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i have used OrCAD in my first job (1989-1992). it used to be small and great. now its huge and bulky and not that nice anymore.
I was using OrCad at that same time. Perhaps our applications were more complex and our expectations higher, but it was absolutely terrible-- more bugs than an ant hill. They kept sending us updates to fix the bugs, and each bug fix would come with two more bugs. Since we were the squeaky wheel, we got updates sometimes a couple of times a week, even two days in a row sometimes, as they frantically tried to take care of the problems. They sent out a newsletter telling about their great programmers being so productive and writing the new version at a rate of X lines of code per day, and I thought, "Ah-- there's the problem-- trying to measure progress by lines of code per day!!" It's always guaranteed to be a loser. They needed an entirely different approach and philosophy, and it probably wasn't going to happen as long as they used the same people. I imagine they probably had an absolute disaster of unmodular spaghetti code that was not well documented.
For the last 12 years I've been using Number One Systems' Easy-PC Pro. It was one-tenth the price of OrCad. It initially had a lot of bugs too, and with all of our wheel-squeaking, they took care of it. I like the software because it's a good, flexible tool for doing what I want to do, which is sometimes rather unorthodox. It just lets me do it instead of trying to second-guess me and telling me I can't do this or that or helping with something I don't want. Other CADs try to be too intelligent sometimes and as a result, stand in the way. I've done various things with this one that it wasn't even particularly made to do. After No. 1 Systems got virtually all the bugs out, they tried to make it more attractive my adding all kinds of modules to it for simulation, autorouting, and other things that were of no use to someone whose work was outside of what the programmers envisioned. I just keep using the old DOS version. I've mostly done extremely dense (40-60 parts per square inch across-the-board average, which supposedly is impossible) thru-hole analog and mixed-signal multilayer boards for our aircraft products with it, but last month I laid out a dense surface-mount board with it for the first time for something that will go on the deck of aircraft carriers. (Think, "RFI city!") The employer is quite pleased with it.
I always found starting with the schematic in CAD to be too limiting. Even with the schematic capture done, the PC board layout part of OrCad would sometimes direct the user to hook things up wrong, because of the bugs. As for the autorouter, take for example two pins next to each other on an IC that were supposed to be connected together (.100" apart), even with a clear shot from one to the other, sometimes OrCad would take off in exactly the wrong direction, wander all over the board, and then stop and say the connection can't be routed. There are things I don't like about
any of the schematic CADs I've demo'ed or used (including Easy-PC Pro), things that mainly prevent the most straight-forward, clearest, neatest schematic; so I keep doing schematics by hand. My main complaint about the CADs is that they don't allow drawing large ICs like processors, LSI, etc. whatever way works best for the schematic. Instead of making just a schematic symbol and making you stick to it, it should let you draw the individual pins wherever is most suitable for where they need to get connected in the drawing.
Enough rambling.
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