simplest to other platforms, such as: autocad, photoshop, adobe reader, microsoft word, etc, just to name a few

those are the most significant advantages it has, from my opinion

tell them again that I prefer to simulation multisim and Proteus

Greetings my dear friends sonsivri community 

remember, the best tool is the one you, know how to use. 

[igor_d24]

I tried to switch to Altium from OrCAD / Layout (which is discontinued) quite recently. The main disadvantage of Altium for me was its extreme slowness when working with libraries (after you open a few). OrCAD / Allegro set-up is much faster. So I decided to go back to OrCAD and learn Allegro.

[Unhappy]

Altium Designer is best nothing comes near to it

[txjammer]

We should create a poll. I'm for Altium. You can export the board to a step file for assembly in a cad project, or even import and create a board based on the imported 3d model.

[dipchip]

I also vote Altium...it does EXACTLY what I tell it to and nothing more.
The last update gave CONTROL-DEL on a track... wow, is that handy.

--Chip

[santiniuk]

Also a firm vote for Altium here. The company I worked for moved from Orcad to Altium a few years back and everyone soon preferred Altium. As mentioned the ability to export a step model is a real advantage. The mechanical engineers pick this up and place it in our product models.
I do no FPGA development so cannot comment on this side of it.

[mgparrish]

Altium here.

One bad thing Altium is now doing is pushing to move everything into the "cloud". They haven't gone as far as Adobe has and gone completely subscription based, but appears they are heading in that direction.

If you need 3D Altium is superior in that respect, as the OP mentioned MECHS can easily take the files. Getting and entire 3d PCBAs into Solid Works is fairly straightforward.

[Brosske]

Altium has extreem slow site... :-(

Personally I use OrCAD 16.0 - Designer & Layout...
Quite happy about it, but not pushing the soft to it's limits either ...

Greetz

[2funpars]

I am very confused about altium vs orcad. At this point I use Orcad 16.0 Layout and it is time to change it.

I have installed both designer. Altium looks better. But when importing orcad schematics, I couldn't manage to convert them properly...

[pickit2]

far too many pissing contests, the one that is better, is the one that you are happy with.