OrCAD PCB Editor vs Layout

[dknguyen]

Hi. I was just wondering if anyone knew the difference between OrCAD's PCB Editor and Layout. Their promotional materials don't help me understand at all what the difference is.

 

[ikalogic]

hello, i took a course for using the OrCad suite. i loved their simulation and circuit desiger, however i hated their PCB design program.. hope you won't spend a lot of money on this...!

 

[dknguyen]

I use OrCAD Unison suite right now (which means I use Layout). I was just wondering what PCB Designer is. Which PCB design program are you referring to? Layout or PCB Designer?

 

[hjames]

I started out using Orcad back in 99 or so... I think I did my first 5-10 real PC boards using Capture + Layout. I think that was the basic configuration. before they did the Capture CIS stuff. I vaguely remember "Allegro PCB Editor" was a extra option that cost more money - It might have been a third-party product at that point.

Orcad's always been pretty well known for it's schematic side - I think it was pretty common for the circuit designer to use Orcad Capture, do a schematic, and then toss a netlist "over the wall" to the layout person. It was pretty common for the layout program to be a completely different software vendor. Doesn't make too much sense for us "1 person design teams" though...

The obvious thing is to look at the price tags - one of the packages is probably has a couple extra numbers added to it. Chances are that they probably also have a lot of extra routing algorithms and UI to deal with really insane things like routing the BGA packages - the things tend to have double-digit numbers of layers and such.

 

[rameshrai]

I think pcb editor is the newer version and layout version is discontinued

 

[DerStrom8]

I think pcb editor is the newer version and layout version is discontinued

Do you realize this thread is from 6 years ago?